India is planning mega defense
projects. With years of beurocratic wrangling and an indecisive earlier
minister, old soviet systems are crumbling. The fourth largest defense in the
world is all on with a big shopping list. But this time serious efforts are on
to see that some ‘war-toys’ are also manufactured locally.
Here are the top three reasons
why it makes sense to make this stuff locally.
Number 1: Like you and I know, these
weapons may never be used.
Number 2: A bit deep point. The
defense technology is at the tip of an inflection point. To make this clear,
gunpowder changed the rules of the game hugely from 16th century.
Then trench warfare changed the game during First World War. Nuclear weapons
rewrote again the rules post second world war. And now Robotics and artificial
intelligence will wipe out human presence itself from the battle field. Multimillion
tanks or aircraft carriers which are huge assets will be sitting ducks for
intelligent projectiles which can search, acquire and destroy targets. Advanced
iron dome sort of technology can sanitize the skies from even a mosquito,
forget a warplane. So we are at an inflection point today. Hence it doesn’t
make sense to buy these expensive toys which anyway will be useless in a decade
or two.
Number 3: Making in defense will
increase capability of local industry and lot of technology will cross over to
the other commercial industry space.
While all these hold true here
are other three potential negative side of the policy.
Number 1: Earlier it used to be
small scout teams from forces having interface with the business people of the
defense companies. But now there will be more interfaces. There is a chance for
increase in corruption within the forces. Another issue can be attrition of top
talent to private companies.
Number 2: By encouraging the Indian
private sector to invest in weapons, we are enlisting powerful corporates into
the war-party. At present there are a lot of talks facilitated between the
government of India and Pakistan at the aegis of the businessmen. Because today
it really not makes sense for the business people, that both nations fight.
They can do more business with peace than war. This situation is going to be
revered.
Number 3: Danger of Nation held
in the grip of a powerful lobby for which peace is not an incentive. It is
widely believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union was not something like a
complete surprise for the US intelligence agencies. Soviet Union was rotting
for a very long time. It is unbelievable that the snooping mechanism of the US
could not get wind of this at all. What seems is, the fact was hidden or not
reported by the CIA and its siblings. They continued to portray the soviet
monster as a threat to world. Several defenses and intelligence spending and
the budget increases were based on this soviet threat. It was also not in the
interest of the defense lobby that suddenly a huge threat vanished away. Today
the Indian business aspire for peace with Pakistan, but if there is billions of
dollars invested in the ‘business of war’ the ‘business of Peace’ will soon
become an orphan. Business will lobby and influence to keep the threat alive so
that there is utility for their toys.
So while making is good in defense,
this should not result in the unmaking of many other things…
indussprouts@gmail.com
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