Tale Of A Quiet Hero

Everyone loves a success story. Indians read so few of them in the Press, they deserve to be told every happy story that can be narrated. This one concerns the few months that Arun Singh spent in the ministry of defence (MoD) in 2001, implementing his own recommendations on restructuring the defence decision-making apparatus. Some in services headquarters jokingly call it Arun's second avatar, thereby referring to his first association with services headquarters in the mid-eighties. That tenure, which saw the only happy times in the army, navy and air force higher commands in the past 20 years, produced the famous Arun Singh committee report, also on restructuring the MoD. But in the mid-eighties, Arun was not the seasoned South Block warrior he has now become. The first Arun Singh committee report was made to simply disappear; not just the official copy, but all copies. Such things can happen if the Lord of the Files so decrees. For many years after this disappearance, services folklore reassured the younger warriors that reforms would come one day when the report would be brought out, dusted and implemented. The day never came, but instead, the Pakistani army blundered into Kargil in 1999 and unwittingly set off a process of reform that may otherwise never have occurred.

The group of ministers (GoM), in a rare and statesmanlike act, ordered four task forces to look into the government's higher-security apparatus. These were the Vohra committee on internal security, the Saxena committee on intelligence, the Godbole committee on border management and lastly the Arun Singh committee on restructuring the higher defence apparatus. While comparisons are perhaps odious and uncalled for, there is little doubt that the Arun Singh committee had the farthest to travel, and it eventually did make the longest journey. What had triggered the GoM into a rare act of statesmanship was the Subrahmanyam Committee report which had stridently criticised the collation and analysis of intelligence. But at the end of the Saxena committee's deliberation, for instance, the country still has no realtime centrally-staffed intelligence coordination centre, nor is one planned.

But to get back to the Arun Singh Committee, at stake against Arun succeeding at all were the entrenched interest of each service, operationally, doctrinally and financially; opposition of the bureaucracy to surrendering any power and the suspicions of the intelligence community against merging the single-service intelligence directorates into a Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). Also in question were earth-shaking decisions like forming a strategic command to manage the country's nuclear forces, the setting up of at least one tri-service theatre command and the nomination of a chief of defence staff. In one swoop the GoM had set its sights on hauling the MoD and the services into the 21st century, mired as they were in the post-World War II organisation bequeathed to us by Lord Ismay. Even the Ismay setup had been taken half-a-century backwards by a power-hungry bureaucracy which had misled the political leadership on the need to keep the service headquarters at a lower-caste status, to prevent them from aspiring for a coup d'etat.

The reform elevated the position of services headquarters next to the dance and drama troupe of AIR as 'attached' offices of ministries to 'integrated' offices of the MoD. Much more has been achieved by this singularly capable man who never lost his humour while dealing with the forces of darkness. After testing nuclear weapons in May 1998, the country today actually has a strategic command to manage its nuclear arsenal. Vice Admiral Arun Prakash commands the first tri-service theatre command in the Andaman islands with his area of command stretching from Myanmar, past Thailand up to Indonesia.These two operational entities come directly under the chiefs of staff committee, but will eventually come under the CDS when he takes over.

More impressive are the new integrated joint staff organisations. Lt Gen Pankaj Joshi, a much decorated soldier popular with his navy and air force colleagues, heads the newly-formed chief of integrated staff division, eventually to be called the vice chief of defence staff (VCDS). Vested with enormous powers, it is this organisation whose successful functioning will decide whether Arun's trust has been rightly placed. With four three-star officers under him, Joshi oversees the interservices doctrine and training staff, the joint operational planning staff, the perspective and financial planning staff and the DIA. Built into the approvals to form these new organisations is a caveat, that a review will be conducted in January 2006. Like many events in history, this reform was steered as much by Arun's skills as by his good fortune. Jaswant, a retired fauji, took over the MoD in addition to his foreign-office job and as is the ministerial prerogative, appointed Arun as an advisor and gave him all-out support. The good fortune came in the form of a wise and sagacious defence secretary who let the reforms progress without interfering.

Arun's skill was severely tested first, when the report was captured by the Lord of the Files, but it was swiftly retrieved. At the last minute the bureaucrats in the committee baulked, demanding a principal defence secretary equal to the cabinet secretary, but were outmanoeuvred. Having done his job, he drove away quietly to Bindsar without fanfare, achieving in four months what roughly 50 service chiefs had failed to do. More than naming him for a national award, Arun's achievements would be respected if services headquarters allowed the integrated staff to function without restraint.

(Raja Menon, a former naval officer, writes on strategic affairs.)