As she charts her destiny in lifting her masses from poverty and backwardness, India is also obliged to ward off incessant military aggression from her two near, and most inimical neighbours. Resultantly, she is compelled to spend as much as Rupees three hundred thousand crores annually from her overburdened national income to maintain the world's third largest defence forces. In normal course of state wisdom therefore, one would expect that such a humungous investment would be managed in the most efficient manner to get the maximum purchase out of every paisa. But alas, that is not the case. What else could explain the contradiction that even with so much manpower, hardware and funding committed upon her military power, none of her adversaries are deterred from perpetrating acts of gross military escalation while indulging in brazen acts of sabotaging the Indian nationhood - freely and with immunity. It is also hard to explain as to why must India's massive defence forces have to be left short of their due war wherewithal, burdened with obsolete weaponry and hardware, and saddled with overgrown and over-frigid organisations for higher (mis)management. The answer is straightforward: the Indian military institution is inefficiently managed. The long festering flaw is observed, understood and enthusiastically banished now and then, but corrections are never actually attempted. Solutions are known, more or less, but are held down, diverted and scotched by systemic prejudices, paranoia and partisan machinations, as if by design. The causes of such afflictions too are no secret: political apathy, bureaucratic subterfuge and to some extent, myopic military leadership.This book is devoted to arguments for empowerment of the apex military management system, identification of the hurdles, redress of systemic concerns valid or conjured, and goes on to offer certain options to modernise the system of Indian defence management into an operationally efficient political instrument that would promote the cause of India's sovereignty in a cost-effective manner.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) is India's powerful neighbor since the first year of 1950's. Before that, without prejudice to the issue of its status of sovereignty or Chinese suzerainty, Tibet had de facto fulfilled the role. That fact of past unfamiliarity with Chinese way of politico-diplomatic expressions, aided by China's unilaterally adopted adversarial posture towards India, makes it imperative for India's strategic community to study China's moves very carefully, and draw conclusions for the purpose of managing the strained relationship. This book is a compilation of such observations, analyses and inferences. Study of PRC's various initiatives which have direct or indirect bearing on India and the methods adopted to implement those is a tough call. This is so because in dealing with inter-state relations, the Chinese leadership arrogate the right of defining the issues according to their partisan perceptions and exclusive stratagem. To that extent, papers contained in this book narrate the factual and honest impressions which China's policies and actions, as these relate to India's concerns, depict. The purpose of this book would be served if these impressions are taken note of in PRC's future bilateral discourse in true spirit of mutuality.

Conceptualising the foundations of national defence and organising a conformingly robust military structure is a humungous task of extremely complexities. Even nations who possess pristine strategic vision and deep rooted military culture find it practically impossible to home on to the right equation between their political goals, military power and optimal resource allocation. The reason lies in the fact that no matter what mock drills one puts up, outcome of military campaigns often remain uncertain and unpredictable, and independent of the forces fielded to secure victory. There can be no right formulae, no right examples and no practice round to hone one`s concepts and practices before the final, bloody and destructive showdown. Irreversibility of war further makes it a nightmare for military planners to guarantee success. At the best they can apply their professional insight to anticipate adverse situations, notionally replicate these and then harness tactical acumen to find possibly the most effective courses of actions to deal with the circumstances. It is here that the salience of various issues discussed in this book come into contention. The book does not offer formulae for the achievement of military success. Rather it offers an insight into the ingredients and processes that enable military planners to conceive the best possible force composition to win wars.

Over the past decade, the VIF has charted an academically independent path of research and analyses. The Foundation has thus been disseminating a vast stream of analyses of key developments and decision dilemmas concerning the nation to its wide circle of associates and readers. Non-partisan and balanced strategic objectivity, and conformity with India`s exalted native civilisational values being its fundamental competencies, it has earned a reputation for the highest level of credibility among national and international opinion as well as decision makers which include governments, strategists and academia. To commemorate the Tenth Anniversary of the Foundation, a selection of 15 articles of contemporary national concerns, along with analyses and prognoses, are presented in this volume after due revision and updating. Authored by the fraternity of VIF stalwarts, with a sprinkling of potential researchers, the topics chosen are diverse, and as the reader would find, the analyses are as concurrent today as when the papers were written in the past few years. The lead authors, of course, are among the top strategic thinkers of contemporary times-Shri S. Gurumurthy, Shri Satish Chandra, General N. C. Vij and Dr. Arvind Gupta, to mention just a few. As the reader will appreciate, each article goes a step ahead to look beyond the usual, mundane discourses.

This book is a compilation of stories penned down by the author at intermittent intervals over forty turbulent years of his service in the Indian Army that began just prior to the Bangladesh War, 1971. The stories recount real-life events, though many times the narratives have either been spiced up or eased down in the interest of readability. The reader may note that it is just a soldier's account; neither is it a philosopher's thesis nor does it lays any claim to literary excellence. Indeed, it is just a witness's narration of certain episodes that he found worth sharing. The book contains twenty one narratives in all, covering themes as diverse as mind boggling experiences, sad episodes, humour in field, adventure, satire and nostalgia. Photographs, where available, and sketches when necessary, are appended alongside some of the story-lines. As the reader may notice, these are products of a young amateur who attempted to compensate his limited skills with boundless enthusiasm. The stories, 'First Blood: East Pakistan' and 'The Battle for Jaffna', are recounts of battle experiences; the first comes from a twenty year old platoon commander's eyes and the second when he grew up to a middle-age company commander. The pieces, 'Olive Green in Dev Bhoomi' and 'On the Trail of the Dead: A Journey Through Karakoram' narrate the travails of long range patrolling in the most difficult environments of the Indo-Tibet Border, while the story 'War of the Junkyard' recounts the triggering of a sensitive situation in the North-East Frontier by an over-active young officer, to be laughed off later. There are two satires: 'Tales and Travails of Study at the NDC' and 'The Final Solution'; the first one laughs at the snobbish culture at the National Defence College, New Delhi, a prestigious destination for military and civil service officers, while the latter points to the incredulity of political stance towards Maoist rebellion. In July 2006, the nation stood transfixed as the child 'Prince' was dug out from the bottom of a 60 feet deep bore-well. 'A Prince in a Bore-well' tells that story. 'Back to the Bygone' and 'Marhaura' are reconnections with the past after four decades spent in faraway lands that motivate reconciliation with the ways of life. Even if India history is replete with hoary military traditions, the independent nation's elite seem to have lost their understanding of the military institution during their two centuries of servitude to foreign rule; thankfully, rural Bharat has maintained their tradition of celebrating its soldierly. The piece, 'Understanding Civil-Military Relations' attempts to refresh the State in that understanding without which the nation would find itself in grief. Hopefully, the reading would give to the readers at least a fraction of the joy that it gave to the author while penning it.

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