Call for greater coordination among Defence services

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, NOV. 28. The annual seminar of the College of Defence Management here on Wednesday began with a call for a serious debate on ``the credibility of leadership and examination of the appraisal system.'' Air Marshal V.K. Bhatia, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Air Command, inaugurating the seminar, said loopholes needed to be plugged to prevent the dishonest from bypassing the system and reaching higher echelons.

Later, Rear Admiral R.M. Kshetrapal, also pointed out that the veil of secrecy in defence procurements was only contributing to the corruption and sleaze.

Rear Air Marshal V.K. Bhatia said the question of whether there was a need to increase the objectivity of the present appraisal system or make it a 360-degree system should also be discussed in depth. Training strategies also needed a revision, he said. He said every service had an operational role to play and if the services worked together the results would be much better.

He said the scope and responsibility of the defence forces had become greater as future wars would be more complex to orchestrate.

Air Marshal Bhatia said the use of unconventional weapons posed a new threat to the security of nations. Only a tri-service integration as was being planned now would provide the required synergy of action, integration of minds and hearts and a formal well-defined joint decision-making organisation. The need of the hour was an extremely close cooperation among the three services because of the enlarged scope of responsibility and for the commitments of today.

Every sub-component of the organisation must be restructured and reengineered to squeeze out additional capacity within the same resources. The three components of human resource management, material resource management and quantitative management should get the required focus, he said. IT would be one of the major components in this regard and a joint planning structure and formulation of a joint doctrine could mean a right beginning, he said.

Rear Admiral R.M. Kshetrapal bemoaned the fact that though the country had a higher defence organisation its cohesiveness and effectiveness had not gone up despite being reviewed by many important committees on numerous occasions. He regretted that the three service chiefs had been placed on the periphery of security-related decision-making apparatus of the nation in the past, though, there was a welcome change now in the attitude of powers that be.

The concentration of the defence decision-making with the civilian officers of the Ministry of Defence was ill-suited for the country, he said. The present laid down procedures and the pattern of examination of cases created bottlenecks, he pointed out.

Inadequate recognition was given to the urgency of operational requirements and extended delays were caused by price negotiation procedures, he said. A simultaneous methodology in procurement must be in place, he said.

On the budget front too, the emphasis should shift from economic challenges to security challenges, he said. The veil of secrecy drawn over defence procurements had played a major role in contributing to the corruption and sleaze. Cumbersome procurement rules and procedural loopholes coupled with lack of transparency had resulted in a situation where defence deals were invariably attended by political lobbying and influenced peddling of the worst kind, Rear Admiral Kshetrapal said.

Air Vice Marshal H.P.S. Sidhu, Commandant of the CDM, welcomed.

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