Human Shield - yet another necessary evil in India's fight against terrorism

It doesnt take much to generate outrage these days, thanks to both mainstream and social media. However, the kerfuffle over the "human shield" incident has been a topic worthy of debate. Using a civilian as a shield to facilitate tricky counter insurgency operations is neither new nor unusual - either in India or outside - but the images of a civilian tied to the bonnet of the jeep driving through villages is undeniably evokes strong reactions.

Besides the usual battle lines between "liberals" and "right wing", an interesting divergence has been in the military circles, with several ex-servicemen coming out against the modus operandi adopted by Maj Gogoi in this case. They have quoted Geneva Convention, Indian Army ethos, counter insurgency doctrines and more. As Lt Gen H S Panag, ex-Army Commander, summarised,  

"The image of an alleged ‘stone pelter’ tied in front of a vehicle as a ‘human shield’, will forever haunt the Indian Army and the nation"

Another ex-serviceman, Retd Col Alok Asthana, surmised that the action went against the ethos of the Army and undermined its honour.

Honour is essential to a professional army. But the top brass in Indian defence, at both the military and the ministry level, seem to have forgotten that.

But is it really so? Is the human shield the first time a somewhat distasteful tactic has been used in countering insurgency? Or is it but another in a series of such innovations that the Indian security establishment has had to adopt to counter the threat of insurgencies and terror? Lets look at a few examples.

Mizoram

The Mizo insurgency was one of the first such challenges faced by independent India. On Mar 2, 1966, the Mizo National Army (MNA), the primary Mizo insurgency group, overran large parts of Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram, as well as a few smaller towns around it. It included the Treasury, Armoury as well as the Assam Rifles headquarters. After the initial attempts by the Indian Army to relieve the city was beaten back, the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the Indian Air Force (IAF) to conduct operations. In the first (and till now, only) case, IAF fighters strafed Aizawl with guns and bombs, destroyed large parts of the city, and killed several civilians. But the operation succeeded, MNA melted away into the jungles, and the might of the Indian state was re-established in Aizawl.

In 1967, the Eastern Command of the Army, led by Gen Maneckshaw, launched a programme called "regrouping of villages". It basically meant driving out villagers from villages and grouping them in fewer hamlets (called Progressive and Protected Villages, or PPV). The idea was it would be easier to monitor fewer number of villages and therefore cut off the support to MNA from the populace living in the rural hinterland. some 500 villages were regrouped into 100 odd PPVs - it accounted for 95% of Aizawl's rural population. Did it work? Open question, but the last PPV was dismantled only in 1980, 6 years before the Mizo Accord that ended the insurgency. It was one of a large bouquet of measures required to tackle a well armed insurgent group.

Punjab

One of the deadliest challenges faced by the Indian state. KPS Gill is widely credited for ending the insurgency, using unconventional means that would not pass muster in "normal" situations. One of them was the "hostage" strategy. A tactic that was a straight lift from the terrorist playbook, it involved picking up (either physically by the police, or through more discrete means) members of the families of known terrorists. Keeping such hostages achieved two purposes. One, it meant that terrorists left the families of policemen (most of whom came from rural Punjab) alone. Two, it worked as a lever for select influential leaders of Khalistan groups to come forward and assist the police in exchange for the security of their families. This was carried out widely in rural Punjab, which is where bulk of the Khalistan leadership emanated from.
The result was a resounding success. This, along with many other measures, helped end the militancy by 1995, barely 11 years after Op Bluestar. In 1985, it was the greatest national security threat faced by India, and no one could imagine that it would be defeated by 1995.


Naxalite movement in West Bengal

There was a time in the late '60/early '70s when the city of Calcutta was literally hostage to the depradations of Naxalites. Policemen were killed in broad daylight, businessmen killed and driven off and the slogan of "China's Chairman is our Chairman" adorned most walls of the city. Biggest issue was the urban middle class sympathy for the movement - some of the brightest young boys from middle/upper middle class families provided leadership to the Naxals. Under an unconventional police chief, Ranjit Gupta, the state (and central) govt turned the tide using what can be mildly termed strong arm tactics. To start with, the police started randomly picking up students from hostels known for their Left wing activism. Many of them were sent to jail and kept without trial for years. Several were simply shot in cold blood. Many families were given a stark choice - to send their boy out of Bengal (preferably out of India), or see him incarcerated or killed soon. Most families exercised the former option. It was a campaign that sent shivers down the cities of Bengal, but it slowly but surely cut the oxygen of fresh recruits to the Naxal movement. By the mid/late '70s, Naxalism had ceased to be a threat to the state.

These are but a few instances. Counter Insurgency (CI) is a complex, dirty business. Hearts and minds is identified as key to CI, but any such campaign can only succeed once the majesty of the state has been established. A neutral populace will tend to side with the group wielding the most coercive power.

Ergo, its perhaps unfair to judge the officer who took the Human Shield call. The Indian Army (and state) have adopted far more distasteful tactics in defence of the state in the past, and succeeded. They were necessary to defend the freedoms and ideas of India for the vast majority of India's citizens.

Strategic Partnership model for Defence - Modi govt's SEZ moment?

After a long and tortuous journey, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) recently finalised the Strategic Partnership (SP) model for defence manufacturing. The salient points of the new policy are as follows:

1. Four key systems - Single engine fighter aircraft, helicopters, submarines and Main Battle Tank/Armoured Fighting Vehicles - have been opened up for private sector manufacturing. While the first two have been opened up exclusively for private sector manufacturing, the last two are open for PSU/OFB to bid for as well.

2. There will be ONE SP per project selected.

3. The SP will require tie-ups with foreign Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM), to cover manufacturing, transfer of technology (ToT), assistance in training skilled human resources and other support.

The putative objectives of the policy are clear and have been discussed for years. Create a Military Industrial Complex (MIC) in India, provide competition to an inefficient PSU eco-system, and prmote indigenous solutions to our large defence requirements. The question is, does the policy do so?

Shorn of the hype and hyperbole, not only does the policy not seem to achieve any of the stated objectives, it in fact lends itself to massive rent-seeking opportunities (or at least motivations for the same). At its core, the policy seems geared to simply replace a public sector license-manufacturing monopoly into a private sector license manufacturing monopoly. 

Lets look at the structural elements. 

First, the defence industry, by its very nature, is a monopsony (a market that has only one buyer, and multiple sellers). Typical other examples of monopsony markets are Railway engines, British National Health Service. In such a market, the buyer can maximise value from this market by promoting a high level of competition among many sellers. The issue though is, military technologies, by their very nature, are available with few companies/entities. Ergo, in the best of times, it is difficult to find enough competing sellers to foster genuine competition. Governments around the world therefore try various incentives to foster competition. The new SP policy however, reverses the logic, by creating monopolies in key areas. In short, now the monopsony buyer (the government) creates a monopoly seller to buy from, instead of fostering wide competition to derive maximum value for itself!

Second, the structure envisaged in the new policy is exactly what has prevailed for many decades in India. Typically, the government (and the military) ask a bunch of foreign OEMs to bid for a contract, select one from those who respond (or remain left in the fray after many years of dilly dallying), and then designate a PSU (or OFB) to license produce the product in India. From Mig21s to Su30s, T55s to T90s - this has been the model adopted. The new policy simply replaces the PSU license producer with a selected PRivate Sector SP. The process remains the same - a foreign OEM provides the know-how, a partner Indian SP sets up the manufacturing facilities to license produce the system in India. In other words, convert a public sector monopoly into a private sector monopoly!

Third, the policy supposes that somehow private ownership is the panacea of all ills plaguing the defence industry. Problem is, private sector operates on principles of profit maximisation (as it should). When a policy seems geared to award monopoly status around license manufacturing of a major system owned by a foreign OEM, there is little incentive for the SP to invest in large R&D and achieve true self sufficiency. Long years of license production of Mig21 didnt enable HAL to design a new fighter (or fighter engine) on its own, because it knew when the time comes, it will license manufacture the next generation (which it did, with the Su30). Similarly, a monopoly private company license producing the F16 (say) has no incentive to set up capabilities to design and manufacture the next generation of single engine fighter. It would rather focus on maximising profits for the assembly line by "working the system".

Many years ago, the UPA government unveiled an ambitious SEZ policy, to emulate China's success with SEZ. But thanks to the design of the same, the policy became a tool for tax avoidance and real estate - related land grabbing. Very quickly, the entire process got embroiled in litigations, allegations of corruption and controversies. It was a design defect with the policy itself. The defence SP policy portends to a similar fate

India's defence expenditure - its a problem of quality, not quantity

Do we spend enough on defence? The general narrative in the commentariat forever is a resounding NO. The point received some recent impetus when the Army Chief, General Bipin Rawat said that the military is not getting its due share of national resources. For good measure, the Chief also said that India should take lessons from China in this regard.

Lack of enough spends on defence is an old chestnut - question is, how valid or even accurate is it?

Lets look at the headline number everyone quotes (often inaccurately), military spending as a % of GDP.

Source: World Bank

As can be seen, not only is India well in line with rest of the world in terms of how much of our GDP we spend on defence, we are in fact ahead of China in this regard. Of course, given the disparity in the relative economic sizes, China spends a lot more on absolute terms, but the solution to that is to expand our own resource base (GDP) to afford a greater spend. However, do we spend too little? Data doesnt suggest that at all, in fact its quite to the contrary.

However, its not just about GDP, but also budget expenditure-intensity of defence. Finally, defence can be funded only out of the public exchequer. And there are competing demands for the limited tax-kitty that funds defence too. And it is here that India is an absolute outlier, on the negative kind.

Chinese budget numbers are not available, but India spends clearly a very high proportion of its Central Budget on defence. Comparable to the US, and only marginally short of Pakistan, where the military is in charge of government and tends to have outsized share of resources and influence.

Put the two together - proportion of GDP and proportion of central govt expenditure, and the oft-repeated lament of low spend on military doesnt stand up to scrutiny. So, what really is the issue?

In simple terms, its quality not quantity. We spend enough, but we underspend on quality. It has 2 facets.

One, we spend too much on salaries and pension. In the last 4-5 years, 45-50% of the defence budget has been spent on personnel costs. As a comparative benchmark, US spends around 25-30% of its defence budget on personnel costs. Bad news doesnt end there though. Thanks to OROP and a steady increase in the number of personnel (Indian Army has expanded around 25% in the last 15 years, a period when almost all major militaries have downsized on personnel), the pressure of salaries/pension is only going to increase.

Two, India is unique in terms of its import-intensity of expenditure on military. For years, we have been amongst the top 3/4 weapons importers in the world. Of late, we have acquired the dubious distinction of being the numero uno!

Source: SIPRI

Countries which spend more than India on defence (as proportion of GDP) - Russia, US, Israel - typically are large net exporters. The military industrial complex is a large part of their domestic economies/employment. For India, conversely, large chunks of the defence budget go to financing imports, with no network externalities in the domestic economy. Its a double whammy, where we spend a pretty large sum of money, while not creating long term benefits for the economy. There is adverse military impact too, as imported weapons are often not available when they are most needed (ammunition for Bofors gun during Kargil as a case in point).

In nutshell, Gen Rawat (and the commentariat) is completely wrong. India doesnt lag in spending on defence - we spend as much as we can afford (and some more). The issue is on quality. Unless we improve upon that, we will continue to derive sub-optimal outcomes for the considerable sums that we are spending on securing India.