NEW DELHI: In 1998, General VP Malik (Retd) had come up with a plan to reduce manpower by 1.5 lakh in three years. The aim was similar to what is being planned now —saving money. The government can, in turn, give back the savings to the Army as capital budget.
“We were facing paucity of funds and this will help generate funds. A budget was given to us for a year and then stopped as Kargil happened,” said General Malik. What General Malik flags is also a reflection of what can happen to the current restructuring exercise. He points out that implementing such reforms or changes in piecemeal is detrimental to the overall effectiveness of the forces.
Former Director General of the Military Operations Lieutenant General Vinod Bhatia (Retd) said, “Finally, the Ministry of Defence has to implement it and if not done in totality it will have an adverse impact on cost and combat effectiveness.”
The same happened with the Group of Ministers Report (2002) and the most recent Lt Gen DB Shekatkar (retd) report in 2016. It was a comprehensive report with 218 recommendations but only 63 were implemented in a diluted form. The Naresh Chandra Task Force recommendations (2011) apart from other points, had re-emphasised the creation of Chief of the Defence Staff, as recommended by also the Kargil Review Committee, and the integration of the force headquarters with the Defence Ministry.
Considering the history of reforms, things do not appear to be rosy. In the present scenario, reforms are necessary and in the case of the current exercise things may shape up for the better. “We had ordered a study on the transformation of the Army and it was the result of that study that two-front war was acknowledged and the need for the mountain strike Corps was realised,” General Deepak Kapoor (Retd) said.