Higher Defence Management, Civil-military relations and force modernisation were three critical areas in which there was little or no movement in the year gone by.
While it may be tempting for the Niti Aayog to make deep inroads into defence planning, it would be wise to focus only on those areas that do not disturb the core function of defence preparedness.
Defence planning has had a troubled history since its inception, in spite of several experiments with the structures and processes of planning. It will, therefore, be in the fitness of things to re-evaluate the existing architecture of planning.
Converting the Services` HQs as departments of the government within the scope of Allocation of Business Rules, with responsibility to Parliament for obtaining defence appropriations, may be in the long-term interests of the country.
The effort to set right the operating environment has to start with creating a mechanism to review the existing devolution of power comprehensively based on clearly defined principles and not in an ad hoc manner.
Despite “indigenisation” being an important policy objective in defence procurement it will be useful to observe the recent US regulatory developments on detection and avoidance of counterfeit components in defence procurement. The new US developments could also perhaps inform the MoD efforts for streamlining its own Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP)
