Thanks to Jonathan for the link!
via atimes.com
While the Indian Army has stated on record that 68% of its war fighting equipment is obsolete, the report has an even more disturbing fact. “Every year the military has to allocate a large part of its capital budget to pay for old and ongoing projects. This is known as the ‘Committed Liability.’ The actual amount left for new purchases is about 10% to 12%. But this year we have noticed that the Indian Army is actually facing a deficit,” a member of the committee told Asia Times on condition of anonymity. The budget, which was presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Feb. 1, has allocated less than even the ‘Committed Liability’ for past projects. “This is shocking,” the member said.
Former military chiefs agree that this has never happened before. “We have always had shortages in the capital budget. But this time, we noticed that the capital budget is actually short by Rs80 billion,” a senior Indian Army official familiar with the issue told Asia Times. “This means, that not only do we not have money to pay for new projects, we don’t even have money to pay for the ongoing ones.”
Lieutenant General Chand told the Committee that the “Allocation of Rs213.38 billion for modernization is insufficient even to cater for committed payments of Rs290.33 billion for 125 on-going schemes, emergency procurements…”
Interestingly, this budgetary deficit comes at a time when political rhetoric over the Modi government’s security policies are at their highest. The much-publicized “surgical strikes” by the Indian Army’s Special Forces in September 2016 and the 78-day stand-off with China at Doklam last year raised expectations. Frequent stories leaked to the media that the Indian Army made emergency purchases to address critical shortages was an attempt to paint the picture of an efficient government.
In fact, the government also actively aided books and films in an attempt to establish that its strategy against its adversaries was working. However, the standing committee’s report is a stark reminder of the actual state of India’s military.
Story here.
Wow. This is stunning especially concerning their latest standoffs against China and their perpetual "almost" state of war with Pakistan.
Is this a money play?
I'm not sure but this is another example of why I don't cover India as much as many would like.
I just don't understand the place.
On one hand they're a nuclear power, on the other hand they give their troops substandard (recently corrected) battle rifles.
They're all over the map on procurement, every other day you hear of a new purchase and then its canned out of the blue.
I can only wish them well and hope they sort things out.
NOTE!!!! It's not my intention to start a "bash" India blog post. It IS my intention to bring attention to why I don't cover defense issues in that country the same way I do in others. It's just been my observation that so many projects are started, stopped, re-started and then canceled again that its become extremely frustrating and I'd rather leave it to India military blogs to fill in the gaps rather than try and do it myself.
My point? There is no point except to say again that this was not intended to be a bash India blog post.
