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The Rediff Interview/ Vishnu Bhagwat

'If a military person does not speak or stand up for his convictions, he is not fit to be there in the first place'

F ormer Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat's dismissal, the first of a service chief in independent India, sent ripples of shock across the nation and the military establishment. Bhagwat himself broke his silence recently, giving his side to the media about his dismissal from service. He agreed to give an interview but was chary about discussing his dismissal or even the allegations hurled at him.

"All that I spoke about in the press briefing and I don't want to go over it again." But the man credited with giving the Indian Navy a vision for the next century spoke eloquently about the country's defence and how prepared the country is for facing its enemies, touching ever so briefly on his ouster from office. An exclusive interview with Amberish K Diwanji:

What kind of message does your unceremonious dismissal send across to the country and the world?

You would appreciate that the chief of a fighting service is not the head of a civil department. He is the leader who was chosen and selected after the most stringent procedure, with a proven track record, and therefore the officers and men of the armed forces look up to him for the kind of leadership, vision, and strategic purpose, the perspective that he provides as a leader, not only in the navy but in the entire area of maritime endeavour, maritime enterprise. And because navies operate globally, his name or his position or his place is not confined to his own country but to navies and maritime organisations all over the world.

As far as sending a signal is concerned, I would quote from a columnist who said, 'When the cook came in after the meal was over, he said he had just heard the news which stated that the morale was very high... in Delhi!' And this was a regimental mess out in forward posts on the mountains.

Your dismissal comes at a time when the Indian armed forces face more challenges than ever before and the civilian leadership seems to be clearly unaware of the task ahead. How detrimental is it to the morale of the armed forces personnel?

I will say that we have been lucky in our country in the past with defence ministers, by and large, and prime ministers overall, being very sensitive to security concerns. Starting with Jawaharlal Nehru whom we uphold as the Father of Indian Navy, who understood what sea and maritime power meant. Nehru understood what navies are all about, how they are linked with not just the security of the country but with its economy and economic development. It was he who said we lie in the lap of the oceans.

Other countries have been very fortunate, whether it is China, Japan, the erstwhile Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The last is singularly fortunate that except for three persons, all its presidents have served in the armed forces and during wars and conflicts. We are not in that fortunate position and it appears that people are insensitive to these issues. As a former famous defence minister once said, 'It is possible that the chief of a defence service may have made a mistake or may be wrong in a particular matter. But the defence minister, in coming to a decision, should weigh the consequences of what effect it will have on the morale of the services. It will lead to indiscipline and anarchy'.

That is the litmus test that will apply to us. In case we recover from this event, it will be entirely to the credit of our young officers and sailors who will treat this as a challenge that notwithstanding political -- to describe it in a charitable way -- misjudgement and mentality, they serve the country with duty and honour.

You have praised the defence and prime ministers of the past. Yet today, we are in a nuclear neighbourhood with a political leadership in the grip of an eternal crisis. How can such a government handle the difficult task of security? We seem to be veering away from strategic issues.

I tend to agree with you. Strategic issues are not even discussed, certainly not with men in uniform or their leaders. Second, the time we devote to strategic issues of the future is something that I would not even like to mention for fear of ridicule. Thirdly, the time that the ministers have for the business at hand and the business of the future is even less because they are so preoccupied with mere survival and holding on to their chairs. They simply do not have the time to give clear political direction or political vision to drive towards the goals and missions needed in a nuclear neighbourhood.

It is not just a nuclear neighbourhood, but a nuclear world. The country does not come only from country A or B, but from whichever country that has a technology threshold that is higher than ours. That's what threats are all about. Today, you have to consider all these stuff rather than the old geographical or geopolitical stuff.

How prepared are we for a war today and tomorrow?

I'll put it in the context of the navy first. The navy operates on a global canvas, on a world scale. It has to win or lose, and lose we shan't, on the international field. Therefore it is no use comparing men and equipment with our immediate neighbours, where most of our discussion is centred. Certainly, the navies have to be a world class level, nothing less is acceptable. That presupposes that you are striving for a world that is driven by technology, by the revolution in military affairs, a navy in the forefront of military technology, which uses space, network systems, a navy able to fight in an era of information dominance.

It is a world where you have to reckon with adversaries who are able to use the seas because anyone who has a navy is a neighbour, enemies who have already targeted you with satellite imagery. There is no goodwill because this is the business of militaries, enemies who will launch precision guided weapons through a doctrine called the war-breaker strategy. This is predicated on the fact that in the first 72 hours of a war breaking out, the command, control and communication node of an adversary will be neutralised or destroyed. The transportation node will be neutralised, the energy nodes will be destroyed. The leadership will be separated from the people, the generals and admirals from their fighting elements and men. This is the nature of war that is already with us, as was seen in the Gulf War, and it has progressed manifold because no one is waiting for us.

We have a long way to go and we cannot catch up at the rate we are going. We have to accelerate our progress, not just in terms of technology and support systems but in the areas of humanware and software. We have to have men who are first rate, who will understand the technologies and master them, and use them in evenly matched situation to turn defeat into victory.

India is very dependent on imports for arms, spare parts, and petroleum. How does this impinge on our defence ability?

I will put the question differently. As far as self-reliance is concerned, Dr Abdul Kalam has been talking about how he intends to take the country from 70 per cent reliance on imports to 70 per cent reliance on self-dependence. That is the overall plan. But the navy has always driven towards a self-reliance goal, and I am happy to tell you that not just in the area of design but in the area of system integration, software, network-centric systems, in all these areas the navy is going ahead. But the navy cannot go ahead on a year-to-year basis or even on a five-year plan basis. And it is to overcome this dependence on imports that the navy has been driving at long-term sustained programmes. For instance, I had suggested the 30-year submarine-building programme, and the sustained frigate programme and building an air defence ship.

All these activities will also have a direct benefit for the Indian economy. For example, the shipyards' capacity utilisation is 50 per cent. Such activities will drive investment into our industry, into our ancillary industry such as electrical, electro-mechanical, electronic, will stimulate R&D, our engineers and designers. Building our own arms requirements will have the capacity to take in more skilled manpower, which is anyway the most important ingredient of anything productive is the human factor, up to two-thirds the cost, according to the economist Mahbub-ul-Haq. Even more important, it provides employment to our own people, hence self-reliance in defence is so important.

Yet, today the Navy is planning to buy the Admiral Gorashkov from abroad.

If you don't mind, I will not talk about Admiral Gorashkov. All I will say that when I was there the priority of the Navy was an air defence ship to be built at the Cochin shipyard, a project which has been unfortunately pending for 12 years. It has received the approval of two successive defence ministers but I am afraid that even after the approvals, it has been constantly interfered with and the final clearance has not come. It takes a naval project three years to cut the first steel from the time of the Cabinet committee approval, two years to spend even the first rupee after the approval. It is a long term project and it is very, very important as far naval aviation is concerned to carry our influence into the far corners of the Indian Ocean, where our strategic frontiers lie.

You said it takes three years from the time of the Cabinet approves to cut the first steel. How can India afford such slow processes?

It takes three years from the Cabinet committee approval to cutting the first steel, but how long it takes for the Cabinet committee to reach a decision is anybody's guess. And regarding your question, it is better put to the political masters. I can only tell you that navies have to be planned on a long-term basis. Ad hoc decisions will not work. For this reason, not only for the Ninth Five-Year Plan, but we have submitted to the government a long-term four structure plan and the 30-year submarine plan that takes us right up to 2025. That is the best we can do at the Naval staff.

Do you think in our country we suffer because none of our political leaders has a military background?

I think so. If you go to the human level, we should not shy away from the fact that we have an elite -- political, business, bureaucracy -- who are united in one kind of thinking: that none of their sons, daughters and sons-in-law want to join the armed forces of the country. I think there is something very wrong with this kind of attitude and it is an attitudinal problem, which has an effect down the line. Because if you think that someone else should fight your wars, if that is the impression that goes, it is a very, very poor way out and a very poor message.

Yet, is this problem not caused by our set-up where an under-secretary at times wields more power than the chief of an armed force?

We have a colonial set-up. In the United Kingdom, from where most of our institutions are drawn, a civil servant in the ministry of defence makes his way up from the lower-most rung of the ladder after spending his lifetime in that ministry. He is not a bird of passage from one ministry to another. Therefore, he has a stake in that ministry, a stake equal to the man in uniform. And the man in uniform is not distinguishable from anybody else.

It certainly is an untenable situation to have a generalist civil servant. And this is not what I am saying but what the Administrative Reforms Commission did in 1968. This commission recommended the creation of at least six specialisation in the civil service, one of them being defence and security. But I am afraid it has not been acted upon at all. In fact it is being put into reverse gear even faster than what it was in the 1960s.

Are you suggesting an Indian Defence Civil Service along the lines of the Indian Foreign Service?

Not at all! We are saying exactly what the Administrative Reforms Commission said. That, after a time in any of the civil services, those who wish to make a specialisation -- in industry, commerce and economics, or agriculture and food, or education and social services -- would be divided along such lines. The civil servants would spend more of their time in such ministries. I am not suggesting a separate civil service line.

In fact, I think there should be a happy mix at every alternate level in an integrated ministry of defence between uniform and civil. And we should have boards at every level such as minister board, minister of state board, chiefs of staff board so that joint decisions are taken. We cannot continue with the present file-pushing system, it will not work.

Is India today prepared for a two-front war?

I hope we never have such a situation. A one-front war means that our diplomacy has failed, a two-front war is not something we would like to have. Indian resources are today needed for economic and social development rather than fighting a war.

But having said that, let me add that as military men, we have to build up our strengths. Only too often we have worked for peace and had war, sought diplomatic negotiations and we were forced into conflict. India has had more than her share of wars. I don't think there is any country in the world that in the past 52 years has had so many wars thrust upon it apart from the proxy war that it continues to fight. I hope the leadership of the armed forces will stand up and put forth their ideas without fear or favour, make their demands that are not exaggerated but moderated by doctrine and strategy. Demands based on a doctrine for the optimum utilisation of our resources, especially our excellent manpower, the finest in the world.

You speak about the military leadership standing up. Yet, so far, the top chiefs who have actually stood up to dissent against the government can be counted on the fingers. And after your episode, will they stand up today?

I will give you a short answer. If a military person does not speak up or stand up for his convictions, right or wrong and within the disciplinary framework of the service, then he is not fit to be there in the first place. We, the armed forces personnel, are not in a career but in a vocation. We are not there to acquire property and money but have higher goals in life. If we produce a leadership that can bend and crawl, then it is better not to have such a leadership in the first place!

Photographs: Jewella C Miranda

EARLIER FEATURE:
Bhagwat promises to reveal the truth soon

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