India gears up for first Chief of Defence Staff in face of China, Pakistan threat
- India’s leader Narendra Modi is said to be in the final stages of choosing the new chief to improve synergy among the army, air force and navy
- The appointment is part of India’s much-needed military reform to face its nuclear-armed neighbours China and Pakistan
“Better late than never” is how Arun Roye, a former major-general who now heads Kolkata-based think tank Ceners-K, welcomed the move, which comes some two decades after a Group of Ministers committee first recommended the appointment in 2001.
L.K. Advani – a former deputy prime minister and Modi’s one-time mentor – headed that committee, which was set up to review the weaknesses of India’s military after the 1999 Kargil War with Pakistan.
However, fierce turf battles between the army, navy and air force, coupled with weak civilian control and the political failure to resolve them led a 2011 committee headed by former defence secretary Naresh Chandra to recommend a permanent Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee instead.
In 2018, the three services finally agreed in principle on the appointment of a permanent chairman, but Modi announced in August he would have a CDS as a “single point” military adviser to the government, with a clear brief to better integrate the three forces. This would streamline defence spending and improve military effectiveness.
The CDS would have to work through the Integrated Defence Staff, which was created in 2001 as the centrepiece of the military reform process following the Kargil War. However, without a CDS, the Integrated Defence Staff was a “bureaucratic lightweight that was easily sidelined by the three services”, said Anit Mukherjee, a former Indian army officer turned academic, who recently wrote about the challenges of military coordination in The Absent Dialogue.