The office of CDS will replace the existing organizational arrangement of what is known as Cross Service Co-operation (CoSC), where the senior-most service chief officiates as its Chairman on rotation basis. Experience has shown that the Chairman CoSC neither had the time nor the institutional authority to efficiently execute his assigned tasks. The model proved to be weak, as each service was working in its own domain and any joint efforts were slow, duplicating and resulting in wastage of resources, which created delays in decision-making.
The CDS will now be the permanent Chairman of CoSC, in addition to being Secretary of the DMA (Department of Military Affairs) in the Ministry of Defence. There are already four other secretaries in the Ministry of Defence, so Rawat’s placement there will give him an opportunity to key in horizontally and vertically with important government functionaries on a regular basis.
In this innovative structure of the CDS donning two hats, he will be the principal advisor to the Defence Minister on all tri-services matters. Functioning both as a Secretary in the Ministry of Defence and CDS, he will need to do some deft maneuvering for evolving a stable hierarchy and equivalence in relation to the civilian bureaucracy and will need a very high level of co-operation amongst all stakeholders. The three service chiefs of the army, navy and air force will, however, continue to advise the minister on matters exclusively concerning their respective services. Like the service chiefs, the CDS will also be a member of the Defence Acquisition Council and Defence Planning Committee.
The appointment will be for a period of three years or till attaining the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier. Should the government so desire, he can be given further extension in service. To fulfill legal requirements, the Army Act has been amended to create the post. Does this mean that the CDS will always be from the army? He could be from the other two services as well in due course after the respective service regulations are amended but this is not clear at present.
There is a lot of work cut out for General Rawat as the first CDS of India. To begin with, his secretariat would need to establish a Joint Operations Centre at the IDS headquarters which encompasses the Indian Army, Navy Air Force, the National Command Authority, Aerospace Command, Andaman & Nicobar Command, and Strategic Forces Command, to provide standing capability to plan and conduct campaigns and operations as well as tackle emergent situations without having a permanent force deployed under its command. The CDS would also want to have various operational commands of the three services electronically linked and sector-wise for assimilation and evaluation of threats from a wider spectrum. These are basic requirements for jointly executing the operational art and promote development of an integrated environment.
In his previous appointment as Chief of the Indian Army, General Bipin Rawat often talked of preparedness for a ‘two and a half front war’, meaning China, Pakistan and the internal security threats. In the on-going nationwide protests against the Citizen Amendment Act (CAA), General Rawat publically threw his weight in favour of Prime Minister Modi’s actions, thus attracting criticism that for the first time in the history of the country, he had politicized the army.
In his new job, he now has to seriously lay down a national security strategy taking into account the entire threat spectrum. He also has to determine whether the entire country is to be considered as one India Strategic Theatre or divided into more than one. Each has its own implications.
India has a million-strong army and an expanding navy and air force. But it clearly lacks a single agency which could link all elements of the nation-state with military strategy and military strategy with operational art. The foundation of that single agency has now been laid with creation of the post of CDS and appointment of General Bipin Rawat. This will dampen individual service aspirations to apply force singly – a phenomenon also applicable to Pakistan. But for the idea to succeed, it has to be understood that joint war fighting is not about fighting a war with equal opportunity but about recognizing the unique competencies and capabilities of each arm and service. If not, then the smaller services in a country tend to lament about being undervalued in overall joint doctrines and war plans.
This is where India’s first CDS will face his main challenge and his success will depend on whether or not and how well or otherwise, he is able to carry along the other three service chiefs. To be successful, there has to be a change of mindset in the thinking of the three services which must have hardened after decades of working independently. There were already some concerns in the three services about the difficult function of attending to the specific needs and understanding the peculiar dynamics of individual services and articulate it seamlessly in the overall Defence strategy of India.
Leave a Reply