SHEKHAR GUPTA - Indian Express

Different Strokes by Sucheta Dalal

March 17, 2001

How Fernandes crossed the line of control
No defence, Minister

What does the Tehelka expose say about our higher defence organisation? How are things so porous, so loose in an establishment otherwise so obsessed with secrecy and security? Forget whether they fixed any deals or not. How come half-witted, whisky-drunk sleazeballs on the fringes of Delhi’s fixer circuit even know which weapons were our armed forces buying? And if they know all this, and they are willing to sell their mothers for a few millions, what will it take the ISI to get them to sell their motherland?

This newspaper, rather dramatically (though unintentionally), carried two remarkable statements from George Fernandes on Friday. One was his parting shot, where he called the expose a foreign conspiracy. He trashed all talk of kickbacks in the various deals. He may be speaking the truth as many of the allegations sound like tall sales talk from minor pimps rather than genuine arms dealers. The other was the reprint of an interview he had given this paper shortly after taking over, where he said he was aware of the lobbies, the sleaze and so on and that he was going to fix it. Did he succeed in doing so?

Fernandes was an odd choice as defence minister though it is well known that he was extremely keen on the job. A maverick, iconoclast, trade union leader known for his very own, bindaas, oppositionist politics, was a very unusual incumbent to head a stiff and starched establishment. But he started out promising to be a very, and refreshingly, unusual defence minister. The impact was immediate. He banished to Siachen the bureaucrats blocking the purchase of snowmobiles for soldiers, began travelling to distant outposts — including Siachen, his favourite destination — and identified with the armed forces as no defence minister had done, not even Jagjivan Ram. Why did he then find himself at odds with two of his service chiefs so soon?

Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, we all know about. But we forget Air Chief Marshal S.K. Sareen, who was confronted with flash strikes by the IAF engineers across the country over the pay commission, and hounded out. Whatever Sareen’s faults, it was unusual for a chief to find the political and bureaucratic ganging up on him in this manner.

Some of this trouble had preceded Fernandes but by the time he was there, the defence establishment had made up its mind on the air chief. Stories were planted against him in the media, many of the leaks coming brazenly from the Defence Public Relations Directorate, obviously with the blessings of those higher up. These were unprecedented events that most of us in the media did not measure up to, for two reasons. One, we were not competent enough to figure out what was going on. Second, after seeing so many namby-pamby figureheads on the raksha mantri’s chair, or complete misfits, we were so much in love with this dynamic new minister who was accessible, forthright and, above all, seemed to enjoy his job. Then came the Bhagwat episode.

Could it be that the maverick, the iconoclast, the fighter in Fernandes got so distracted, — or seduced — by this internal politics of the defence establishment as to forget some ‘givens’ of the defence minister’s job? The media loved his accessibility and he, the publicity. But in which other democracy does the defence minister keep such a high profile? His frequent visits to the outposts, the 18 trips to Siachen, were an interesting new approach to his job. But was it the appropriate one?

The truth is, the troops, by and large, loved him. He was the first defence minister, ever, to reach out to them directly. He listened to their grievances and, in many cases, delivered immediate redressal. Mountain hospitals he visited found high-altitude sickness survival equipment delivered immediately on his return. The government massively raised compensation for soldiers dying in the line of duty and so on. But, there was a problem.

In democracies, the defence minister does not establish direct communication with troops or go around shoring up their morale like the marshal of the army in the Soviet tradition. He represents the higher, elected, constitutional authority which provides political direction and control, strategic leadership and means to look after the nation’s defence. The responsibility of communicating with the troops, the operational formations, the role of image-building at that cutting-edge level of the armed forces, lies with the three chiefs. It is they, not any politician or other civilian, who must be seen by their troops as the God whose word is sacred, order divine, and integrity — and courage — beyond all doubt and suspicion. If the minister takes over that role, it diminishes the office of the chiefs. This is precisely what happened in the past three years.

Some generals fret about it, some suffer in silence. Some also exploited this new approach in a way so reminiscent of the Krishna Menon era. There are two essentials to civil-military relations in a democracy. First, the soldiers must fully defer to civilian authority. Second, no civilian should ever acquire an image among an army larger than its generals. For a politician, the adulation of the soldier is touching, and heady. But it is there that some self-denial is called for, in the fashion of a K.C.Pant, a Jagjivan Ram, or even a Y.B. Chavan.

The armies dress their generals in colourful uniforms, medals, epaulettes, lanyards, swords and all as part of this essential process of deifying them in the eyes of their men. Troops will charge a hill or a machine-gun nest or pilots will raid an enemy airbase in daylight if they not only have full faith in their chiefs but also a belief that they are tough, uncompromising men, masters of destinies, their own and that of their charges. Did Fernandes adequately appreciate that?
If he did, he wouldn’t have sent a RAW aircraft stealthily to fly in Admiral Sushil Kumar to take over as the navy chief. Then he stated, repeatedly, how Kumar had expressed to him the fear that he would be victimised and harassed by his chief. ‘‘I said, don’t worry, I am there,’’ said Fernandes in so many interviews after Bhagwat’s sack. What was he telling us all, and the armed forces? That he was installing as chief of naval staff a man who was ‘scared’, even of his chief, and had to be brought in stealthily to take over as commander. The issue was not Bhagwat’s sack. A soldier who challenges civilian authority must go. But what does it do to the troops’ morale if their chiefs are painted as handmaidens of politicians? If the chiefs were to be as mortal as the rest of us, the civilians, the journalists, the politicians, why parade them in fancy dress, the epaulettes, the lanyards, the medals and the swords?

Fernandes had a particular view on this which, as his three years as raksha mantri show, perhaps doesn’t work in a democracy. It will be interesting to see what his successor does with this unusual legacy.