Today we have establishments whose primary task is to study national security and evolve strategies to secure national interests. The headless (no decision yet to appoint a chief of defence staff) Integrated Defence Staff within the ministry of defence and the National Security Advisory Board are adequately staffed for strategic planning, constantly monitoring our security envelope and determining the fund requirements for creating capabilities. The national security adviser has direct access to the PM as also to the cabinet committee on security. Then where is the problem?

There could be some justification for our low levels of expenditure if we have some very secret alliances in place. Otherwise, even a casual look would suggest that our budgets and spending are grossly insufficient.

Comparisons are not necessarily conclusive. Yet a brief glance at China’s defence spending can be instructive. That country, most analysts believe, is spending contrary to its claims on defence. The size of its GDP is more than two and a half times that of ours.

Its focus is on rapid modernisation. If we were to couple this with the fascinating pace of infrastructure development in Tibet and the linking up of mainland China with Tibet by rail, the picture, militarily, is reasonably ominous. The timing of the Chinese posturing over Arunachal in the last couple of years requires no special analysis. If we were stronger, the Chinese would probably have been more subdued. After all, many of us believe that the Kargil adventure by the Pakistanis happened only because our forces were not potent enough to deter. Two years later, our reluctance to take any punitive action after deploying for Operation Parakrama would again suggest that among many reasons, perhaps the most important was the nagging doubt that we were not strong enough.

... contd.