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Admiral J G Nadkarni (Retd)

The superhighway to nowhere

The emphasis laid by the ruling BJP government on information technology is a step in the right direction. In the next few years we are likely to see an explosion in the availability of facilities for easy Internet access in the towns and villages of India. Unfortunately, making it easy for information to be available quickly is only half of the story. The other half consists of making information available to be accessed in the first place. After all what use is a super highway of information if there is nothing at the end of it. In this respect, if the past record of the Indian government is any indication, we are still far away from allowing our people easy access to legitimate information. And no institution of the government is more expert at the game of hiding information than India's defence establishment.

India's men in power treat information as gold and hoard it with the same zealous intensity. In a few months time, India's finance minister will get up in Parliament and make his budget speech. He will allocate close to Rs 50,000 crore for the defence of the country next year, the second largest item of expenditure will be disposed of in few lines. This year, tucked away somewhere towards the end of his speech were these two lines. "Rs 45,694 crore are being provided for defence expenditure against Rs 41,200 crore in revised estimates 1998-99. Further need based budgetary support will be provided during the course of the year." That's all. There were, of course, a few inscrutable figures in the details. That is all the information that the Indian taxpayer is likely to get about the money he will fork out during the year.

Both the ministry of defence as well as India's armed forces have a disdainful and cynical attitude towards the public, except of course, when a Kargil occurs. "Give us the money we ask for and we will defend you. You don't need to know anything more." How much did the Kargil operation cost? What is the exact number of jawans killed in the operation? How much will the aircraft carrier Gorshkov cost if the Navy goes for it? How much did the Mysore cost? How much will the leasing of AWACS aircraft from Russia cost? These are all legitimate questions, which the taxpayer would like to know. Yet try asking them in close proximity of the South Block and you will most probably be arrested as a Pakistani spy.

The United States Navy publishes its annual budget in four thick volumes giving every conceivable detail about the next year's expenditure. It maintains more than a hundred web sites making available information and photographs for those interested. The Indian Navy's annual budget covers three pages and tells you nothing. Every defence minister takes office promising to open up the closed doors of defence, bring in more transparency and liberalise or scrap the outdated and draconian Official Secrets Act. That is before he is brainwashed by the bureaucrats and the defence forces. Soon the promises are forgotten. The status quo is maintained.

Over the years the Indian defence establishment has become more and more paranoid about the secrecy of its affairs. Under the garb of security, no information is ever made available except in the last extremity, leading to some ridiculous and absurd situations. Consider the following:

* The Indian Navy refuses to divulge what equipment its latest warship carries. Yet recent issues of Jane's Fighting Ships give full details of that equipment. The so-called 'state-of'-the-art' missiles carried on the ships are eighties vintage according to Jane's.

* 37 years after the Indian Army's humiliating setback against the Chinese, we still refuse to make public the Henderson-Brooks report because it might demean a prime minister and sully the image of the Army. And yet numerous books have been written by Indians and foreigners on the same war without mincing any words.

* To this day, Indian airports have strict no-photography regulations. Apparently our defence establishment has not yet progressed to the satellite age.

* During the recent Kargil operations, the Indian Army cut off all telephone communications to its establishments. Yet an officer could walk just across the road and make a call on civilian lines!

* We had to undergo the ignominy of a Russian minister declaring on Indian soil what the Indian Air Force and the Navy will be buying from that country. Yet there was not a single bit of information from the defence ministry.

Why are we so apathetic when it comes to making available defence information? To start with, the average Indian is least concerned about defence matters or expenditure. He is far too involved with the mundane things of life, his next meal, the job or the education of his children to worry about defence. Yet he should worry. The government might have spent close to Rs 5000 crore to evict the militants from the heights of Kargil. Lesser expenditure there might have resulted in more for the wretched thousands of Orissa where more than 6000 died in the cyclone.

The five per cent of population who pay taxes are even less bothered where the money they contribute goes. They will no doubt crib about the high taxes but take no measures to arrest the growing government expenditure, a large portion of it on defence. It has been drummed into them over the years that taxes they pay for defence is their patriotic contribution.

Our elected representatives, who should keep an eye on matters of defence, rarely raise their voice in Parliament. The annual defence budget has not even been debated for the past five years. Even on the few occasions when it has come up for discussion the debate has consisted mostly of praising "our gallant jawans" and little else. There is hardly any dissent or criticism. In fact, the late Rajiv Gandhi once stated that to criticise the defence budget was "unpatriotic".

The maximum blame for continuing the opaque cloak of secrecy around India's defence establishment should go to its armed forces. From the time of Independence the services have enjoyed the Holy Cow status which they are reluctant to shed. Fifty years of mollycoddling has now led them to believe that any scandal will lower their image, any dissent will affect discipline, any criticism will affect morale. However strongly they may criticise the Official Secrets Act in public, in private they know that it helps to shield all their inadequacies, insufficiencies and inefficiencies. Ironically, there is a general belief in the services that any classified document is available to our enemies within a few days.

And yet, on the few occasions when the armed forces have been dragged into controversies such as Bofors and Bhagwat, free flow of information has hardly resulted in the blackening of its image. The recent Kargil episode clearly established that free and frank briefings help in scotching the availability of information from clandestine sources. Why should one listen to the BBC or Pakistan TV when information is freely available on Indian channels?

Our armed forces will do themselves a favour if they carry out an honest and unbiased introspection of their security set-up. They will discover that in this age of Internet and satellites very few items classify as secrets. The 21st century will be the era of information and quicker India's services shed the veil of secrecy surrounding them the better.

In his first term as Defence Minister, George Fernandes has built up a reputation as a progressive individual ready to knock down some of the walls built by his ministry around itself in the past. Freedom of information about the armed forces and the ministry in the next millennium should be an important priority. Let him go down in history as someone who made defence user friendly.

Admiral J G Nadkarni

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