 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. The Ministry of Defence in a new notification has announced setting up of Defence Planning Committee. And to discuss the issue, we are joined by D. Raghunathan. Welcome to NewsClick. So, let's start with what is this DPC and what will be its role and basically what are its compositions. See, the Defence Planning Committee is a new creation. The idea, I think, is to create a new institutional structure to make up for various deficiencies in the past. It's chaired by the National Security Advisor. It consists of the three Defence Chiefs, the Chief of the Integrated Command Office at the Defence Ministry, and three Secretaries from the Defence Ministry in charge of finance, etc. The brief given to this committee is to draw up a national security strategy, a national defence strategy derived from the first to also supervise the defence production policies and programmes in the country, which is of course, intimately linked with the defence procurement system and some other tasks. It asks that this committee will prepare reports, which would be submitted to the Defence Minister, leaving open the question of where does the decision making lie? If the defence committee makes a recommendation, is the minister bound by it? If not, what are the criteria brought about to change decisions or is the political leadership going to override this committee? However, given the composition of this committee headed by the National Security Advisor, who is known to be very close to the Prime Minister and who answers essentially to the Prime Minister's office in essence to the Prime Minister himself, it's extremely doubtful if Raksha Mantri could overrule the recommendations of this, which means that you have essentially a committee which is outside the purview of political accountability, not answerable to parliament, quite capable of saying all these discussions are security related and therefore cannot be revealed, but at the same time give a allowance to the political leadership to say we have taken this decision ourselves. So, this also I think the recommendations talk about that the committee needs to follow up on the points that they have mentioned, if they are talking about production, they need to follow up with the ministers and since you are pointing out the current National Security Advisor deals directly with the PMO, then the defence minister's role will just be like in stamping authority, right? I find three very serious anomalies with the brief and the mandate given to this committee. The first is that the National Security Advisor who is chairing this committee is strictly speaking an officer with advisory role rather than an executive role, but this committee combines an advisory role with executive responsibilities which is highly anomalous. If there are executive anomalies which lie within the purview of the defence ministry, it should be run by defence ministry and be accountable to Raksha Mantri and through that to parliament. That does not seem to be the case here. The other major anomaly I find in this is till now the national security strategy, if you like, of the country was supposed to have been laid down by the National Security Council. Where does this leave now the National Security Council? The National Security Council was broad based, had strategic experts, had diplomatic experts, experts drawn from different fields, who could then have given inputs into forming the national security doctrine or strategy from which your military doctrine and your defence doctrine could follow. This combines all of them and puts them all into one basket. Not only does it I think marginalize the defence minister, it also marginalizes the Ministry of External Affairs and it also marginalizes the National Security Council and the various dimensions to that and essentially makes this a creature of the Prime Minister's office but with the three service chiefs added in a sense as decorations to say we have taken the military into account whereas actually decisions will be taken by the political leadership. So as you have pointed out and this way I have been witnessing when we see the NDA regime that consolidation of authorities or the power is happening basically at the Prime Minister's office. The way this government has been pushing defence production and bringing in private players especially from US and its allies, do you think this is also a move to fasten up that? Well it may play that role in the sense that since this committee has been given responsibility to oversee defence production and currently the defence production policy is heavily weighted in favour of private sector players within India with whom foreign equipment manufacturers from whom India is going to buy equipment are in a sense forcibly linked. On paper there is nothing, there is no compulsion but with a nudge and a wink you can always indicate to the foreign equipment manufacturer as to who he should tie up with in this country and with elections around the corner next year and a large number of defence purchases going to take place in the next year or so if this committee under direct leadership of the Prime Minister's office is given freedom you are likely to see crony capitalism showing up in a very big way. This is basically what's happening when you see Boeing tying up with about those 110 fighter jets and all basically then make in India and indigenous production goes into backbench because these when these private players come they're not coming with they're not giving us technology they're just producing for us we are buying them and money is going outside right. It depends on how you define make in India if by make in India you mean sub-assemblies, subcontracting, screwdriver technology then you have make in India on paper you can show that 30 percent 40 percent of the expenditure is taking place here but no technology would have been transferred, no serious capability would have been built which is the crucial function of a national defence or security policy which is that your industrial base should develop to the extent that it should be independently capable of supporting the military especially in times of conflict. So also because we've been witnessing there has been a massive protest by the defence employees the the industries which are there inside India they have been protesting for the fund crunch for the because there has been fund cuts and all what could have been an alternative that could have ensured that we grow we become self-sufficient on our own and we don't have to rely on the private players. The most important of these is of course to have a robust and self-reliant industrial base in this country not only for manufacture but also for research and development in that a very crucial role has to be played by the military I think till now this entire procurement process as well as the indigenous R&D process treats the military as giving inputs but then decision-making, financial outlays, procurement processes are run by the civilian bureaucracy which has very little idea of the technical requirements of these weapons platforms or of the armaments requirements of the military. On the face of it the only positive of this committee was the presence of the military chiefs because the one thing that this country has long lacked is an integrated planning which will involve top levels of the military leadership along with the civilian leadership of the country under the overall guidance of the political leadership that has not happened. Several commentators have made this the basis of a positive evaluation of this committee by saying finally we have brought the military into the process I don't think so because just by bringing in the three service chiefs does not mean there is an integrated planning process of the military which is built from the base up. The real answer to that would have been an integrated defence ministry which integrates the military presence along with the civilian leadership build that up have a technology forecasting and weapons platform forecasting system based on which the Indian industry of course in the public sector because they have the maximum experience in manufacture as well as research along with a set of feeder industries which could be from the private sector as well needs to have been developed. That's all the time we have for today Raghu and as the committee starts functioning and what they do we'll follow up these issues once again. Thanks a lot. Thank you for watching NewsClick.