Military matters

As India continues its marathon general election, corruption is one of the key issues. Anna Hazare, the anti-corruption campaigner who rattled India’s political establishment in 2011, may not be the force he once was, but his ideals remain a powerful motivating factor with graft scandals rocking the Congress-led government. How one defines corruption is notoriously difficult, multifarious as it is, ranging across sectors such as the government, police, judiciary and the corporate world for example; where certain practice is cultural rather than deception; and the scale ranging from low-level nepotism to active subversion of the entire body politic. And if definitions are elusive, measurement is further hindered, already suffering from the very nature of corruption being hidden. To the social scientist, measuring perceptions of corruption are the most accurate, if fuzzy, guide.
The complacency of the corrupt is the most common cause of prosecution and this was on international display at the Delhi Commonwealth Games, where kickbacks led to shortcomings in construction and accommodation. It plagues the defence industry too. India’s defence ministry cancelled on 1st January this year a $573m contract with Anglo-Italian firm AgustaWestland to buy luxury helicopters for VIPS. Italian prosecutors had arrested the boss of the helicopter maker’s parent company in February 2013 and suspect around ten per cent of the deal was in bribes paid by AgustaWestland to Indian officials to swing the deal its way. Having received three helicopters, New Delhi halted deliveries of the outstanding nine.
Though this would not have a detrimental effect on the Indian military, it is indicative of the defence ministry’s handling of such allegations. The International Relations and Security Network (ISN) asserts that India’s defence procurement sector continues to be rocked by instances of corruption and wrongdoing that have the potential to compromise the country’s military modernization program, with three major scandals leading to the blacklisting of nine companies in the last eight years and the jailing of the former chief of the Ordnance Factory Board in 2010.
India’s efforts to counteract such corruption has been stymied firstly by contradictory policies by various government agencies, secondly, by what the ISN terms ‘systemic complexities’ that have allowed the Ministry of Defence and its Integrated Headquarters to function in a closed and relatively autonomous manner for generations to this day and thirdly, the complexity of defence procurement is an open door to malfeasance, where a constellation of oversight committees cloud accountability, provisions are vaguely worded and sometimes purchases are made for strategic reasons to satisfy the vendor.
Further, the country’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is slow in its examinations. The Bofors scandal in the 1980s, where the Swedish industrial giant allegedly supplied the highest level of government with kickbacks to win a contract to supply field guns (the outcome where the then-government fell and with it the contract has negatively affected the artillery arm of the Indian Army) took two decades for the CBI to file a closure report, a decade to file a similar report on the role of South Africa’s Denel in an ordnance factory scam and seven years with regards the Barak missile scandal in the 2000s (alleged bribes for Israel to supply India with the missile systems). This reinforces both vendors and end-users losing if large arms deals go wrong.
Defence minister A. K. Antony has pushed ahead recently in blacklisting contractors, cancel contracts and punish individuals has had effect but, with the complexity and opacity of defence procurement procedure and conflicting edicts from different government agencies, suggests, as ISN claims, “New Delhi’s push for transparency will fall short of expectations for the foreseeable future.”