By : TOI

India's long-term defence and strategic planning continues to flounder, with no concrete measures yet in place to build military capabilities in a systematic manner in tune with the country's growing geo-political aspirations.

Instead, in the absence of integrated planning, what we have is the continuing squabble among Army, Navy and IAF for bigger slices of the budgetary pie, without much "inter-service prioritisation" to achieve the required military posture.

India, of course, is certainly procuring a lot of military hardware and software, inking as it has defence deals worth over $15 billion in the last three years to emerge as the biggest arms buyer in the developing world.

But is it getting the biggest bang for its buck? The lack of systematic plans to build "capabilities" in the most cost-effective manner, instead of merely procuring weapon systems, would certainly indicate otherwise.

Take, for instance, the much-touted Long-Term Integrated Perspective Plan (LTIPP) for the armed forces. First, the draft LTIPP for 2002-2017 was junked since it could not be finalised in time. Now, the date for approval of the new "upgraded" LTIPP for 2007-2022 has been set for October 31, 2009. The latest report of the parliamentary standing committee on defence has, in fact, pulled up the defence ministry (MoD) for its "lackadaisical approach and commitment" in preparing long-term plans for armed forces.

The new LTIPP is supposed to cover the 11th, 12th and 13th Five-Year Plan periods. But having failed to get the finance ministry's formal approval for even the 10th Defence Plan (2002-2007), there are fears that the story may well be repeated.

Incidentally, MoD had asked for Rs 4,18,101 crore during the five annual budgets during the 10th Plan period but got only Rs 3,79,300 crore, of which it was unable to spend Rs 21,167 crore.

Even in the 2007-2008 budget, the finance ministry reduced the defence outlay to Rs 96,000 crore from the MoD projection of Rs 1,03,940 crore. That is not all. The 11th Plan (2007-2012) has already kicked off but the finance ministry is yet to approve the MoD projections made for it.

"MoD should take up this matter at the highest level to get its 11th Plan cleared by the finance ministry and finalise the LTIPP at the earliest," said the parliamentary report.