High on promise: Can the Defence Planning Committee turn things around?

Last week, the Union government notified setting up a body called Defence Planning Committee (DPC), with a broad mandate. The DPC is expected to prepare draft reports on national security strategy and international defence engagement as well as provide a road map for building a defence manufacturing ecosystem and a strategy to boost defence exports. The DPC will be chaired by the National Security Advisor (NSA) and will comprise the foreign secretary, the chairman of chiefs of staff committee, the Army, Navy and Air Force chiefs, and the secretary (expenditure) in the finance ministry. The DPC will submit its reports to the defence minister. The agenda and the composition suggest the DPC will be the overarching structure driving India’s defence strategy.

It is a welcome move as the DPC could finally provide a holistic approach to national security planning. For one, the presence of the three service chiefs will provide a comprehensive assessment of what is required militarily. The presence of the foreign secretary allows defence and diplomacy to be on the same page working towards a common goal. The inclusion of the expenditure secretary further enhances inter-departmental co-ordination by bringing the finance ministry up to speed on the financial aspects of defence planning. The fact that it is headed by the NSA enhances the committee’s political heft. After all, the NSA not only attends all meetings of the Cabinet Committee on Security, he also advises the prime minister on the use of nuclear weapons as the chair of the Executive Council of the Nuclear Command Authority.

 

As such, the DPC could overcome a long-standing weakness in India’s strategic thinking on defence, which has so far been dealt with in silos and often lacked full political approval. The structure of the DPC, too, is promising. It will have four sub-committees looking at four separate aspects: Policy and strategy; plans and capability development; defence diplomacy, and defence manufacturing ecosystem. It is expected that these sub-committees would provide a further avenue for benefitting from the expertise in the ministries concerned.

But what will truly determine the DPC’s usefulness is its ability to turn things around. This is not the first time that such a high-powered committee has been put in place. For instance, a 1978 DPC headed by the cabinet secretary and having representation from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Planning Commission, the ministries of defence, foreign affairs ministry and finance as well as defence production, sank without a trace. After the Kargil war, there have been numerous committees on defence but most have struggled to be taken seriously. More recently, the Raksha Mantri’s Advisory Committee on Ministry of Defence Capital Projects (RMCOMP) made some promising start by including private consulting firms in it, but the proposal appears to have been shelved for unknown reasons. This has been a sore area for industry, as not a single big manufacturing project has been awarded to the private sector, despite much ado about Make in India. The DPC will also be running against time, with the government entering the final year of its term.