Poor don't eat guns!

This would not have made much difference if the approach of the Congress had been similar to that of its predecessor. The BJP is chauvinistic in thinking. It believes that the more weapons a country has, the greater is its say in the world affairs. Its is arrogance of power. The Congress, on the other hand, has had the tradition to confine armaments to the needs of defence, neither profligate nor offensive. The BJP-led government took only a month after coming to power to explode the bomb. But the governments headed by the Congress and the non-BJP parties did not explode the bomb although they had it in the basement for years. Their reasoning was that the explosion would nullify India's advantage in conventional weapons if and when Pakistan followed suit. Narasimha Rao changed his mind even after all was ready at the Pokhran site. The fallout deterred him.

Indeed, the reading that Pakistan would retaliate turned out to be correct. Islamabad detonated the bomb within a week of India's explosion. Then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif told me that he had to do so because he could not resist the pressure from his own people. "They would have killed me," he said. I am surprised that the Congress party, which harks back on the values of Mahatma Gandhi, should have increased the defence expenditure. L.K. Advani's pride in exploding the nuclear device is understandable. He belongs to the RSS which has fascist tendencies. He does not realise that the BJP is responsible for making India lose the advantage of superiority in conventional warfare.

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My purpose is not to renew the discussion on the bomb but to know what we have gained. We gave Pakistan parity overnight. Does the colossal expenditure on weapons from Israel, Russia or America make much sense when Islamabad has made it clear more than once that its defence was the bomb.

Some 15 years ago when I interviewed Dr A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's bomb, he minced no words in making it clear that "if you ever drive us to the wall as you did during the Bangladesh war, we would use the bomb." Islamabad's modernisation of its armed forces is nothing except the strategy woven around the bomb. President General Pervez Musharraf has often argued that the modern war does not require a large army. While effecting a cut in the Pakistan forces, he made the same point and mentioned the change in the conduct of warfare after the bomb. I cannot visualise the situation where Pakistan does not use it even when it faces reverse after reverse. India will also use the bomb if repulsed, however loud its declaration that it will not be the first user. Moral postures hold so long as they are not tested in the battlefield.

With improving relations with Pakistan and China, the hike on the weaponry makes little sense. Either we are not serious about normalising relations with the two countries or we are not clear about our defence policy. In both cases, we betray lack of mature thinking. Even otherwise, the world has arrived at a stage where war means only destruction. There will be no victory, only defeat for everyone. Strategists from now onward will have to keep this in mind while planning even a limited war. Violence cannot possibly lead today to a solution of any major problem because violence has become too terrible and too decimating. One thing which is clear is that there cannot be an imposition of ideas on any large section of people. The experience of Iraq is before us. America believed that it could enforce its way of thinking on the Iraqis. See the consequences: the resistance has come to represent nationalism striving for freedom from foreign control.

I am worried over the effect the sharp raise in defence expenditure might have on the neighbouring countries. Pakistan has reacted adversely. Its people are also poor like ours who need food and employment, not guns and warships. Were Islamabad and Dhaka to tear a leaf out of our book, they too would lessen expenditure on social welfare and the poverty alleviating programmes and go for the armament. For a country like India every penny counts. A raise of Rs. 17,000 crore is too big an amount to be ignored. I do not want to translate the allocation into schools, hospitals or houses. But making a fetish of defence does not help. People can always be frightened into spending much more on "security." Is the spending-spree on defence goodies necessary when we are in the midst of fighting a grim battle against poverty? The military is such a holy cow that nobody wants to touch it. But every purchase has to be justified. There is no reason why we should look for more weapons, not for avenues of employment. The Left's silence intrigues me. It does not criticise the 27 per cent increase in the defence, taking away quite a bit of resources. But it picks on small expenditures here and there to talk about equity. It should have at least demanded some independent agency to find out whether the money for the armed forces was rightly spent. The Tehelka disclosures have shaken people's faith in the purchases made by the military. There has never been a parliamentary committee appointed to look into the spending by the military. Why not appoint one now? The Auditor General's scrutiny is too superficial.

One former defence secretary McNamara in the US during the Kennedy regime reorganised the Pentagon in such a manner that even the military gave him credit for having done so. Billions of dollars were saved. The Government of India needs a similar exercise. Too much money is wasted on too many weapons under too many heads. I wish defence minister Pranab Mukerjee who has been finance minister would act like McNamara and rationalise the whole apparatus.

In any case, the sum total of defence is not the outlay but the country's honour and dignity. What face does India have when the American police strip searches George Fernandes on the suspicion that he is "an unwanted element?" The then government under the BJP did not demur, much less protest, lest it should annoy America. Washington's explanation that there is a system where a foreign government's ministers are not even searched is like rubbing salt into the wound.

George Fernandes was searched twice over a period. It was not a mistake. It was an affront. Did we get more weapons from America? I am ashamed to ask.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.