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Point Out POINTOUT SPOTLIGHT NAVY UNDER PRESSURE »» INS SINDHURATNA 8 <strong>MARCH</strong> 2014
»» Surya Gangadharan he Navy is under tremendous pressure," said the former vice chief “Tof naval staff. "I've commanded ships that were 30 years old and we had to be extra careful. The same problem is with the submarines, they are old and getting older. No matter how careful you are things can happen." Things can and did happen. After two officers died of asphyxiation on the INS Sindhuratna in February, Navy Chief Admiral DK Joshi quit, taking moral responsibility for that (and other mishaps). His action was unexpected but not without precedent: In 2005 Admiral Arun Prakash offered to resign over the naval war room leak case. The government refused to accept it. Admiral Prakash, many years Joshi’s senior, lauded his decision to resign. “The tradition in India is not to own up moral responsibility. Most of the accidents were trivial incidents like a ship touching a jetty or a submarine being caught in low tide, for which a chief cannot be held responsible. Our politicians and bureaucrats should take a hint from Admiral Joshi's conduct." But Prakash and Joshi are in a minority. No air chief ever took responsibility for the repeated crashes of MiG-21 aircraft and the loss of so many pilots. Nor for that matter did any defence minister or defence secretary. As Admiral Prakash put it, “had the government ensured actual integration of Naval Headquarters with the MoD, the latter should have borne collective responsibility for whatever happened, and Admiral Joshi’s resignation need not have been accepted. However, the armed forces HQs remain outside the MoD, whose approval they need for each and every activity. The Chiefs carry full responsibility for their Service — operational and administrative — but they have no locus standi in the MoD.” It may come as a surprise but it is actually the defence secretary who is assigned with the “defence of India and for the three armed forces HQs”. But when things go wrong, he bears no accountability. So what happens now? Priority is to appoint a successor to Joshi, which is already in the works. But the larger issue remains: Will Joshi’s resignation serve as a wake up call to the Defence Ministry to respond to the navy’s pleas over so many years to speed up procurement? The Navy had started warning the 9 The last decade has been less than satisfactory for the Indian military. Ineptitude and turpitude has permeated the civil-military combine and the political leadership across the divide has not been able to extricate itself from the Bofors shadow and the trading of allegations. »» UNNERVED: AK Antony, Defence Minister
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