Vivek Chadha replies: It is a well established fact that the transfer and smuggling of arms does take place across India’s borders. This is especially an acute problem in the case of Northeast India. The challenge is accentuated because of porous borders with Bangladesh and Myanmar. It is also difficult to stop such activities due to limited control over the border areas of these countries. In some cases, there is also collusion between state and non-state agencies to smuggle arms. These arms come from weapon markets in Cambodia, Laos and are often sourced from China.

There are two major factors which lead to the smuggling of arms. First, it takes place as a result of terrorist groups and smugglers active in the border areas exploiting it as an illegal trade to make money. Given the high profit nature of this kind of trade, the incentive to undertake gun running remains high. This is furthered because of the need for such military hardware by terrorist groups like CPI (Maoist) in the hinterland, which may not have access to sophisticated weapons, with the exception of those captured from security forces. Second, weapons smuggling is done as part of a state sponsored strategy to destabilise India.

In both these cases, the measures required to be put in place to prevent this activity are similar. First, cooperation with countries which are not directly involved in gun running should be strengthened by way of intelligence sharing and mutual legal assistance and extradition treaties. Second, fencing along borders should be completed urgently to limit free movement. Third, there is a need to enhance the employment of electronic means for surveillance along the borders. Fourth, both the strength and capacity of border guarding forces should be enhanced to ensure that they are better equipped to stop gun running. Fifth, intelligence along border areas needs to improve. This can best be accomplished by coordination between intelligence, border guarding forces, local police and the people in the area. Sixth, stringent laws should be employed to ensure conviction through newly amended acts like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 2012, which can book offenders under counter terrorism offences. Last, since the nature of this crime is international in its scope, there is a need to highlight it and build pressure upon countries in the diplomatic fora to curb the existing trend.

Posted on January 30, 2014

Mahendra Prasad replies: In order to hasten up the procurement process, several long and short-term organisational and procedural re-engineering would be required. Few suggestions have been listed below:

Short-term measures

• Defence procurement being a highly specialised job, pre-induction training of service officers and bureaucrats before entrusting them the responsibility of procurement is a must. Presently, most of them learn the nuances of procurement on the job.
• Every procurement should be treated as a separate project with a dedicated team headed by a project manager. Presently, a lot of overlap of responsibility among various functionaries exists, and in many cases, delays occur as few functionaries in the chain fail to deliver their part of the job in time.
• Strict adherence to the laid down time lines. In case of delay, a delay report must be prepared. The report must identify the reasons and sources of delay in unambiguous terms.
• Give longer tenures to service officers (minimum five years) involved in the procurement process.

Long-term measures

• Establishment of Defence Acquisition College.
• Continuous tracking of latest technological trends.
• Vendor development instead of just stopping at vendor registration.
• A liberal defence production policy.