Defence Primer: India at 75

by Pushan Das, Sushant Singh

The Defence Primer establishes India's defence goals and the strategies needed to achieve them as India moves towards the 75th year of its independence in 2022. The book leads off from the principal challenges to India — long, disputed, and militarised borders with Pakistan and China and visible capability gaps vis-à-vis the ever-widening threat spectrum. Where does India stand today? What should India’s national security goals be in 2022? If we map out the trajectory of India’s current path of defence modernisation, where will we be in 2022? How do we bridge this gap between the desired state and the actual condition?

The Modi government, since coming to power in May 2014, has generated great expectations of reforms in defence procurement and policy. The ambition to eventually transform India from the world’s largest arms importer into a defence manufacturing hub under the ‘Make in India’ scheme is still in an incipient stage. India’s military doctrines and force modernisation — hampered by the slow pace of defence acquisitions — have hindered its ambitions to shape its security environment as an emergent power. Effectively understanding these complex strategic and tactical environments to inform policy makers is the precursor to developing and maintaining a spectrum of capabilities in accordance with realistic threat perceptions.

154 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 1, 2016