DeansMusings

 Agnipath has been touted as the biggest reform in military recruitment in India. In brief, it is a scheme which seeks to recruit all those below officer rank for an assured period of 4 years only, after which only 25% will be retained for a further 15 years.  The details of the scheme, as elucidated by the govt are here: https://loksabhadocs.nic.in/Refinput/New_Reference_Notes/English/15072022_141146_102120411.pdf When details of the scheme were first announced in June 22 (rather suddenly for such a major reform), the reaction from the veteran community was largely negative. The media reported the emotional sound-bites more than the underlying facts. The govt, on the other hand seemed to suggest that the services were resistant to change and that the scheme was well though through.  The best fact based criticism of the scheme I have seen came from Lt Gen. P.R Shankar in his blog  https://gunnersshot.com/  where, in a number of posts and video clips, he ha...

  Since my last post in April, there have been some significant non military developments in this  conflict.  Israel’s GDP grew in the 1 st Quarter of 2024 (after a fall in Q4 2023), showing it has shrugged off the effect of war. GDP growth was close to pre war estimates. Iran will elect a new President on 28 th June. His policy may impact Israel’s policy towards Hezbollah. A word about the deployable strength of the IDF : An IDF brigade is barely 2000 personnel (it is lower in an armored brigade), compared to over 3000 in an Indian army brigade. Reserve personnel who have been mobilized and form the bulk of the IDF soldiers in combat in Gaza, cannot be mobilized for more than 60 days. Thus reserve units who have been fighting in Gaza for several months, have deployed only individual battalions of those brigades at any point of time. A particular reserve brigade may be deployed in Gaza on paper, but in reality, only a single battalion (barely 500 personnel) of t...

I had first written on this topic in 2017, in the aftermath of the Doklam crisis, where Chinese and Indian forces were involved in a standoff, on disputed territory in the Doklam area. At a time when there was lot of Anti-China sentiment, India recorded its highest ever trade deficit with China. In 2020, another border standoff at Galwan, which lead to a serious clash, resulted in the first fatalities on both sides since 1967. Despite a lot of hysteria to boycott Chinese goods and making India `Aatmanirbhar’ or self-reliant, becoming a national priority in 2020, the year 2022-23 again saw a record trade deficit with China. While there is a lot of attention to India’s defence preparedness via-a-vis China, there is little understanding of how dangerous our imbalanced trade with China can be.   In 2022-23 India has a trade deficit with China of US$ 101 Billion (plus US$ 12.2 billion with Hong Kong, which is a proxy for China). It is expected to be similar in 2023-24. That defici...