This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire & Galileo Ideas – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.
Nearly 10 months after previous incumbent General Bipin Rawat died in a helicopter accident, the government has found a replacement as Chief of Defence Staff. It needed the help of rules amended earlier this year to allow any serving or retired three-star officer to be nominated. Lt Gen Anil Chauhan (retd) is the first beneficiary of the rule change. He had retired as Eastern Army Commander in May 2021 and was later defence advisor in Ajit Doval’s National Security Council Secretariat.
Although he served as DGMO before moving to Kolkata as Eastern Army Commander in September 2019, he does not have the benefit of serving as either Vice Chief or Army Chief in New Delhi. But his stint in the NSCS ought to have prepared him for the politico-bureaucratic level of the national security set up in the current regime. That, however, will not take away from the challenges he will face as the CDS.
First is the border crisis in Ladakh, where India can’t find a way to reverse the Chinese ingresses on Indian-controlled territory, as the Chinese assert that the situation is ‘normal’. New Delhi is short of options to bring Beijing to discuss de-escalation of forces from areas of disengagement. As DGMO, Chauhan was intimately involved in the process of passing strategic guidance to the Army, as decided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the Wuhan informal summit in 2018. The world has moved on since then and Ladakh will be the most immediate and pressing challenge in his early days.
Second is the poor state of modernisation. The three services are struggling with a shortfall of major equipment and with vintage weapons and platforms, which need immediate replacement. With the economic downturn, the government has failed to provide resources for modernisation. The problem is complicated by an insistence on Atmanirbhar Bharat and Make in India, though indigenous capacities and technological prowess simply don’t exist. This means that India’s transition into newer domains of warfare will be further delayed.
Third is the unfinished mandate of Rawat as CDS — to create integrated theatre commands where the Indian Air Force is not yet on board. To balance out the competing requirements of the three services and the aspirations of senior officers in a steep pyramidal structure, while enabling political directions, is a challenge he will have to manoeuvre with great care and patience.
Fourth is the challenge of the Pakistan front, after the rebalancing of forces towards the China border since 2020. Related to this is the future of Rashtriya Rifles in Kashmir and the command of Assam Rifles, which is sought by the home ministry. All this is linked to the political directive to reduce the strength of the armed forces by around two lakh, which can’t be achieved without a concomitant reduction in operational responsibilities.
Fifth is the problem of firming up the processes of the Department of Military Affairs within the defence ministry, while working out the most cordial way of working with the three service chiefs, who wore four stars before him. The CDS is equivalent in protocol to the three other chiefs, and not above them. If this nomination of a retired Lieutenant General creates functional and status problems, a whole new set of issues would crop up. Nevertheless, it is an interesting gambit to have Lt Gen Anil Chauhan (retd) as the new CDS.
