As India begins upgrading its military capability after Operation Sindoor, the deadliest entity in the Ministry of Defence (MoD), one more potent than the combined firepower of the three services, is its omnipresent file: a weaponised bundle of paper that has resisted reform, evaded accountability for decades and outlasted governments.

Deceptively mundane in appearance, it is just a sheaf of papers in a plain folder, sometimes decked with coloured flags, sharp-edged tags, and the occasional rusted clip. Yet, its lethality is inversely proportional to the materiel it seeks to procure.

This inert bundle, strewn with cryptic initials and bureaucratic hieroglyphs, has the power to paralyse progress and neuter even the most urgent strategic initiatives for India’s three armed forces. In such an environment, military modernisation is not determined by threats on the border, but by how swiftly – or sluggishly – the file can crawl through the labyrinthine corridors of South Block and those of nearby single service headquarters.

Military officers grimly joke that it takes less time to fight a war than to procure the weapons needed to fight one. And, ironically, while they were trained to respond to threats swiftly, the system meant to equip them operated on glacial timelines. Air Chief Marshal A.P. Singh echoed this at a recent CII summit, lamenting that “not a single project by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited had been completed on time." A few months earlier he had declared that he needed additional combat aircraft ‘yesterday’, to make up for depreciating fighter squadrons.

The MoD file’s true genius lies in its seeming banality

Few would suspect such lethality from these padded folders filled with duplicates, annexures, appendices, and scribbled notings in a bureaucratese understood only by a select priesthood, and questioned by none.

These annotations followed a cryptic Freemasonry of administrative shorthand: PU – Put Up, Pspk – Please Speak, N/A – Necessary Action and the deadliest of all, LO/ LL – Lay Over or Lie Low: acronyms for dumping a proposal or project, but without officially rejecting it.

These files were often split into ‘main’ and ‘part’ sections, like civil service who-dun-it equivalents, destined to be ‘merged’ someday, but rarely ever were. The left side housed official noting’s by respective officials, and the right side, the correspondence. In theory, this was aimed at clarity, but in reality, it merely spawned ambivalence which few questioned.

Also read: Operation Sindoor Highlights That It's Time for the Indian Air Force to Make Key Procurements

Within the MoD’s cavernous halls, files do not merely record decisions – they initiate, nurture, interminably delay and in innumerable instances, eventually derail them. The modernisation of India’s military has long been a casualty of this repeated ritual, which in recent days claims to be undertaking reforms to fast-track it after Op Sindoor, but little clarity has emerged in this regard.

But at its most destructive, the file doesn’t just delay – it kills

Entire defence procurements have died because the relevant file failed to “move in time.” Conversely, by the time some systems did receive approval the threat they were meant to counter had either evolved or vanished. Alternately, the shortlisted vendors had backed out, or more commonly, costs had spiralled, making the acquisition untenable, as additional grants were impossible to secure.

Occasionally, the same project re-emerged – rebranded as a ‘priority’ – only to be buried once more beneath fresh layers of paperwork, lost in a Kafkaesque process designed not to fail, but never to succeed either.

Even the MoD-managed Defence Public Sector Units – supposedly the champions and underwriters of Atmanirbharta or indigenisation were not spared the files tyranny while private vendors, inducted into the defence ecosystem in the early 2000s, fared no better. MoD babus, wary of profit motives and allergic to initiative, kept the latter on a tight leash.

File notings, however, rarely conveyed urgency, but were cleverly drafted to ensure the concerned officials were not later faulted or, held accountable even after retirement, as per a recently revised ruling. Consequently, over the years the axiom gained currency in the MoD – and other ministries as well – that no Indian civil servant was ever held responsible for not doing his or her job. They were penalised, if at all, for doing it, further furnishing this phalanx of officials an alibi for inactivity and procrastination.

Through it all, the file itself aged

It grew heavier, its corners curled, its pages yellowed with time, gathering dust and the invisible fingerprints of countless handlers. . the only change in the digital age was that the file now existed in two versions: one physical, the other electronic. Alongside, the MoD’s Finance Division maintained ‘shadow’ files or parallel records on every deal to duplicate scrutiny but without adding clarity or efficiency to the process.

Meanwhile, some years ago, former Indian Army Chief of Staff General V. K. Singh quipped that military procurement files in India resembled a game of snakes and ladders – with one key difference: “there were no ladders, only snakes.” These snakes, he warned, could strike without warning, derailing entire acquisition cycles and forcing the process to slither back to square one.

Every defence acquisition in India begins as a gleam in the eye of one of the three Service Headquarters, before receiving the Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) from the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by the defence minister. Despite its authoritative name, the AoN signifies only an ‘in-principle’ nod – a mere bureaucratic checkpoint.

Amit Cowshish, former MoD financial advisor for acquisitions, described the AoN as a formality, mandated by MoD procedure, but hardly the real challenge. The real accident-prone and adventurous journey, he warned, began thereafter during which the acquisition or project tender could, and did fall through on innumerable counts.

This post-AoN process comprises 11 complex stages, each capable of indefinitely delaying – or derailing the acquisition. And, though the Defence Acquisition Procedures, 2020, prescribed a timeline of 74 to 118 weeks for post-AoN processes, projects routinely took twice or even three times that long.

“A large proportion of AoNs routinely fade into oblivion, with just a handful being subsequently revived,” said a two-star Indian Army officer, declining to be identified. Securing AoNs, he stated, was no more than a bureaucratic manoeuvre by the MoD to indicate its intent. An AoN's validity was six to 12 months, depending on the category of procurement and was subject to renewal if a request for proposal or tender was not issued in the intervening period, he clarified.

The first step (and many other steps)

After an AoN comes a request for information – domestic or global – issued by the services to gather technical information and frame their qualitative requirements or specs, for the concerned equipment or project. Ideally, this should be straightforward. But in practice, it invariably became a bloated wish list, for in their eagerness to appear thorough, officers loaded these specs with every conceivable feature, often ignoring operational relevance or feasibility.

The qualitative requirement draft then ascended the chain of command, with each officer adding his own embellishments to demonstrate diligence. The final list, as one unnamed two-star naval officer conceded, was often a “utopian wish list,” rarely trimmed and frequently unimplementable. Even late defence minister Manohar Parrikar had ridiculed these qualitative requirements, calling them “Marvel comic book fantasies,” lampooning the Services for asking for weapon systems that defied physics, budgets, or battlefield logic.

Once qualitative requirements were finalised by the service-specific policy committees, headed by the respective deputy or vice-chiefs of staff after an inordinate amount of time, the request for proposal was issued, and vendors responded. Their submissions were subjected to technical evaluation, followed by exhaustive and prohibitively expensive field trials under a ‘no cost, no commitment’ clause.

Take the 2007-08 Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) tender for 126 fighter jets. Each of the six competing vendors reportedly spent over $300 million on transporting their platforms and teams across India, testing them on over 600 parameters across varied terrain – from the Thar Desert to Himalayan heights. For the Army, trials were even more elaborate – howitzers, small arms, and vehicles needed to perform in Siachen’s and Kashmir's snowfields, Rajasthan's sands, Punjab’s plains and in north-eastern jungles.

After trials, a staff evaluation was conducted, followed by a Technical Oversight Committee review to ensure compliance with the qualitative requirements. Industry insiders admit this stage was rife with subjectivity and frequently invited protests from losing contenders, alleging bias or favouritism which only delayed matters further.

Then came the Cost Negotiation Committee stage. And once the finance ministry cleared this negotiated funding, the final stop was the Cabinet Committee on Security, headed by the prime minister before final contract inking.

But even then, the file persevered in the Post-Contract Management Committee that supervised contract execution, extending its longevity. Or, in short, India’s macho soldiers remained vassals of tyrannical file.

Nonetheless, for a nation aspiring to be a great military power, the gravest obstacle for India was not fiscal constraints or enemy firepower – it was the Rs-100 file folder, stamped ‘Top Secret/Confidential’, nestling quietly in a South Block almirah – its lethality unmatched, its movement glacial, and its accountability non-existent.

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