Anit Mukherjee. 2020. The Absent Dialogue: Politicians, Bureaucrats and the Military in India
| Author | Ian Hall |
| DOI | 10.1177/2347797020962704 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
390 Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs 7(3)
Anit Mukherjee. 2020. The Absent Dialogue: Politicians, Bureaucrats
and the Military in India. Oxford University Press. 296 pp. ISBN: 978-
0-19-750719-3.
DOI: 10.1177/2347797020962704
India is widely—and rightly—recognised for being one of only a few postcolonial
states that has avoided interference by its military in its politics. At one time or
another, most have experienced some kind of intervention, coup d’état, or period
of military rule. In India, there have been occasions when generals have
overstepped the mark and there are present concerns about the politicisation of the
armed forces, but it has been remarkably successful in keeping its armed forces
under civilian control. Indeed, so strict is that control that some analysts and
officers suggest that India’s military is not just constrained from interfering in
politics, but also held back from becoming a more effective fighting force. A
swathe of failings has been attributed to this ‘civilian dominance’, as it is
sometimes called, from the procurement of unsuitable weapons to the appointment
of subpar senior officers.
The reality, however, as Anit Mukherjee argues, is more complex. In some
spheres, India’s military actually has considerable autonomy, ceded in practice by
politicians and officials who lack the expertise and incentive to exert effective
influence. Elsewhere, it is tied down, principally by the bureaucrats that hold the
purse strings, and by institutional arrangements that stifle and inhibit action and
reform. In areas where more civilian involvement could actually improve the
effectiveness of the military, it is missing; in areas where civilian involvement can
inhibit, it stifles. The armed forces retain a high degree of control even in areas in
which greater civilian involvement would actually be beneficial. The problem is
not so much ‘civilian dominance’ as too little substantive interaction between
politicians and bureaucrats, on the one side, and the armed forces, on the other—
the ‘dialogue’ that ought to exist between the two in key areas is ‘absent’. And the
result, Mukherjee suggests, is a military less capable of doing its job than it should
be.
Making that case, Mukherjee acknowledges, is tricky. As he observes, we still
lack good data on Indian combat operations, making it difficult to determine how
effective its armed forces are in battle. So, measuring effectiveness entails
analysing other factors that we normally associate with competent militaries.
Conventionally, such organisations are able to procure the weapons they need in
a timely fashion; undertake joint operations involving two or more branches of the
armed forces; provide high quality professional military education; select the best
officers for command; and produce robust defence plans.
The Absent Dialogue assesses how well India’s military does in each of these
areas, drawing on extensive research in the archives that are available, interviews
with politicians, bureaucrats and military officers, and what can be gleaned from
the press. It opens with two scene-setters: a sharp reflective chapter on what we
know (or suspect) about civil–military relations and military effectiveness in
general and in India, followed by a longer history of those relations from Nehru to
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