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Let me give you the root of the matter....and you can take it to the grave like I will if you choose to.
Scuse all my "french" here in what follows....
Human species as a whole ultimately works with profit (wealth) motive lot better than it does with politics (power) motive.
The recognition of this attracts such labelling as "right winger" etc....I personally reject this label (and such labelling in general) as I see what the human species actually has proven over its existence.... and I work on that logic of practicality.....as much as I see validity and (realised) balance from the collectivist power scope as well (that Mr. Marx and his coterie did the most to philosophically and then more practically surface in the 19th century as an ideology).
A nation state can however seriously conflate these two things (and evolve a "big govt"/statism etc given the existence of the power domain that cannot be ignored)...
....but then that nation state needs to be in existence a very long assured time to do so....for it to have the buffer and low consequence to get away with.
India as nation state is young...actually very very young for its size (and context)....and inherited by colonialism a certain bureaucratic model to take forward.
....and what it did it do? (Instead of recognising its youth, inheritance and need for practicality)
It developed one of the most unwieldy, large bureaucracies and heavy statism.....when it needed the exact opposite instead (focused, disciplined, minimalist one....honed to the basic premise of WHAT is a state there for - i.e helping basic needs, law and order and security).
It (now with time passed, and others moving on in interim to practicality after confuddling for however long they did) pays for this now like an obese f being forced to run a marathon that he no longer has a choice to avoid.
You see there is the basic reason why corporates do (profit and thus efficiency driven) product dev + production magnitudes better than any statist organ could even start to contemplate.
The state bureaucracy should be concerned only with acquisition (defined by the public interest and the exercise of power vested in it).
End of.
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Like I could bore you for hours on end regarding the many years my dad has bitched at me about how he was treated in the statist era in the PSU he made his early career in till he hopped over to semicon MNC.
The stupidest most mundane things he had to file a piece of crap paper for....and not get any kind of ear for basic improvement on the most basic things.
He spent best of his productive life in foreign shores, taking my mom and me alongside there....and my sis was born outside there too.
Now he returned to live in India, doing his pilgrimages to north and all that stuff...and as much I love him, there are certain things I will never understand about him psychologically as to the impact this dreaded crap had to drive his motivations as it did (given his clear conservativism that now severely grinds against my liberal basis..... that he chose to grow and instill in me and now complains against when I question him on some political+society matters between periods of long silence and distraction). A "sanghi" dad with "centrist" kid, yep you can imagine maybe small bits of it.
More broadly its the kind of stuff thats make me have to peer from outside into India....and try to rejig and refit into it to try help it as I grow.....instead of being there and doing it "at home" from the start.
It has started to take a toll on me, as I see the stupid crap just stay and persist and grow (in all manner of ways now including toxic statist identity politics past the "economics")....instead of being held to account and corrected....and stalled as long as possible for a century to at least complete first from genesis.
I will spare you that stuff....because these are just letters and words to type on a keyboard in the end....and it will just anger and frustrate me like no one can possibly imagine.
As much I talk about competence (gross lack of its promotion) regd Pakistan with folks like @VCheng and @Bilal Khan(Quwa) .... I see very much same thing within India....the degree changes a bit, psyche alters a bit and India's size does most of the rest.
But that is very low bar to feel good about....compared to what we have squandered, squander and will continue to squander for the rest of my lifetime I am here....because a whole bunch got "baked in" real badly at the size and consequence it has.
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Like in this small microcosm (with heavy impact) of India that is defence babudom.....what would I have done if I had power to (start to) correct it?
I mean it is very easy to treat babus as some "monolith" ....as quick to head nod to foreign maal....while being corrupt sleazy lazy whatevers.
I see it different from my experience (specifically what has been recounted to me and what I can interpolate and extrapolate to south block "upstream" types... from my dad and uncles experiences overall more downstream), there are layers and tiers of them....some examples:
Type 1) This babu is just a star wars hutt and often looks the part. pushes paper, pushes pencils, finds way to use most amount of time to do least amount. Overpaid and addicted to his alloted station. Just a concentration of all the worst things a human (with power) can be.
Type 2) This babu is a mess cleaner for type ones. 10 years pass etc nothing gets done, some admin guy and yells at him eventually since army really needs something by now etc.... so the foreign import conduit gets actioned. He defends and protects type ones....and has vestigial drive to see india armed forces at least get something since india getting F-ed means he does too etc. A common minimum kind of thinking.
Type 3) The more diligent kind of babu....still driven by younger earlier impulse of patriotism...do good, and even rationality. Inevitably finds himself in priority projects like missiles, sensors and other such base input critical stuff (indian state realised at least that much - i.e what it cannot import at any reliability at all - things must be toughed out).
Rest of babus that exist are some combination of these or some "others" but these are main 3.
Type 1 and 2 find themselves in the long corruption riddled drama projects like arty and small arms like I mention....given type 3s are scarce and must be put into critical things that cannot be imported over time.
But overall since its a statist sinew....there is no accountability like private corp can do (driven to make wealth by bottom line).
So the accountability needs to be well crafted, it needs very disciplined well focused inspector general (or similar) reviewing all babus as frequently as possible (what have they delivered + peformed in X number of years).
I would literally review them myself each year....and kick the worthless ones out on the street. Theres no use for them in a channel of power and importance....they should get a real job and live a real life.
I would delegate southies and bongs in critical nodes almost exclusively (given how these 2 types think in my experience in better ways overall).....if its a northie he needs proven vetting and experience.
Broadly it needs people like Haider Ali, who despite his many flaws (big one eventually being his kid), was quite intelligent in how to set self-checking mechanisms in a bureaucracy....his patronage from number of Hindu intellects around him (who saw merit in him and vice versa) helping him as well.
If its not well baked in, we simply rely on folks like Parrikar coming to kick a number of them up the butt to get Tejas squared away (order + commitment wise)
Or Gadkari doing the same where he is. (I wished for entire govt to be gadkari clones somewhere else).
But it is ultimately exercise of disciplining the fat eff structure in random sporadic intense coaching (to get better at this marathon)......he is not going to change quick at all....and he is used to and addicted to certain things a long time.
You need 100s of Parrikars and Gadkaris basically.....and we only have a couple...appearing here and there....they only got so much time man.
Yet we spent a vast amount of time having this statist model for almost the entire economy and we are just now weaning out of it....and slowly (no matter what is talked about in the media and twitter blah blah).
Try imagine an India (at the start and middle) with a bureaucracy that focused on things like education, health, nutrition, internal law + order at the start along with defence....instead of everything under the sun (at cost to those important core things)....like running stupid businesses too (that my dad joined and got sapped by till he left....intersecting with start of my own story).
We literally would not have stunted population, stunted skills, stunted defence in critical areas (be it whatever item or border infra)....and the over-developed obese crap in govt power instead..... where it is totally impractical, stupid and even immoral.
As govt would have deployed power where power is actually meant to be....rather than deploy power for power sake in some psychological counter-reaction to colonialism and partition or whatever else.
So you are simply not thinking in the scale and time thats needed to understand the problem of something so specific as to why not ATAGS and why ATHOS etc etc in a small working consequence of it.
You are again looking at small slivers on artillery.....when I explored some of the real root earlier already:
How can Artillery Numbers today relate to Universal Education yesterday?
How can Artillery Numbers today relate to Universal Education yesterday? Analysis on the Guns versus Butter impact over time. By: "Nilgiri" Prelude https://defencehub.live/threads/indian-army-artillery-archive.1564/page-4 "Crixus": 100 (Vajra SPH) is too less if you compare the eastern...
defencehub.live
@Anmdt (would be interesting to see if he has seen similar within Turkey pending his interest and time)
@Jackdaws @Paro et al.
, better late then never. The only fear is OFBs might fuck up the quality of the AK's .
