00:07Welcome to SAM Conversation, a program of South Asia Monitor.
00:16Our topic today is to discuss a book, The India Century Vision 2047.
00:29This has been authored by Vigidya Ashok Pathak, retired.
00:35He served in the core of signals, the branch of the army which provides communications, both line and radio,
00:47and as well as also nowadays some cyber communication also.
00:55His earlier books, earlier two books, very interesting are
01:02India's Strategies for Information War and Cyber Detrance.
01:08And the other one is Unified Theater Command, breaking free of military silos.
01:16Vigidya Pathak, would you please start by giving us what inspired you to write this particular book?
01:28Because it's a little different from the earlier two books, which are quite military.
01:38And thereafter we request you to elaborate on it further.
01:48Firstly, it is quite a privilege to be talking to you,
01:54involved in spreading this kind of knowledge base to the environment.
01:59Coming straight to your question, what inspired me?
02:02This book, as you know, is sponsored by Bharat Global Industry Forum.
02:08This is a group of big industries, Indian industries, more than 1000 crore turnover and more.
02:16They have global footprint.
02:18And their mission is to create or to make India a manufacturing hub for the globe.
02:29If you go back to the Vision 2047 statement, one of the pointers there is to make Indian goods and
02:39products famous worldwide and to become the global hub for manufacturing.
02:45So their primary aim is to improve processes, to enhance indigenization, to do handholding of SMEs and to create an
02:58environment of entrepreneurship among the societies so that India grows through its ancient and traditional methods of entrepreneurship and not
03:07by job seekers.
03:09So that is as far as the impression from BGIF was concerned.
03:14As a matter of fact, they wanted me to write on economy.
03:18But you would agree with me that economy by itself is not much of a factor for a nation to
03:27be counted among the global committee.
03:29Because political economy drives geopolitical status and geopolitical status requires military powers, internal security and military power to sustain it.
03:45You have said it.
03:45That is how I suggested to them that writing just on economy may not serve your purpose because you are
03:53talking of not your industry or not of making money or GDP numbers.
03:57You are talking about India and India encompasses the citizens, the political economy, the security of the citizens from external
04:07and internal factors and its geopolitical status so that we have independence in choosing our strategic approach or you can
04:17say autonomy of choice.
04:19So that is how the book came into shape.
04:25Well expressed and I am glad you brought out that economy can be good only if the security of the
04:36country is sound.
04:40In earlier years, earlier decades, there often used to be this thing, you know, argument, guns or butter?
04:53And I, whenever I argued this, I said, you won't have any butter if you don't have guns.
05:01Simple.
05:04So, you have an interesting, you know, collection of topics in your, from your contents.
05:21You begin with the introduction, challenges and then economy, military power, geopolitics, very relevant, all very, very relevant today.
05:42Please, briefly elaborate on each of them, beginning with your introduction.
05:51Okay.
05:52The introduction, if you read it, is very interesting because we got independent in 1947.
05:59And we were among the 40 odd countries, 40, 45 countries who got independent a lot around that time.
06:06But there is some uniqueness in our independence.
06:10Firstly, we were the only, I think must be the only country, which got partitioned into two after independence.
06:18That is one.
06:19A more dangerous phenomenon was that after independence, we kept our ruling masters with us for more than a year,
06:28especially in the military.
06:29Absolutely.
06:31Absolutely.
06:31Absolutely.
06:32Most important.
06:32Most important.
06:34When we had the first India-Pakistan war, the Indian army chief was a Britisher.
06:41The Pakistan army chief was also a Britisher.
06:44Yes, sir.
06:44And between the two of them, it was a fixed match.
06:49It was a fixed match.
06:53Obviously, very deterrent to Indian army.
07:00Yes, sir.
07:00Good.
07:01You have brought out this point.
07:02I will just elaborate on this because how much of damage did it cost?
07:06In 1947, we had much superior armor, organized infantry divisions.
07:14We had one of the best air force in the world around that time.
07:18And rather than chasing the insurgents or tribals in the mountainous terrain of Jammu and Kashmir,
07:27we should have gone straight away into the plains of Punjab.
07:31A normal military mind would have done this.
07:34Incidentally, General Natu did suggest this.
07:39The tribals would have run away from there had we captured the things in plains.
07:44And once or twice, the Indian prime minister at that time did mention that since Pakistan
07:50has dared to enter our territory, that is Jammu and Kashmir, we are free to enter their territory anywhere.
07:56But he did not do that.
07:59And the reason you brought out is the same because both sides were the Britishers.
08:04So this is one thing which we in 2014, I will straight away go to 2014 from 47 now.
08:11There is an article in Guardian, 18 May.
08:16And that said that the Britishers have finally left India.
08:20Now this date is 18 May 2014.
08:23How many years after independence?
08:25So this is what I brought out in introduction part that our economic processes, our military thinking, our customs and
08:34traditions followed,
08:36we followed the Britishers legacy.
08:39And what did the Britishers give us to earn all this?
08:45Because they looted us.
08:47They trisected us.
08:47They trisected us.
08:49Yes.
08:50They made sure that it was given.
08:53India was an independence given to us in pieces.
08:57Yes.
08:57And more than that, they killed our trade.
09:03They killed our farming techniques.
09:05They killed our thinking.
09:06They killed our education system.
09:08And Shashi Tharoor's book, he mentioned it very clearly, trillions of dollars that they looted.
09:14And after suffering so much from the British, kotoing the British line and following their policy was quite a disaster.
09:24I am not going political on this, but it was quite a disaster.
09:28And from 1947 to 1976, our economy actually did shrink.
09:35Because the population, the rate at which the population grew, the economy did not grow at that rate.
09:41We became from poor to poorer.
09:44From 1976, slum changes started taking place.
09:48We started growing at 44.5.
09:491991, I am a forced on us liberalization.
09:53But the steady growth started happening after 2014.
09:59When the Guardian thought that the British had finally left, we started talking about our own heritage, which was a
10:06taboo earlier.
10:06We started giving incentive to entrepreneurship.
10:10We started to value the wealth creators, the private sector.
10:16And we started to liberalize the citizen.
10:22I mean, self, you can say attestation was brought in.
10:25More and more laws were brought into the system, which liberated the citizen to conduct their own activities.
10:34So this system continued.
10:37And the acid test for this system was during the COVID period.
10:42In COVID, nobody expected India to come out of it unscathed.
10:47They thought, they actually predicted that billions will die.
10:51India has no chance.
10:52But we surprised everybody by producing a vaccine, which has been the best in the world.
10:59By distributing that vaccine free of cost to people who needed them.
11:03We didn't want to make profit.
11:04That is Indian values.
11:06By distributing food to the countries who had suffered.
11:10So India came out of COVID in a manner that surprised the rest of the world.
11:16And we haven't looked back after that.
11:18So this is what is something which I clarified in the introduction.
11:24Before I came to the topic of economics as such.
11:28The macroeconomic or political economic that we do need to follow.
11:32So you want me to continue the economy or any other question before that?
11:35No, no.
11:36Please.
11:38You very well brought out some points about how for seven decades, even after 76, 76 was
11:48a landmark here.
11:52But even after that, as you said, I am not a political person.
11:59Neither are you.
12:00But we are analysts about the country's well-being, the country's security, particularly in military
12:10terms.
12:10And I think there were tremendous amount of compromises on this till 2014.
12:22Terrorism was one thing which, you know, Pakistan started dishing out to us, you know, cut, you
12:31know, million cuts.
12:34Yes.
12:35Whatever as Ziaulak said.
12:37And we kept our choices of options were so weak.
12:47Anyway, again, we won't go too much into that.
12:52But the economy is making a lot of news now.
12:59Please elaborate a bit on that.
13:03Yeah.
13:05The economy front, the vision 2047 is very, very ambitious, I would say, because it is
13:10talking of 30 trillion GDP by 2047.
13:15Though the prime minister in his debate, he mentioned 10 trillion.
13:19I read Arvind Barmani's paper today.
13:22So there is some dilution in that, scaling down in that.
13:26But the vision is that by 2047 we will reach 30 trillion dollars as far as the gross GDP
13:34is concerned.
13:35And GDP per capita would be around $18,000 per person.
13:41Again, Arvind Barmani now says that it will be between $15,000 to $18,000 GDP per capita.
13:50But in this book, I have gone a little further as far as economy is concerned.
13:55Because economy is not about GDP.
13:57It is not about GDP per capita.
13:59It is how you are achieving that GDP.
14:03GDP per capita is a data which hides a lot.
14:07How is the wealth distributed amongst people?
14:10What is the happiness quotient of these people?
14:12How is the government responsible to the people of India?
14:16How are the people of India productive, educated, healthy?
14:21All these things come in the ambient of citizen-centric security.
14:26Now, the paper 2047 vision does bring out all these factors in economy.
14:33But here I must say that the challenges are tremendous.
14:37Because let's look at the economic landscape as it exists today.
14:42We will go by the Western model only.
14:46The bulk of our GDP contribution is by big corporate houses.
14:52Very big corporate houses.
14:53We have almost 63 to 70 million of SMEs.
14:58These SMEs contribute around 11, 12, very marginal thing to the GDP when compared to just 1 to 2%
15:08of big corporate houses.
15:09This data shows that there is tremendous amount of, should I say, inefficiency or lack of productivity or lack of
15:19commitment amongst the SMEs.
15:21Again, in the corporate houses, our expenditure on research and development is very poor.
15:28It is, I don't know whether I should use the word.
15:31It is very shameful that we don't spend on research and development.
15:36Because other countries, for example, China spent 2.4 to 3% of GDP on research and development in new
15:43technology.
15:45Israel, a small country spends more than 3%.
15:48The US spends a lot on research and development.
15:51Because if you have to grow at that kind of a pace, then you should be going into the new
15:58products, new technologies.
16:00In the BCG matrix, there are four quadrants.
16:03One quadrant is question mark.
16:05You don't know what is happening there.
16:06That is research and development.
16:07Second quadrant is star.
16:09New technology has just come up.
16:11You exploit that technology.
16:13Third is cash cow.
16:15Now, we are primarily into cash cow.
16:18Something which has been proven.
16:20Something which will get obsolete in due course of time, but we are making money there.
16:24So, our expenditure in R&D is low.
16:27Bulk of our industries are primarily interested in the cash cow sort of thing.
16:34Our SMEs are not that productive as they should be.
16:39No, this is as far as the Western model is concerned.
16:42But SMEs have to stay.
16:44SMEs are important.
16:45There are people who are giving employment.
16:48I will, at this stage, request your intelligence on SMEs factor, having authored a book, Assam, Terrorism and the Demographic
17:02Challenge.
17:02I was in SMEs.
17:06I was in SM as a military spokesperson at a time when ULFA was, you know, holding, was quite a
17:20deadly organization.
17:21They were no longer insurgents.
17:25They were terrorists.
17:27And they were terrorists who were getting assistance.
17:31They went across to Bangladesh.
17:34The very question on which there arose foreigners.
17:43Who were the foreigners?
17:44The Bangladeshis.
17:46And when the army was lodged against them, they ran away to Assam.
17:50And by running to Assam, they came under the, in those days, Assam was, you know, sorry, Bangladesh.
18:00Bangladesh was under Khalidazia's rule.
18:03And there was a very large presence of Pakistan's ISI in Bangladesh.
18:10And they came.
18:12They were total stooges of the ISI.
18:14And then they, they facilitated illegal migrants to come and settle.
18:24And the Congress in those days handed them ration cards to make them a vote bank.
18:31So, I will give them, I will give this present chief minister that much credit that he has pulled Assam
18:40from Morris of, you know, he's trying very hard and he's succeeded to quite an extent.
18:48So, I think we need to give them a little more time because there are resources there, which, well, I
18:59don't know how well they were managed earlier.
19:01Or whether they were managed at all or mismanaged.
19:06Now, I think, I, I, I felt I should stop you there, you know, and say something in, in defense
19:14of the, in favor of the Assam.
19:16Please, continue.
19:19Yeah, okay.
19:20No, that's a very valid point you have brought in.
19:22Of course, I have not covered, I have covered terrorism or internal security separately.
19:26But see here, the funniest part is that our political dispensation across party lines, you can say unified view on
19:41national security.
19:42What is national security for me needs to be national security for you also.
19:47Absolutely.
19:47Because if I consider that the infiltrators, illegal migrants are a threat, it's a demographic inversion is a threat.
19:55Then everybody across the board should agree to this.
19:58But if a major part of the political dispensation think that they are not a threat, and they are World
20:05Bank, then there are serious problems.
20:08For example, the way we treated Huryat.
20:10Now, that was very funny.
20:13Absolutely.
20:16Yes, yes.
20:17Now, coming back to the question of economy, what we need to do, we can't do away with SMEs.
20:23Actually, they are the biggest employers of Menpower.
20:27They employ a lot of people.
20:28They promote entrepreneurship, startups come.
20:30There's oil and tea there.
20:32You know, there are very, very major resources.
20:34Yeah.
20:35For example, in defense sectors.
20:37No, no, but basically for long it has been oil and tea.
20:41Yeah.
20:42For defense sectors, SMEs are doing a wonderful job.
20:45What we need to do is to give them the technical and managerial know-how so that their productivity increases.
20:53In the book, I mentioned that even if there is doubling of their productivity, incidentally, in productivity, we are very
21:00low.
21:01Earlier on, the Germans were the highest, best productivity was German.
21:05Then the Japanese took over them.
21:07Today, Norway is more productive than us, but our labors or our people work 47 hours in a week.
21:16The Norwegians work half of this, but they are more productive.
21:19Yes.
21:20This is where we need to work on, give them technical and managerial things.
21:24And SMEs should stay.
21:26They should become more productive.
21:29Hand-holding should be done by the major corporate houses and research centers.
21:34And we must spend more in research, more by the education department and the industry.
21:41The government is spending, and the government is spending in defense.
21:44Let's face it.
21:45Bell, HAL, they are spending research and they are exporting also.
21:48We've gone almost 30,000 crores in defense export.
21:53But this kind of thing is not happening in the private sector.
21:56This is my take on the economy part, the challenges and what we need to do.
22:04Now, your other two portions of military and geopolitics, I think there's a lot of relationship between them, which has
22:16come to light very much so ever since this Persian Gulf, ever since Mr. Trump started, you know, taking off
22:29against Iran.
22:30Yes.
22:31Which he thought he could treat like Venezuela.
22:34Yes.
22:35And how we have held our own.
22:39Yes.
22:39In the, you know, this is the time when we sent a naval group of two, we only have two
22:47aircraft carriers.
22:48We sent both of them there.
22:50Yes.
22:52And we sent these two, you know, sea battle groups, which left no doubt that, you know, I think,
23:03to treat us with a bit of respect.
23:07Yes.
23:08Because this was not always the case in the past.
23:12Yes.
23:14So, we've been able to withstand also a lot of the turbulence, not just the water, the turbulence of oil
23:24and the turbulence of economy.
23:28The way Mr. Trump is, you know.
23:33Yes.
23:39Yes.
23:40Yes.
23:50Yes.
23:52Yes.
23:53Yes.
23:54As far as the military power is concerned, from 2016, when we entered Myanmar, then 2018 or so, we did
24:06the Uri, 16 I think, 16 we did Uri, September.
24:09And then we did Balako 2019.
24:12This was a gradual upgradation or calibrated increase of intensity of our response towards terrorism.
24:22But the watershed thing was removal of Article 370 and 35A, where we told rest of the world, look, this
24:32is what we will do.
24:34And we don't worry about what you think.
24:36Then, another aspect was brought in Operation Sindur.
24:41Now, when this Behalkam thing happened, if you recollect when the Prime Minister came back from his foreign tour,
24:48the first thing he did was at Indira Gandhi International Airport was to hold a Cabinet meeting and Cabinet Committee
24:55on Security meeting later.
24:57And in Bihar election rally, he made that the perpetrators of this heinous crime will be punished to an extent
25:04that they can't imagine.
25:05Now, this kind of statement from an Indian Prime Minister, I don't remember, has ever come so quick on the
25:13heels of an act of terrorism.
25:15And after that, what we did, the Indian Armed Forces did, was something...
25:21I think, as a technical person, you will know much more about how much we have achieved in 88 hours
25:29of Operation Sindur.
25:30Yes.
25:31And see, the icing on the cake was, Pakistan did everything under their power, whatever capabilities they had and what
25:42Turkey and US and everybody supplied them to hit us hard.
25:46And our anti-drone systems, our Akash Teer and ACCCS, Air Force Command Control Communication System, this integrated network, call
25:56it ADCNR network, this thwarted their attacks, that means the defensive part of so-called Sudarshan chakra.
26:05And after that, we will hit them, which no other power could have imagined that we will go and hit
26:11them at Noor Khanh.
26:12We will hit them at Rahimiya Khanh.
26:14We will hit them at Lahore.
26:15We will hit them at Sargoda.
26:17We will hit them in such a way that they need special equipment to see how much of nuclear, you
26:28know, what do you call it?
26:32Nuclear radiation.
26:35Radiation.
26:36The after effects of the nuclear explosion.
26:38Because Noor Khanh, for all tactical purposes, was as an American base.
26:44And we knew this.
26:45Of course, Marshall Bharti said that we don't know what was therein.
26:50But the fighter pilot who went and did that or those who fired the Brahmo, they knew exactly what it
26:56was there inside.
26:57And taking that kind of initiative, knowing fully well that was going to happen in the international arena, was a
27:04very big step or it was a statement.
27:07It was a message.
27:08And the veneer or the parda of US is our friend etc. came out.
27:15Because US came openly in favor of Pakistan.
27:20So that, you, Mr. Donald Trump is solely, he is solely responsible for sending the US, India, US military relationship,
27:33you know, hitting it very hard.
27:36Yeah.
27:37What we need to do from now onwards, and still on military power only.
27:47That Sindur, all said and done, was not a major operation in that sense.
27:52You know, we have so many infantry divisions.
27:54We have three armored divisions.
27:55We have so many squads of fighter aircraft.
28:00We have a very big Navy.
28:0136 ships were breathing down the neck of Karachi and Gwadar.
28:05Though this power has not been synergized against an enemy like Pakistan.
28:11Now, so far.
28:13And one of the reason is this, that some of the old Montegumari type or bevel type of military tactics
28:22have to be given way.
28:23And we have to come back to our Indian military thinking of aggressive or offensive defense, where we synergize our
28:31forces and strike with one single mission and one goal.
28:36The Air Force can't have their own doctrine.
28:39And military, the ground forces, separate doctrine.
28:42Navy is separate doctrine.
28:43This is not going to work.
28:44Because today's war is whole of the nation approach war.
28:48And the least of it, the military needs to have jointness.
28:51There has to be one goal, one military goal for all three.
28:56Their method, of course, will be different because the platforms are different.
29:00Their weapon systems are different.
29:01But the goals can't vary.
29:03The Air Force can't say that, okay, I am going to do counter error operations and you do your ground
29:08operation.
29:08No.
29:09These two operations, ground operations and the Air Force operations have to synergize.
29:15They have to think together, plan together, act together.
29:18This has not been happening.
29:21Thanks to the British legacy again.
29:23And the inertia which has set in.
29:25This I brought out in the military thing.
29:27And the second part is indigenization.
29:30So I have, because many times we say that foreign equipment is good, bad, indifferent and sixth generation, fifth generation
29:36aircraft, etc.
29:38Go back to 65.
29:40Sabre versus net.
29:42If you look into the records, more sabres were down by net.
29:49Even HF 24.
29:51Absolutely.
29:51Absolutely.
29:52So apart from the fact that the ancient centurions were, they destroyed a disproportionately large number of modern patterns.
30:04Then modern patterns.
30:06The battle of Asana, then the battle of Dugrai, these were the centuries you were fighting against the patterns.
30:11Sharmans and centurions, they said they were the obsolete tanks.
30:14They didn't have gun control, fire control systems.
30:18Pattern was the most important at that time.
30:20And what happened in Khemkar and Asal Uttar.
30:22What happened in battle of Dugrai.
30:25So our faith in our indigenous system has to grow.
30:30We have to have our own.
30:31Whether we can be very happy.
30:35Sooner or later, we have to have our own systems.
30:37And we have the capability.
30:38We have the capability.
30:40We have the capability.
30:41We have the, you know, we have a resource of the Indian industry.
30:47Yes.
30:48Indian industry, which can, I think, produce anything that we require.
30:57We just need to, need to be a little clear about, you know, no, we need to have 20 systems
31:04from abroad and only 80.
31:06I think we have to get over that.
31:09Because if we can have 80, we can have 100 also.
31:11Because in, you know, building on your indigenization of our own capabilities, during Operation Sindur,
31:19we developed our own directed energy weapons.
31:23We developed our own integrated network, which integrated, which brought in all these Iglas
31:30and Shilkas and ZSU-23s and Pichoras.
31:34All these guns were brought into that network.
31:37So that when the enemy drones were hit, we were not using our expensive Akash or S-400.
31:44We were using very inexpensive methods.
31:48Directed energy weapon is a laser weapon.
31:50To that time, it range was 2 kilometers.
31:52We're developing 20 kilometers range now.
31:53Then Igla.
31:55I mean, during our service, we were saying Igla is almost 60, 70 years old.
32:00L60, L70 with the Clifacher radar.
32:03All these, they were all integrated.
32:08So this is the capability we have.
32:10And we can, we demonstrated in Sindur.
32:12My suggestion here is that we need to synergize it at a macro level, a bigger level.
32:18We have the three services.
32:19Not only three, various services, because cyber also comes in now.
32:22Space comes in.
32:23All these things need to synergize to create that kind of impact.
32:27I will, very reluctantly, but, you know, because of the possibility of time, I must thank you
32:36for a lot of very important aspects that were brought out.
32:50Thank you very much.
32:51All the best.
32:52Thank you very much.
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