THEATRE COMMANDS, A QUAGMIRE AWAITS US

THEATRE COMMANDS.. a quagmire awaits us 

Dr Prof K Prabhakar Rao

We keep reading in press frequently that Indian army is going to reorganise itself with major changes. the forces is likely to be reorganized with theatre commands. this throws up some important questions and doubts too. of late we are much influenced by American military set up and there is a great tendency to ape the yankees in all aspects. America is a world power and has  global interests. it has military bases in all continents and in all oceans and seas to protect their interests. it had also waged wars  after wwii,from time to time such as Korean War, Vietnam War, Irq war, Afghanistan war, Syrian war, Palestine war  proxy for Israrelis, In comparison we have only two enemies  and they are Pakistan and china. the small countries neighbouring  our country are nepal, Bangladesh,Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, lanka, maldives, brunei, bhutan and these countries pose no  military threat to us. with Afghanistan we have no land border as POK is with Pakistan. thus ,theatre based wars  for India looks strange.Although  the top brass keep stating that India is capable of fighting simultaneous war with china and pak, in reality it appears doubtful. the  stand off with PLA I. E CHINA HAS BEEN GOING ON SINCE nine months and we  are unable to evict PLA from our land. we lost the initiative immediately after the first physical hostilities. Where PLA soldiers and Indian soldiers fought each other in pitch darkness without fire arms  in which we lost a colonel and 19 men. probably PLA lost many more. There have been never ending discussions with PLA to resolve the issue but nothing could be achieved and PLA entrenched itself. talking of theatre war in such scenario is strange in fact. It appears the creation of theatre commanders is a prelude to increase the ranks of such commanders to four star gen ranks while CDS gets, elevated to five  star rank.creation of more and heavier brass with more stars and flags appears to be the aim  . where are our global interests in different continents?till now India foufgt several wars with Pakistan and China  under existing command structure such as North, south, east central and western commands, apart from training command. it is unlikely that we  are going to fight sea battles fardeep  in bay of bengal  or Arabian sea . India is unlikely to be a part of  multinational force in future war that could reach shores of middle East or sea shores  near china. in such scenario what purpose will be achieved by creating theatre commands except creating  bottle necks ,delay areas and Red tapism. Nothing more. it is opined that no useful purpose will be achieved by the quixotic changes in the present set up.