New Delhi: Mysterious indeed are the ways of the Indian bureaucracy. But, even the mystic allusion would fail the comprehension test here. Otherwise, how would the Indian National Defence University (INDU)—an idea first mooted in 1967 by the Chief of Staff’s Committee—take more than 52 years to even make it to the drawing board stage?
What is surprising is that the plan has not moved much even after PMO coaxed the Defence Ministry to post the draft INDU bill online on July 11, 2016, so as to seek 'opinions and inputs' from the public before seeking parliamentary approval for the institute cum university.
Most nations with powerful militaries including the US, China, and even Pakistan, have such an institute that is the most appropriate platform for military scholars and students where original ideas of military and security policy formulations can be studied, discussed and debated and thus give direction and wholesome perspective to national policy.
Synergy is another key aspect of the INDU as it will promote and inculcate coordination and interaction not just between the Army, Navy, the Air Force and other commands like the Strategic, the Cyber or the Special Forces and others, but also between 'other agencies of the government, the civil bureaucracy, paramilitary forces, Central Armed Police Forces, intelligence services, diplomats, academicians, strategic planners, university students and officers from friendly foreign countries'.
The draft INDU bill, painstakingly prepared after due inter-ministerial consultations, still awaits the clearance from the Union Cabinet and is currently gathering dust in the Cabinet Secretariat.
In its present form, the INDU bill seeks to integrate under it the National Defence College (NDC), New Delhi, National Defence Academy (NDA), Khadakwasla, Pune, Defence Services Staff College (DSSC), Wellington and College of Defence Management (CDM), Secunderabad, “without diluting their powers or autonomy for award of degrees and diplomas”.
Initially, four new institutions—School of National Security Studies, School of Defence Technology, School of Defence Management and Centre for Distance and Open Learning—are proposed to be set up as INDU’s constituents at the main campus in Haryana’s Binola, near Gurgaon.
Nor has the Detailed Project Report (DPR) been finalized because that can happen only after the Cabinet’s okay. Meanwhile, the project cost has increased from Rs 395 crore in 2010 when such a fund was first approved to Rs 4007 crore in 2017.
After 1967, INDU was given a push by the Sethna Committee in 1980 and then by the Kargil Review Committee in 1999.
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