CHIEF AGENDA
GENERAL M.M. NARAVANE has taken over as army chief at a significant juncture in India’s defence history. In appointing his predecessor, General Bipin Rawat, as India’s first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) on December 30, the government signalled it was ready to begin restructuring the defence ministry and integrating the three armed forces into a single command structure. These recommendations were made nearly two decades ago by the Kargil Review Committee, but remained unimplemented for reasons ranging from political lethargy to a status quo-ist, change-resistant system.
Seen from the standpoint of reform, General Naravane is now best placed to execute what he implicitly believes in—preparing the world’s second-largest army to fight the wars of the future. “We aren’t modernising to fight past wars, we will be modernising to fight the next war,” he told a small group of
