Recently someone complained that the aggregate military presence in Goa is perhaps higher than its fair share compared to other Indian states. Paradoxically, however, this doesnt seem to be reflected in any disproportionately high share of discussion about genuine military matters, say on goanet or even in the local newspapers.
On the other hand there are occasional melodramatic statements about ardent admiration for the readiness of military people to make the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of the homeland. These super patriotic folks however seem to have a definite blindspot about the hundreds of millions of Indians who are barely eking out a daily living because no meaningful poverty alleviation is possible unless the Indian military-bureaucratic complex can somehow curb its gargantuan appetite for the country's hard earned savings and investment funds. This is by way of a brief prologue to the festering problem of Dabolim. Here we have an airport which is among the top 5 non-metro airports of the country and the only one to be controlled by the Navy. It is also used by the Air Force and the Coast Guard. There may be little wrong with the use of an asset as costly as an airport as a base for various military aircraft. The problem is centred on the reportedly substantial use of the airport for mere military flight training, resulting in the blocking off of civilian traffic on 4 days of the week resulting in skewed airline schedules, needless delays and socio-economic opportunities lost. As everyone knows, Goa, though relatively sparsely populated by people with per capita income that is above the national average, is one of the top tourist destinations internationally as well as domestically. There is also the Goan diaspora of unknown size. Hence there is a strong felt need for a substantial amount of air travel especially given the hilly terrain that ground transportation to and from neighbouring metros has to contend with. It is unfortunate that the military seems to be taking a literally dog-in-the-manger attitude to alleviating the pressures on the airport. As stated earlier there is no forum for discussion of any kind. And consequently, military planning seems to have completely neglected the need to systematically plan for shifting the flight training requirements over time to other more convenient airports and thus relieve the operational constraints. Instead we now gather that there are plans to INCREASE the burden by inducting a new naval aircraft for which the Navy is to be a worldwide launch customer! While the Navy is resolutely silent on its capabilities and intentions at Dabolim, its proxies on goanet have proved very adept at shooting down any and all options that are put forward! They also stonewall through military mumbo-jumbo or branding international inputs/precedents as irrelevant and and take evasive action by resorting to extraneous allusions. So discussion is seemingly futile. Recently the noted defence affairs commentator, K. Subrahmanyam, has observed that an impression is assiduously cultivated by the civilian political leadership that defence expenditure is a holy cow, an untouchable. He says this is primarily because of a lack of civilian knowledge and a corresponding inability to set the defence agenda. The threat assessment (preferably on a zerobase principle) which is crucial to civilian control of defence is simply non-existent in India. Individual services reportedly prepare their annual demands for budgetary support based on previous year's figures "plus 10%"! Hence the military juggernaut keeps rolling along like Old Man River. Fortunately the Indian miltary has not yet developed a taste for ruling the country and is by and large free of the corruption that plagues other spheres of our society. Recently Subrahmanyam has introduced PM Manmohan Singh's foreign policy vision of Feb 25 in the media (TOI March 15). It seems Manmohan Singh wants India to give supremacy to economic objectives while formulating foreign, including presumably military, policy. He wants India to seriously try and exploit the opportunities provided by globalisation. In this context, the challenge is for Goa's political leadership, hopefully in combination with a newly enlightened military leadership in the state and the centre, to give real importance to socio-economic issues including active efforts to remove the widely perceived bottleneck to this at Dabolim airport.
