Hum was the rare Indian movie that depicted corruption in the Indian Army.
I'm talking about corruption in the purchase of supplies. And corruption by army-men, not by bureaucrats and politicians at the at the MoD level.
Right now, just looking at the some of the videos coming out of Ukraine, I see what an underprepared army looks like. Much of the videos on both sides are propaganda, but some of them are just genuine videos of badly made and shoddily maintained equipment, and very poorly trained and oriented soldiers. Some soldiers are cold and underfed even as they arrive in Ukraine.
I don't know what the state of our army is in terms of feeding, clothing and training its men. The truth is that we like to believe our army is in order, without really demanding any evidence of that. But we do know that when it comes to equipment, we are far behind. The army has regularly complained about being underfunded. And I also often hear from other entrepreneurs how they paid off an officer to get their payment cleared.
Which is scary. Now my own firm sells regularly to the armed forces, in very small quantities, for different requirements. We have never come across any corruption. No demand of bribes ever. But we also come across unscrupulous dealers who want to secure large orders for us without any tender or testing, because they have a "setting".
The truth is that armed forces purchasing has much lower oversight for corruption than regular government purchasing. And its not like the public can just file an RTI and get info.
Anyway. You don't think about war. You assume war will never happen. But when you see other people fighting, and then people dying like chicken because their armies were not well prepared, you think of your own preparedness. Nobody deserves to die on the frontlines because an officer took a bribe when buying components.
One of the reasons the USSR collapsed was the sheer amount of corruption and bullying in daily life. And that didn't really go away when the USSR converted into "democratic" Russia. Our own ordinance system is modelled after the Russians, where we manufacture much of our ordinance ourselves without using private entities. Any time the government is both the buyer and the seller, quality goes for a toss and protocols and specifications exist only on paper.
Just a random chain of thoughts in my head after seeing needless death. Who will save us from our own greed if war comes.
I'm talking about corruption in the purchase of supplies. And corruption by army-men, not by bureaucrats and politicians at the at the MoD level.
Right now, just looking at the some of the videos coming out of Ukraine, I see what an underprepared army looks like. Much of the videos on both sides are propaganda, but some of them are just genuine videos of badly made and shoddily maintained equipment, and very poorly trained and oriented soldiers. Some soldiers are cold and underfed even as they arrive in Ukraine.
I don't know what the state of our army is in terms of feeding, clothing and training its men. The truth is that we like to believe our army is in order, without really demanding any evidence of that. But we do know that when it comes to equipment, we are far behind. The army has regularly complained about being underfunded. And I also often hear from other entrepreneurs how they paid off an officer to get their payment cleared.
Which is scary. Now my own firm sells regularly to the armed forces, in very small quantities, for different requirements. We have never come across any corruption. No demand of bribes ever. But we also come across unscrupulous dealers who want to secure large orders for us without any tender or testing, because they have a "setting".
The truth is that armed forces purchasing has much lower oversight for corruption than regular government purchasing. And its not like the public can just file an RTI and get info.
Anyway. You don't think about war. You assume war will never happen. But when you see other people fighting, and then people dying like chicken because their armies were not well prepared, you think of your own preparedness. Nobody deserves to die on the frontlines because an officer took a bribe when buying components.
One of the reasons the USSR collapsed was the sheer amount of corruption and bullying in daily life. And that didn't really go away when the USSR converted into "democratic" Russia. Our own ordinance system is modelled after the Russians, where we manufacture much of our ordinance ourselves without using private entities. Any time the government is both the buyer and the seller, quality goes for a toss and protocols and specifications exist only on paper.
Just a random chain of thoughts in my head after seeing needless death. Who will save us from our own greed if war comes.