The expansion of the Indian army is considered as a necessary step to level the ongoing heated situations between India and neighboring nations. The scarcity of 9000 officers and about 30,000 soldiers in Indian army has to be filled up and the efficiency need to be increased in order to deter the two emerging threats in the neighboring territories (Pakistan and China). The replication of problems due to unbalanced circumstances between both the nations has led India to take some steps to expand its force.
The concept of integrated theatre command has been in news from the last few months and seems to be a great move toward combining the efforts of all sections of the armed forces to bring out the best match of respective command. The concept of theatre command lies in the comprehensive joint amalgamation of Army, Navy and Air Force in one command. Here, the resources of all three services were put together to make a joint integrated approach to a task.
The move by India to raise such command came after Chinese Army was restructured last year in order to refresh the efficiency of its army. India is not the first nation to propose such command. U.S. and other nations also possess such commands. Apart from the raising of the Theatre commands, the restructuring is also a crucial aspect of it. The main benefit of a Theatre command is to act over a multiple strategic fronts by one command rather than dealing with it by all respective commands individually.
Another stroke by India Army came from the step to raise Strike corps (17 corps). The approval to raise mountain strike corps in 2013 was judged as a significant step to boost the defense of India. But as the time passed, it seemed to be hard to raise the corps with about 90,000 soldiers. The cost of raising the corps was estimated to around 64,000 thousand crores and marked to be raised by 2020-2021. As per the sources, the fund shorted Army is raising the corps with the War Wastage Reserves. As on march this year, only 90 of the 250 headquarters have been established. The Headquarter suggested for the corps is Panagarh, West Bengal.
Refreshing the basic knowledge of aspirants, Army commands in India are as follows:-
Northern command – Udhampur
Southern command – Pune
Eastern command – Kolkata
Western command – Chandigarh
South western command – Jaipur
Central command – Lucknow
Training command – Shimla
Along with the above measures and steps to bring up the defense scale, Indian National Defense University (INDU) was proposed to be established in Binola, Gurgaon (Haryana). The aim of establishing it is to increase the leadership quality of officers and enhancing defense related research and promoting defense management and defense technologies.
Conclusion – The increased manpower in the army is the need of the hour as the tensions along the borders is escalating day by day. China is reported to be planning a cut down of about 3 lakh soldiers by 2017. While India has to think over expanding and arming the soldiers and providing required equipment and facilities to them. Reorganizing armed forces can be a good idea as it will refresh and bring out the joint approach of all the three forces to work over a specific problem and sort it out.
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