ABSTRACT
The fundamental problem confronting India in both conventional and nuclear force management fields is that the country has a defence management system which has not been functioning well from the time of independence and which has gotten even worse since then. Half-hearted attempts to improve the system beginning in 1985 have not succeeded for reasons of politics, especially of the bureaucratic variety. The two biggest manifestations of this dysfunctional system are the functioning of the military outside the government and the inadequate joint functioning of the three services. By ploughing its solitary organisational furrow, India has seriously, and totally unnecessarily, enfeebled its conventional as well as nuclear military capabilities.
