India's military inaction against Pakistan in the wake of the Uri atrocity isn't because India prefers diplomacy to war, claim some military sources.
It's because the Indian Armed Forces -- especially the Indian Army -- doesn't have the ammunition, technology and the equipment to sustain any campaign against Pakistan lasting more than three days.
This embarrassing admission isn't new. The deficiencies of the armed forces have long been pilloried in the media in the hope Delhi might act decisively to remedy it. That inaction has now come back to haunt India, which again is made to look like a toothless tiger fearful only because it growls with such verve.
And if India can't fight Pakistan, what will be its chances against China? What will be its chances against both Pakistan and China together? We all know the answer to this question.
The army's Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has revealed the army's ammunition reserves aren't sufficient to fight a 10-day war. Some army officers say India can't even fight a three-day war with the ammunition on hand. It's estimated that a professional army like the one the Indian Army claims to be should be able to fight a 30-day conventional war against another country.
Not only aren't the army's guns well fed, the jawans that fire these guns in battle aren't well fed either. Last July, CAG blasted the army for the poor quality of food -- including spoiled food -- supplied to jawans deployed in operational areas of Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast.
CAG also reported a very low level of troop satisfaction regarding the quantity, quality and taste of army rations. The troops were also critical of the low quality of meat and fresh vegetables they were being fed. It said 68 percent of the troops it interviewed graded their rations satisfactory and below.
"Army continues to consume ration, even after the expiry of original shelf life," reported CAG.
CAG also hit the army for implementing only two out of 12 recommendations to improve and streamline the supply chain management of rations.
Besides ill-fed guns and ill-fed frontline soldiers who will do the dying in a war against Pakistan, the army is also beset by outmoded technology, especially in soldier firepower and protection.
In March 2012, retired general Vijay Kumar Singh, former Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) of the Indian Army, put on record in a letter to the Prime Minister that "97 percent of Army's air defense inventory was obsolete." Singh is now a minister of state in the government.
The Indian soldiers' extremely vulnerable to Pakistan's capable air force equipped with French Mirage attack jets is compounded by the jawan's lack of adequate personal protection in the form of capable body armor and helmets.
Indian media has slammed the army for not have enough bulletproof jackets for most of the frontline soldiers. Most jawans go into battle with the outmoded steel helmet while some do so in cloth caps.