India Can’t Be a Superpower If It Can’t Create Jobs
The country’s military can serve as a tool to project power or a scheme to generate employment, but it’s going to be very difficult to do both.
Protests over the new recruitment system turned violent.
Photographer: Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images
India’s attempt to reform military recruitment — which has set off political convulsions that show no signs of abating — once again shows that its aspirations to superpower status are no match for a below-par economy.
India’s military — particularly its army — is antiquated in organization and manpower-heavy. After some ill-advised, populist and expensive tinkering with pensions early in its tenure, the government found it was spending all its military budget on personnel, leaving very little for modernization or for hardware.