NEW DELHI, Aug. 16 (UPI) -- An Indian government-backed expert group has asked the government to prepare a 20-year defense plan that will make defense management more efficient.

“India requires a holistic and integrated defense perspective plan for 20 years through a process of inter-state service prioritization,” said a parliamentary standing committee report attached to the Defense Ministry.

It said the Defense Ministry may be directed to ensure timely completion of the plan, apart from introducing all suggested measures to bring about efficiency in defense expenditure.

The parliamentary standing committee has observed that over the past five years, actual defense expenditure had been below the amount required by the defense services to perform efficiently the tasks allotted to them. India is formulating its 11th defense plan in consultation with the services and it would be forwarded to the Finance Ministry for budgetary approval.

“With the creation of new bodies there is a need to clearly lay down the field of responsibility between the Ministry of Defense and three services,” said Balasaheb Vikher Patil, the chairman of the standing committee.

The Defense Ministry is assigned with drawing up defense policies, both five-year and long-term, which include border management, entire defense infrastructure, requirements of all three wings of the services and whole expenditure for defense, both services and non-services. Three services have to prepare plans for their respective forces. Actual implementation of the policies and achievement of targets have to be the part of the three services themselves.

The committee also recommended that the defense plan should be on a zero-based budgeting approach and all ongoing schemes may be examined on the same concept in a time-bound manner. It asked for formation of a study group by the Ministry of Defense to go into the details of the functioning of the ministry and the three services.

The committee said the study group, after conducting a detailed study of India’s defense system and security infrastructure, could suggest measures to improve defense efficiency and a new system for national security and border management as western and eastern borders of the country are considered vulnerable. Despite the fencing all along the borders, illegal migration from Bangladesh and cross-border terrorism from Pakistan continue.

The Defense Ministry has said it has already constituted a study group to make recommendations on budgetary reforms. It said the group has submitted its report, which the ministry has accepted and implemented. The ministry has declined to comment on the suggestion of setting up of another study group for the purposes other than the financial aspects of the Defense Ministry and three services.

The ministerial study group on financial aspect said the budgetary allocation to the Defense Ministry should be based on various schemes to be taken up during the period of the five-year plan. It said the ministry should have the authority to spend that sanctioned amount within the five-year plan period and not in a particular financial year.

The standing committee has in its report strongly felt that the Defense Ministry needs reforms and procedural changes to implement the principle of zero-based budgeting. It recommended the government that the Defense Ministry should carry out the necessary reforms and make concerted efforts to utilize the sanctioned amount within the particular financial year itself to avoid the surrender of non-utilized amount.

The Indian government had, after the Kargil conflict in 1999, constituted a high-level expert committee, which looked into the whole Indian defense structure and in its report made various suggestions to bring about more professionalism and modernization of the Indian armed forces.

The parliamentary standing committee has endorsed the view of the Kargil committee that the armed forces need to maintain a younger age so that they are at their fighting best at all times. The ministry said there are a number of problems in lateral induction of soldiers into the central paramilitary forces like border security force and central reserve police force.

The intelligence apparatus of the Indian armed forces has always been an area in question. The Kargil invasion had evoked much controversy, and the failure of Indian intelligence agencies to gather early inputs about the invasion of Pakistani troops in Indian soil was construed as the major reason that led to an armed conflict between two South Asian nations.

“Kargil invasion was the first regular war India had fought since 1971 and it has evoked much controversy and the extent of intelligence available and the action taken thereon,” said A B Mahapatra, a defense analyst and executive director of Center for Asian Strategic Studies, a non-governmental think tank. "The Kargil review committee had made a number of observations regarding intelligence gathering, analysis sharing and taking of follow-up actions in this regard. But, nothing has happened on those recommendations."

India does not have a separate defense intelligence agency with adequate resources and equipment to play a substantive role in intelligence collection. The Research and Analysis Wing, the foreign spy agency of the country, plays a substantive role in intelligence gathering. Indian threat assessment has largely single-track process dominated by RAW.