Chandigarh: After some 35 years of reporting on defence, military, and security affairs, I have reached a point where even my most vivid superlatives fall grievously short of conveying the extent and urgency of the enduring institutional deficiencies that continue to plague India’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), the armed forces, and their modernisation efforts.What were once viewed as isolated shortcomings have, in recent decades, hardened into a pattern of chronic dysfunction, evident in stalled procurements, shifting priorities, bureaucratic inertia, and, above all, a lack of accountability for non-performance. Each new crisis or capability shortfall is dismissed as an exception, rather than acknowledged as evidence of deeper structural failure, allowing these problems to fester and erode operational readiness and strategic credibility.A multitude of expressions – glaring shortcomings, critical capability gaps, interminably delayed acquisitions, lack of accountability, chronic underfunding of priorities, obvious wrongdoing, endless bureaucratic entanglements, and overambitious qualitative requirements (QRs), amongst a host of similarly grave failings – once sufficed to convey the seriousness of these lapses.And, though these phrases remain both accurate and applicable even today, their endless repetition – met with indifference from the MoD and the armed services – has, over time, drained them of all meaning. While the problems and shortcomings they describe have neither changed nor been reformed, it is the persistent failure to act on them that has steadily stripped this language of its relevance, force and passion.Consequently, these formulations now barely register within a hidebound system hardened by complacency and self-preservation, where endemic delay, corruption, and inefficiency have trapped vital materiel – from fighters, submarines, mid-air refuellers, basic trainers, close quarter carbines, howitzers, and sundry other equipment – in acquisition cycles stretching across decades.Su-30MKI of the Indian Air Force touching down with airbrakes deployed. Photo: Sanil Nath, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.Early in my career as a defence reporter, 1991 onwards, reporting for a respected overseas military journal and concurrently with local news outlets, phrases such as strategically troubling, critically deficient, or operationally untenable were used to flag delayed combat aircraft procurements, stalled naval projects, or long-overdue missile systems, amongst other materiel. They had teeth back then, considered unduly harsh criticism and employed sparingly.But today, after years of repeatedly chronicling the unchanged routines of over-promise and under-delivery, such language has lost its sting, proving increasingly ineffective in capturing the persistent, recurring gaps and inadequacies that continue to hobble India’s defence preparedness.Meanwhile, over the years, I pursued multiple journalistic stratagems: severe metaphors, historical analogies, and even dry humour and satire in an effort to jolt the defence establishment out of its complacency and embarrass it into timely and apposite action, but to little or no avail.Yet, when major critical tenders are repeatedly scrapped, reissued, and binned once more on spurious grounds, only to be revised years later to make good yawning operational gaps, there are no expressions left to encapsulate either the scale or the seriousness of the situation.Language itself feels spent and tired, much like many of the military’s programmes it seeks to describe, leaving concerned observers with a sense of helpless frustration at a defence establishment seemingly impervious to both reason and ridicule. The more one tries to articulate the chaos and inefficiency, the clearer it becomes that censorious words and phrases, like so many plans and procurements, simply falter and fail.The MoD and the three armed-services were unavailable for comment.Nowhere is this propensity for empty ceremony more evident than in the frequent seminars, conferences, and think-tank brainstorming sessions on defence and military matters. These gatherings are convened with great fanfare, often under the banners of innovation, strategic foresight, or defence reforms, promising fresh ideas and actionable insights, but in reality, yield little of substance.An increasingly bloated cross-section of self-professed experts and professionals convene regularly in New Delhi and other major Indian cities, armed with ‘new’ presentation slides, yet the content is almost always the same with tactical weaknesses, procurement delays, capability gaps, and bureaucratic bottlenecks being enumerated with alarming predictability.Representative image of HAL Tejas. Photo: Ministry of Defence/Wikimedia commons.Prescriptions are equally recycled – indigenise and modernise systems, streamline decision-making, increase inter-service coordination, invest in training, enhance operational planning – all framed as how the MoD and the services need to, ought to, or have to resolve these perennially contentious issues. But rarely is any of all this implemented.Having attended innumerable such sessions over decades has taught me a simple lesson about the MoD’s and the armed forces’ institutional inertia and rhetorical cycles: conclusions rarely diverge. Each session ends the same way – nodding heads, polite applause, and rehearsed urgencies, delivered in slightly different words.However, the problem, glaringly obvious to objective attendees, is not a lack of understanding but a lack of courage to act; prompt execution of projects and proposals for force modernisation remains conspicuously absent. When multiple seminars echo the same insights, it seems that just the mere act of convening them equates progress.This is not to say that such sessions are not useful for cross-pollination of ideas, and for exposing weaknesses that might otherwise be overlooked or ignored. But the measure of their intrinsic worth should be judged not by the volume of their discourse or the novelty of their slides, but by the speed and efficacy with which their recommendations are translated into operational reality on the ground. Without that, all seminars, regardless of their profile or attendance, remain exercises in repetition.And then there is the supine electronic, print and online media which too, over the past decade, has merely augmented official shibboleths. Instead of interrogating MoD and service claims on defence preparedness, acquisitions, and doctrines, it too has often collectively repackaged official press releases as analysis.Such uncritical activity by any formal media worth its name, is further magnified by mushrooming social media platforms, creating a circular information loop in which dissent or criticism, however minor, is dismissed as disloyalty. In such an ecosystem, accountability weakens, debate shrinks, and performative complacency replaces genuine challenge as the norm.Alongside, cohorts of armchair strategists – mostly retired military officials – populate assorted television news channels, offering commentary on defence and security with laughable gravitas, each trying to outdo the others in an effort to please the government.These self-styled experts thrive on hyperbole, turning routine procurement delays, training exercises, or intelligence assessments into theatre. Most of their analyses rely on superficial readings of open-source reports, social media chatter, or recycled Press Information Bureau (PIB) releases, yet they speak as if privy to classified deliberations at the highest levels.What is striking – and hugely exasperating – is the certainty with which these couch commanders pronounce judgments on highly complex issues. Strategic doctrine, logistics, inter-service coordination, and the intricacies of procurement cycles are reduced to soundbites by them, measured in volume, not insight.Competent defence and security analysts – those who toil over classified papers, operational data, or conduct first-hand reporting – are dismissed entirely, their expertise ignored, and no attempt is made to bring them into this grandstanding circus. And should one of them, by some oversight, be invited, the token gesture is never ever repeated.In conclusion, the reality is stark and uncomfortable: all the discussions, analyses, seminars, and commentary – no matter how eloquent – boil down to a single reality for policymakers, defence planners, and the security establishment. Problems are solved only when decisions are made swiftly and decisively, accountability is enforced, and delays are unacceptable. Words, reports, and presentations, however polished, do not build capability – they create a veneer of movement, while tangible results remain circumscribed.Action, and action alone, bridges the gap between strategy and operational reality; everything else remains live theatre.