Created in 1993 as part of the Parliament’s effort to strengthen scrutiny of government policy, the Standing Committee on Defence (SCoD), like others of its ilk, was expected to become the principal parliamentary forum for examining India’s military preparedness, armed forces expenditure and long-term materiel needs.It was one among 17 Departmentally Related Standing Committees (DRSCs) inaugurated on March 31 that year in the Central Hall of the old Parliament House. It also marked an earnest attempt to move parliamentary oversight beyond periodic debates and towards more specialised examination of State functioning.Speaking at the inaugural function, the then vice president and Rajya Sabha chairman R.K. Narayanan had cautioned that all these committees were merely mechanisms which would acquire relevance only through the “full and intelligent participation” of their members and the “powerful support” of their secretariats.More than three decades later, that warning appears particularly relevant, particularly with reference to the SCoD. For, rather than emerging as a rigorous instrument of defence oversight, it has increasingly become associated with laborious reports, heavy on official data but invariably light on independent analysis, critical questioning and meaningful recommendations.Findings fading into obscurityIts findings often generate fleeting media attention, before fading into obscurity, without either substantive parliamentary discussion or even the remotest demonstrable impact on overall defence and security policy. Whether this reflects inadequate engagement by committee members, insufficient research support from its associated secretariat or the broader limitation of parliamentary oversight is less important than the outcome.On balance, SCoD’s reports have too often become compilations of ministry’s inputs, containing familiar observations and broad recommendations that seldom evaluate the difficult choices confronting India’s defence establishment and its myriad woes and shortcomings.This weakness is particularly evident in its annual examination of the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) four Demands for Grants, which constitute the core of India’s defence budget. Among these, the report on capital outlay traditionally receives the greatest attention because it is directly linked to military modernisation, entailing both new acquisitions and upgrade of existing platforms and equipment, or at times, both.Consequently, the SCoD report on capital expenditure for Financial Year (FY) 2026-27, submitted to Parliament on March 18, 2026, was awaited with considerable interest. Unfortunately, it too largely followed the familiar pattern of providing extensive, often unrelated data, cautious conclusions and little critical examination or accountability.The report examined not only capital expenditure, but also defence planning, procurement policy, foreign direct investment (FDI) and defence pensions. Yet its treatment of each subject remained cursory and non-committal, offering little by way of deeper analysis or actionable recommendations. Many of the committee’s conclusions are little more than bureaucratic circumlocution – carefully twisted and crafted so that every viewpoint is accommodated and no difficult choice or challenge is highlighted.Its assessment of capital outlay, for instance, was particularly ambivalent. On one hand, the committee expressed satisfaction with the allocation and emphasised that enhanced capital expenditure should continue in subsequent years. On the other, it gratuitously advised the MoD to remain pragmatic while seeking additional funds at the revised estimates stage.It further recommended that capital allocations be increased in view of the geopolitical security environment and the need to maintain credible deterrence, while simultaneously hoping that future allocations would better balance revenue and capital expenditure.Such conundrums occupy the safest possible middle ground: acknowledging the need for greater resources, while avoiding any serious examination of how much is affordable, where additional funds should come from or which capabilities deserve priority. In short, it’s the bureaucratic equivalent of keeping all options open but refraining from choosing one of them.Similar nebulous recommendations have appeared repeatedly in previous SCoD reports. These include raising defence expenditure to 3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), establishing a non-lapsable modernisation fund, maintaining a 60:40 ratio between revenue and capital expenditure, and ensuring a smoother flow of expenditure throughout the year. Yet these suggestions are rarely accompanied by an assessment of their financial viability or a detailed explanation of how they would address specific capability gaps.The committee’s long-standing advocacy of a non-lapsable defence modernisation fund is a case in point. For years, SCoD repeatedly recommended such a mechanism despite reservations among a section of defence planners about its practical utility. The Fifteenth Finance Commission (2021-26) subsequently endorsed the proposal in 2020, recommending the creation of a Modernisation Fund for Defence and Internal Security (MFDIS) with a corpus of Rs 2.38 lakh crore, including Rs 50,000 crore for internal security.The government accepted the recommendation and, in March 2021, informed the committee that a draft cabinet note on establishing the fund was under consideration. Five years later, the fund remains a work in progress, rather than a reality. More tellingly, the issue of a non-lapsable fund has simply disappeared from the committee’s own recent deliberations, despite having once been treated as critical for defence modernisation.Lack of scrutinyThe report’s examination of defence planning displays a similar lack of scrutiny. A substantial portion of this is devoted to describing the Integrated Capability Development System (ICDS), developed by Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS) as a top-down, iterative process for defence planning and adopted by the MoD in 2020. The committee reproduces descriptions, diagrams and explanations of the system – including a commentary in Hindi – but fails to address the more important and relevant question: what has ICDS actually delivered in the six years since its introduction?A parliamentary committee examining defence planning should have asked whether capability development plans prepared under ICDS have improved prioritisation, accelerated procurement or reduced the persistent mismatch between military requirements and available resources. Instead, its examination concludes with general, somewhat banal, advice that planning should reflect the changing nature of warfare, including greater emphasis on automation, advanced technologies, artificial intelligence, rapid response and coordination.These observations are, no doubt accurate, but they add little analytical value to the issue under discussion and analysis. They describe the general characteristics of modern warfare, known to all and available on Wikipedia, rather than specifically examining whether India’s planning mechanisms are actually producing the capabilities required to fight it in its own peculiar environment of planning for a two-front war with collusive nuclear rivals Pakistan and China.The section on defence procurement is equally revealing.The report discusses the Defence Acquisition Procedure (DAP) 2020 and various acquisition reforms undertaken previously but omits to mention that the MoD had released the draft Defence Acquisition Procedure 2026 for public consultation on February 11, 2026 – more than a month before the committee finalised its report and presented it to parliament.The committee’s detailed discussion of defence offsets is equally difficult to comprehend. An entire section is devoted to the subject, even though the draft DAP 2026 makes no mention of offsets. The report does not examine the rationale behind this change, nor does it question why only one offset contract has reportedly been concluded over the past six years.Instead, the chapter ends with the assertion that dependence on foreign suppliers is declining and that India is moving steadily towards self-reliance in defence. That optimism, however, sits uneasily with the March 2026 report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which identified India as the world’s second-largest importer of major arms.The committee’s examination of FDI in defence reveals a similar lack of analytical attention. The report welcomes increased investment but simultaneously expresses concern that foreign capital could undermine indigenous capability. Its recommendation reflects this ambivalence: make FDI more attractive while also strengthening domestic research and development through greater public-private cooperation. However, beyond stating the problem, it offers no concrete measures to achieve this transformation.Data presented in the report raises disturbing questionsEven the data presented in the report raises disturbing questions for serious analysts.It claims, for instance, that between the liberalisation of the defence FDI policy in September 2020 and December 2025, foreign investment worth Rs 2,273.94 crore entered the sector. Surprisingly, this figure does not correspond with data available from the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT).According to DPIIT figures, cumulative FDI in the defence industry stood at Rs 60.77 crore ($10.5 million) until September 2020 and rose to Rs 207 crore ($27.78 million) by December 2025. Such glaring discrepancies should have prompted closer scrutiny, but instead, the SCoD appears content to reproduce information provided to it without adequately investigating its accuracy that reveals a shortfall of Rs 2066.94 crores. This response raises a fundamental question about the purpose of a parliamentary standing committee. Such committees exist precisely to examine complex issues in depth, question executive decisions and assist the Parliament in arriving at informed judgments. Passing the matter back to the ministry concerned amounts to little more than avoiding the difficult examination that the issue demands.The result is a parliamentary mechanism that exists in form but often falls short in substance.India’s military presently faces a rapidly changing strategic environment, technological disruption and persistent capability challenges. In response, the Parliament requires a defence committee that does more than catalogue allocations and reproduce official assurances. It needs to perform more than just an oversight role, ask harder questions, demand cogent answers and ensure that national security decisions are subjected to the serious examination they deserve.Without that apolitical transformation, the SCoD will remain little more than the author of a well-bound report masquerading as parliamentary oversight: a repository of hurriedly collated information rather than an instrument of critical analysis and accountability.Amit Cowshish is a former financial advisor (acquisitions), Ministry of Defence.