📅 JUNE 8 DAY 14 | HOT TAKE: THE BOFORS IRONY IS THE BEST SUMMARY OF INDIA'S POLITICS Let me be direct today. The Bofors scandal lasted for over a decade in Indian courts and politics. The gun at the center of it won Kargil. That one sentence summarizes something essential about Indian democracy that we don't like to say out loud. We are extraordinarily good at political warfare. We are considerably less good at defense preparedness. The Bofors deal was probably corrupt. There were almost certainly payments made that shouldn't have been. The investigation, though slow and ultimately inconclusive in courts, was legitimate. But here is what nobody wanted to say in 1989, or 1991, or 1999: The gun worked. It was a good gun. It was the right gun for what India needed. Whatever happened in the procurement process, the weapon that Indian soldiers carried to Kargil was capable, accurate, and battle-winning. We spent 10 years debating how it was bought. We spent zero years ensuring we had enough ammunition for it. A political system that is more energized by the question of "who got the kickback" than "are our soldiers equipped" is not a system serving its military. This isn't a defense of corruption. It's an indictment of misplaced priorities. Post-Kargil India slowly began correcting this. Defence budgets increased. Procurement reforms began. The private sector was gradually opened to defence manufacturing. These are real and meaningful changes. But they came after 527 soldiers died on peaks that had been occupied while India's intelligence slept, and whose recapture was complicated by ammunition shortages that nobody had planned for. The Bofors irony should be required reading for every defence ministry official in India. The question isn't just how you buy the weapons. It's whether you buy enough of them, maintain them, and stock the ammunition. Kargil taught us that. At a price we should never have paid. #Kargil27 #KargilVijayDiwas
