, around 180,000 soldiers would be recruited under the scheme. This will give us a good idea as to how the scheme is working - what sorts of recruits are coming in, how are they getting integrated within the units - and then we review it," he adds. In an earlier interview with the BBC, Lt. Gen. HS Panag said that India has a "large military where we are forced to use quantity to compensate for quality". As a developing economy, India's defence spending "cannot increase exponentially" and therefore it needed to slim the forces. But Mehta argues that a shift from reliance on personnel to technology, and a younger age profile of soldiers "should be dealt with in its own terms, not governed just by the logic of cutting your pension bill". "The armed forces need support and reform. But reforms should be governed by a sound sociological, professional, institutional and strategic logic... A dose of scepticism might be a better act of patriotism than cheerleading blindly, especially if you want reforms to succeed," he wrote.
