Dashing the high hopes pinned on it by the defence forces, the Indian missile fraternity and the entire nation, the maiden night trial of the nuclear weapon capable Agni-II failed recently. The mission’s aim was to test the missile’s reliability in adverse conditions, however, the missile failed to pass the test. The term failure is not new to us. We have perhaps become used to this word, especially when it comes to defence equipment and trials of other indispensable armory that makes a country self-reliant on the defence front. Here Light Combat Aircraft [LCA] and the much-troubled Main Battle Tank [MBT] deserve a special mention.

With the government spending tens of millions of taxpayer’s money, these recurring failures raise serious concern and questions in the minds of the defence and scientific fraternities and also in the minds of common people regarding the fact  that despite tens of millions being pumped into these programmes and government assurances that the best technology is in use, these failures continue to reoccur. As pointed out by one of the analysts, the debacle highlights serious, structural problems within the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), and its chronic inability to overcome them.

Pointing out the inefficiency of the DRDO despite a whopping annual budget of US$670 million, Admiral L. Ramdas, a former chief of staff of the Indian Navy revealed that the DRDO isn't the world's most reliable weapons R&D agency. The Indian armed services' experience with DRDO-made armaments has not been a happy one. Their reliability is often extremely poor. ‘We often used to joke that one had to pray they would somehow work in the battlefield.’

The arena of science and defence technology is very dynamic, constantly changing and of course not a cake walk. One failure can have several reasons and no experiment comes with the guarantee of a hundred percent success rate. In the past we witnessed an example of scientific disappointment in 2006 during the launch failure of Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) carrying the Insat-4c communications satellite. Moreover, Agni-II’s last test on 19 May was not fully successful either.

But what makes the failure of Agni-II so important that the entire media has been flooded with the news of its failure? The answer is threefold; first the test launch was significant from India's strategic point of view as it was the first time since the beginning of DRDO’s missile development programme that a missile was tested in the night. It was a major step towards making it fully operational in the Strategic Forces Command (SFC), which unfortunately was a failure. Second, the recent report indicating that Pakistan, with the help of China and North Korea, has surpassed India in the missile arena is a cause of worry. Third, General Kapoor’s  announcement, hours before India tested the nuclear enabled missile Agni-II, that the Indian sub-continent is prone to nuclear war, meant that the test failure put our preparedness with regard to how we are going to deal with this kind of conflict and instability into question.

This brings us to the question of how much this failure harms the image of the country, which aspires to be a superpower one day. These kinds of failures can prove to be intensely embarrassing for the nation's prestige and raise doubts about India’s military-industrial high-tech capabilities. It also highlights our inefficacy in learning from our past shortcomings and political limitations and prevents India from fulfilling its ambitions to pursue a military capability, which would give it a superpower standing.

With its military capability being questioned, embarrassment on the international front and disappointment on the domestic front, what immediate steps can be taken to rectify these enormous errors? One of the answers lies in DRDO’s accountability and transparency. As a taxpayer, citizens have the right to know how their hard earned money is being used. If the organization undertaking the enormous responsibility to work on these programmes fails to accomplish the objective it should be accountable to one billion Indians. The nation is not looking for a statement full of scientific jargon but a statement that states that why we failed and who is taking responsibility for it and how the error is going to be rectified. There is an urgent need to overhaul the entire DRDO machinery. The DRDO should come out with facts, for they relate to the country's security and tax payer's money.

In addition to this, the government should take a serious look into the matter as reoccurrences of this kind do not improve the image of the country’s defence system either in the domestic stratum or on the international pedestal. The need of the hour demands that the government looks into concrete measures to stem the rot in the existing system as the country’s territorial integrity and security is at stake with these kinds of failures. Not only is Agni missile success indispensable in providing a strong strategic position for India but it is also an answer to China’s striking capability to hit the Indian gangetic plain from Tibet. It is also capable of hitting any part of Pakistan, which is plagued by political instability and fear of a Taliban managed coup. Looking at the current scenario where power respects power and meek remains weak, such events should be dealt with, with extraordinary swiftness and absolute commitment so that there is no room for error in future.