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I fully agree to the thought that the defense matters should not be open for public debate. And that’s the reason i support that those should not be part of regular discussion in parliament. And this s how it works currently. In such case now, where does the decision making part is handled then? Decision making remains with the defense minister and we have a standing parliamentary committee on defense to keep track of the things and provide suggestions to defense ministry and the government.

Now lets just have a look at some of the prominent members of the committee from Loksabha.

the current chairman of the committee is Mr Raj Babbar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Babbar) and no one can dare to talk about his credentials to be the chairman of such committee. The last chairman was Mr Satpal Maharaj (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satpal_Maharaj). Some other members include Kamal Kishore “commando” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamal_Kishor). I assure its not me who gave him this nickname, but this is a person with some real work in defense but on decision making i don’t know. And, I serious doubt his appointment to the committee was for his his work with Army after reading this article (http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/commando-who-guarded-rajiv-among-up-firsttimers/463062/). We have Mr Varun Gandhi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varun_Gandhi) on it and he has some serious experience in defense (defending his own earlier speeches and comments). Another person is Ramesh Jigajinagi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesh_Chandappa_Jigajinagi).

I understand that Loksabha is for people directly elected so they may be more on popularity than the “serious” work they did before joining politics. Lets move to Rajyasabha which is supposed to have some experts in it.

We have people like Prakash Javadekar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prakash_Javadekar), Mukut Mithi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukut_Mithi), Naresh Gujral (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naresh_Gujral), P J Kourien (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._Kurien) etc…

I bet you have got bored with the info till now and still wondering what is the point? the point is why do we have so many of non-experts chaired by a person like Raj Babbar in a committee that is supposed to work on our national defense. Cant we find a few good experts to man these committees, or at least one person be the chairman. The reason is that, the member selection is limited to the Parliament only. My take on it is we should allow some non-parliament experts in such committees and make it mandatory that such committees should be headed only by an expert whose credentials are beyond doubt.

Imagine a committee on economics headed by Sharad Pawar (do i need to give wiki link for him also?), and then the same headed by D Subbarao (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duvvuri_Subbarao).

Imagine a committee on environment headed by Lalu Prasad Yadav (again… is the link needed??) and then the same headed by Dr R K Pachauri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri)

At the least the quota of nominating 12 members into Rajyasabha by the President should be used purely to induct eminent people from such fields into the decision making and then those eminent people should be sent to the relevant committees to chair them.

* the names include some current and some ex-members.