You have made some very pertinent points. It is true that India spends a lot of money on defence. It is also true that India’s economic and social development could do with a lot more money. But when an attempt is made to link the two, things begin to get cloudy.

Firstly, India can achieve greater growth and development by pursuing policies that give economic freedom to its people, than by simply spending less on defence.

Secondly, I am loath to accept that the Indian economy is hostage to Pakistani blackmail – for this is what the argument about peace-with-Pakistan-for-economic-development is all about. India’s economy continued to grow happily in 2002 when troops were mobilised and the world was worried about a nuclear nightmare. Terrorism killed thousands in the 1990s, but economic growth happened because of the end of the license raj.

I’ve made some arguments here and here.

Besides, if you take the Reagan parallel, India can win if it simultaneously focuses on economic reform and force Pakistan to give up its designs or alternately spend itself to penury.

Hope it’s useful.

This note/thoughts were based on a quote by Michael Jordan:

There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren’t willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest
is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves. Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

And the note was:
The concept is as follows: “Look at optimizing the other person/people’s time value and efficiency”.

We often focus on optimizing our time, our value – look at identifying our faults & working on them and improving. If we were to help others to optimize their time, the value would be much larger. For example: If I were to go on holiday for 3 days and were to leave my phone mail system as is. Each person calling would have to listen to 4 rings before being able to log his/her message. But If I were to set the ringer to one ring, I have saved the other person 3 seconds. 20 people leave messages for me and I’ve saved everyone 1min. Another possible example. If I (could somehow) improve my communication such that I were able communicate this message in a shorter, clearer and crisper form and as a result if I could save 5 min of your time. You would add more value to yourself with that 5 min. And that would have a multiplier effect.

A different perspective to the old perspectives. Our job is to improve the value of the product to Sales so that they can sell it more easily. Improve their efficiency & value. Or to improve the value of the product to the customer such that he/she saves time and improves his efficiency – that would be customer delight.

My point is that we should focus on both – improving our efficiency and helping the system improve it’s efficiency. This has implications for teams, groups, Orgs, societies, countries.