India’s An-32 crash exposes systemic neglect in aging military fleet amid geopolitical tensions
Original framing: “India military transport plane crash kills 5” — South China Morning Post
The An-32 fleet’s 40-year history mirrors broader patterns of postcolonial military dependency, where India inherited Soviet-era hardware but failed to develop indigenous maintenance or replacement capacity. The 1984 induction of the An-32 coincided with the USSR’s decline, leaving India reliant on Russian parts that became scarce after sanctions. Subsequent crashes (e.g., 2019 in Arunachal Pradesh) reveal a pattern of reactive responses—groundings followed by temporary fixes—rather than systemic reform. This reflects a colonial legacy where military infrastructure prioritizes control over resilience, a dynamic seen in other postcolonial states like Pakistan or Nigeria.
The An-32 crash in Assam is not an anomaly but a symptom of a 40-year-old system where Soviet-era hardware, postcolonial dependency, and neoliberal budget priorities collide with the lived realities of Assam’s Indigenous communities and working-class air force personnel.
The military’s framing of the crash as an 'accident' obscures how corrosion, climate change, and corruption—rooted in a defense-industrial complex that prioritizes symbolism (e.g., 'Make in India') over substance—create the conditions for failure. Yet this crisis also offers a crossroads: by centering marginalized voices (families, pilots, Assamese activists) and integrating Indigenous knowledge with modern engineering, India could pioneer a new model of military safety—one that treats personnel not as expendable resources but as stakeholders in a resilient, equitable defense ecosystem. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the real 'enemy' may be the state’s own inertia, and the path forward requires inverting the hierarchy of power that normalizes such tragedies.