new delhi while the defence ministry may not be very amused by p chidambarams advice that it must spend money wisely many among military officers agree with the finance ministers advice the finance minister said how is that money defence budget spent if rs 225 lakh crore is allotted to defence how is it spent should it be spent on maintenance acquiring new equipment training raising a new battalion these are questions which are decided by very senior officers of the army navy and the air force commenting on the recent submarine accident chidambaram said i sincerely hope that the defence forces will learn a lesson and make sure that the money allocated to them is spent more wisely and more efficiently on essential matters he went on to say that at some point of time the maintenance of the submarine appears to have been neglected only an inquiry will prove the fact from what reports i have read it appears to be neglected there seems to be some problem with the battery that led to the fire and two precious lives were lost the mod did not offer any direct comment to chidambaram but many military officers agreed with the suggestions i dont really know what is going wrong but what i can say for sure is that most of the problem is within us we are also playing our own games within the military said a naval officer who has dealt with submarine acquisitions he said the navy and the mod have not shown enough perspective to create submarine building maintenance and overhaul capabilities from the hdw days of the 1980s when we started assembling submarines we have not moved forward much we are almost where we started he said the result is expensive refits overpriced foreign items and deeprooted corruption the story is not very different in the case of fighters tanks or any other major platform he said a senior mod official said what chidamabaram said in public is what defence minister ak antony has been repeatedly telling the forces both in public and private the minister has been saying this and pushing to be more financially prudent he said that is why antony appointed independent financial comptrollers in all major departments including service headquarters and has taken action whenever any wrongdoing was detected almost 600 complaints have been sent for vigilance inquiries by antony and over 100 of them to cbi he pointed out many of the other steps taken by antony have also been in many senses a response to concerns about possible irresponsible spending he pointed out however a senior navy officer pointed out that antony has failed to push the services into embracing indigenisation in a big way and to clean up the entire place the arms dealers are still very busy india continues to be the biggest importer in the world and we continue to spend imprudently he said