NEW DELHI: The country’s defence establishment hopes a full-time political heavyweight like Rajnath Singh will be able to push through the much-needed military modernization to plug critical operational gaps as well as usher in some long-pending structural reforms like the appointment of a tri-Service chief and integrated theatre commands in the long run.As the country’s new `Raksha Mantri’, Rajnath Singh will have his plate full. The myriad challenges range from tackling the collusive threat from China and Pakistan to bolstering India’s fledgling defence-industrial base to get rid of the strategically-vulnerable position of being the world’s largest arms importer.The first Modi-led NDA government did take some initial steps to address the challenges since 2014, but the meaningful systemic reforms needed to overhaul the country’s entire defence management remained missing in action.Frequent changes in the critical defence portfolio, from Arun Jaitley twice to Manohar Parrikar and Nirmala Sitharaman in just five years, did not help matters in the gargantuan ministry with all its national security imperatives, turf wars and competing lobbies.“Rajnath Singh has the requisite stature and political heft to push things through in the Cabinet Committee on Security. Many defence proposals get stuck in the finance ministry, which now will also hopefully have a more receptive minister in Sitharaman after her 20-month experience in the defence ministry,” said a senior official.Rajnath Singh will also have help from defence secretary Sanjay Mitra, who was slated to retire on Friday after his two-year term but has been granted a three-month extension by the government, as well as a new minister of state in Shripad Y Naik, a BJP leader from Goa.An immediate priority will be to ensure the 15-lakh armed forces get enough ammunition stocks to last 10 days of “intensive fighting” or a full-blown war, which is colloquially called “10 (I)” in the corridors of South Block. Though several contracts to achieve this have been inked, many more remain in the pipeline. Then, of course, the armed forces continue to suffer from critical shortages in submarines, fighters, helicopters, minesweepers, air defence, infantry weapons and night-fighting capabilities.The new minister, who will take over the first-floor corner office in South Block on Saturday, will need to crack the whip to improve the tardy performance of DRDO and its 50 labs, four defence shipyards, five defence PSUs and 41 ordnance factories as well as get the private sector to jump into defence production in a big way.As earlier reported by TOI, no major “Make in India” project in fighters, helicopters, minesweepers, infantry combat vehicles and diesel-electric submarines actually took off in the last five years. Similarly, the much -touted “strategic partnership” policy, which was originally meant for the private sector but has seen the public sector muscle its way in, has largely remained a non-starter till now.