Articles By Lt Gen Harwant Singh
Has the military been given a raw deal on the pay front?
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 04 Aug , 2012
6Th Central Pay Commission (CPC) had, besides a few bureaucrats as part of the commission, approximately 125 officers drawn from various central services, (but none from the defence services) ...
Is corruption wide spread in the military?
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Date: 12 Jul , 2012
A TV channel recently showed a sting operation where a junior commissioned officer is caught on camera handling wads of currency notes obtained from prospective candidates for various jobs in the...
Is Army's profile changing?
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Date: 04 Jun , 2012
The incidence of ill discipline in an artillery unit at Nyoma field firing ranges in the Ladakh sector has drawn nation wide attention. While some of the TV channels went ballistic in over playing...
Afghanistan: Strategic Alliance vs Strategic Depth
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 01 Dec , 2011
Historically, Afghanistan has been the most difficult country for military campaigns and equally difficult to govern. The nature of terrain, the climate and the tribes that inhabit the land make...
Withdrawing AFSPA - A welcome move?
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 28 Oct , 2011
Omar Abdullah’s decision to withdraw AFSPA from some parts of J&K should be taken as a welcome move. However it would have been far better for him to have first discussed this issue, within the...
Limited War : A Flawed Concept
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 20 Oct , 2011
It is not clear as to when the idea or perhaps the concept of a limited war was first evolved and articulated in the Indian military. May be it was the fallout from the procrastination, dithering...
Neglect of the Indian Military
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Date: 15 Aug , 2011
In a developing economy, rapid industrialization and a country well on the road to prosperity, preference for government jobs tends to decline. This has not happened in India so far due to a...
Pakistan's Confessions: Shouldn't go slow on defence modernisation
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 13 Jul , 2011
Pakistan Defence Minister in a recent statement has acknowledged that his country just cannot match India in defence capabilities. This, it is argued, is due to the vast difference in the GDP and...
High Court ruling can make the Armed Forces Tribunal infructuous
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 15 Jun , 2011
The defence services had been clamouring for an Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) for decades, essentially because the civilian courts took years and even decades to decide their cases. These...
Career in the Military: imperatives of attracting right material
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Vol 26.1 Jan-Mar 2011 | Date: 04 Apr , 2011
Throughout history, the Indian soldier fought in the defence of his motherland with unmatched valour and yet lost to almost every invader: even to those who arrived with an army of just a few...
Pak nuclear card limits Indian anti-terror options
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 04 Feb , 2011
ITS three decades since Pakistan has been fermenting trouble in India. It started with Punjab and later in Jammu and Kashmir, followed by sporadic terrorist attacks in rest of India. While it is...
Self-employed Soldier!
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 17 Jan , 2011
I was at the College of Combat, Mhow, when the India-China war of 1962 started. The course was terminated and all were instructed to forthwith rejoin their units. Army Headquarters required me to...
Meeting Maoist Challenge
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Vol 25.4 Oct-Dec 2010 | Date: 05 Jan , 2011
While Maoists have been slowly but surely spreading their hold over district after district, scoring a total of over 200 districts, the Indian state slept through this phase spanning over couple...
New Delhi's political incompetence creates a valley of discontent
By: Lt Gen Harwant Singh | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 17 Dec , 2010
It was winter- of 1963 when the holy relic at the Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar went missing. News spread like wild fire and a crowd of more than quarter of a million assembled in Srinagar town. A...