Indian Defence Review

If the serving soldiers do not vote in the forthcoming state elections, not only will it be a great pity but this would compound such earlier follies. Ensuring every serving soldier votes is part of the command responsibility of the commanders up the chain, right up to the Service Chiefs. Not letting the soldiers vote amounts to denying them their fundamental rights, which otherwise are curtailed because of service conditions anyway.

That defence is the least priority is apparent with the defence allocation for the next fiscal with the amazing mathematics of allotting Rs 25,000 crores additional but with Rs 35,000 crore unspent in the current fiscal resulting in reduced spending in revised estimates. The Rs 25,000 crore additional allocation too needs to be viewed in the backdrop of the rupee depreciation coupled with yearly inflation rates of defence procurement. It would lead to the conclusion of a second successive negative budget, don’t mind the media hype of 6.2% increase over the last budget – one self-styled ‘defence Correspondent’ even talking of a 10% increase. How much of these Rs 25,000 crores ‘additional’ allotment will get surrendered by 31 March 2018 is another issue.

While the FM spoke at length on infrastructure, our border infrastructure, especially in the northeast, remain pathetic. The 16 strategic railways refuse to budge beyond the paper.

Intransigence towards the growing China-Pakistan hybrid threats is ironic. At the same time, the Service Chiefs should be concerned with the military continuing to face disparaging assaults at the behest of India’s ‘deep state’. The fact remains that the concept of ‘Naam, Namak aur Nishan’ so dear to the soldier is alien to many and the ‘deep state’ has made it a point to deliberately attack this and denigrate the soldier. There is a malicious campaign that keeps attacking the military to demoralize and even create a wedge between the rank and file.

The 7th CPC brings the military below the central armed police forces, the so called “anomalies committee” has done the vanishing trick and the one-man Reddy Commission report appears to have joined the 1962 report in deep freeze. The lie of full OROP granted is no secret. Even Soli Sorabee has remarked, “While the essential features of OROP have been accepted in principle by the government, any purported changes now, if they would deny seniors of their hard earned benefits would be unfair and also demoralizing. The same would also affect the prestige of the institution of the Army which is held in deep reverence by all sections of our society”.

Look at the misinformation campaign launched about government letter No A/24577/CAO/CP Cell dated October 18, 2016 that equated: civilian Group B section officer with army captain; civilian joint director with full colonel (earlier equated with Lt Col); civilian director with brigadier (earlier equated with full colonel); principal director with major general (earlier equated with brigadier). According to media, not only did this letter have MoD approval, objections by armed forces were overruled by the Defence Minister – in a note to MoD in August-September 2016, Army had “categorically objected to the systematic downgrading of defence officers in status/equivalence vis-à-vis civilian officers”. The Defence Minister has perfunctorily dismissed the issue on grounds that it only is for “functional purposes”. Pray which other purposes is the rank equivalence meant for and if it bears only on “functional purposes” then is the intention that they do not function together?

OROP was already in force for military veterans till arbitrarily removed by 3rd CPC. The 3rd CPC increased pension of civilian employees from 33% to 50% and reduced military pensions from 70% to 50% without justification. The Non-Functional Financial Upgradation (NFFU or NFU) was surreptitiously introduced by the 6th PC in 2006 for 58 Civil Services, classifying them arbitrarily as “Organised Group ‘A’ Services”, but keeping the military out of its ambit. This was and is OROP through the back door, since 80% IAS officials retire as Additional Secretaries vis-à-vis only 0.7% military officers retiring as equivalents, i.e. Lt Gens. So the IAS gets the pension of Additional Secretaries. Financial burden of NFU for civil services is Rs. 17,000 crore, which is twice that of OROP at Rs. 8,293.6 crore.

Government has sanctioned OROP with revision every five years whereas revision was done annually before the 3rd CPC scrapped OROP for the military. If revision is done every five years, then four years juniors will keep getting more pension in the intervening four years till equalized after five years.

The combined mafia of the MoF and MoD portray that actualization every years is too complicated, as if a yet to be acquired super computer is required. Of course the public is unaware that the actualization of NFU for all the 58 civil services is being easily managed annually. A WhatsApp campaign, generated perhaps by the same mafia, is now circulating that the government is likely to agree to actualization of OROP every two years (instead of annually as it should be) and that NFU too is coming. Why the chronic constipation while chest thumping about welfare of soldiers? All civilians retire at 60 yrs of age. 80% of military personnel retire at 34-37 yrs of age. Even if the retirement of military personnel is increased by two years as recommended by the Shekatkar Committee, they will still be deprives deprived of benefits of one or two pay commissions, three or four promotions, and corresponding pensions of those ranks.

Recently, a CBI Special Court virtually slapped the CBI while granting bail to ACM SP Tyagi in the AugustaWestland probe. While the CBI had arrested ACM Tyagi accusing him of receiving kickbacks illegally in the VVIP Helicopter deal, the CBI Special Court observed that the CBI had failed to show when and how much of the alleged bribe was paid to him though the investigation had gone on for almost four years.

Special Judge Arvind Kumar also pointed out that the allegation that Tyagi’s properties were linked to the alleged illegal gratification was not investigated in over three-and-a-half years despite the CBI having seized the documents regarding properties in the year 2013, but more than three years and nine months having passed, no investigation was conducted in this regard.

So now the question is that if the CBI did not have sufficient evidence against ACM Tyagi, why was he arrested at this point of time and kept imprisoned for 18 days while the same CBI had no guts to even question the then Defence Secretary and the then SPG chief who were intimately involved in the AugustaWestland deal? For that matter, of the scores of defence scams since Independence, how many politicians and bureaucrats were probed, arrested, prosecuted? Isn’t it the anti-military constituency that derives cynical pleasure in rubbing the nose of the military in the mud, to appease themselves and their cross-border peers? Look at the manner in which probes against senior military officers are being headlined. Sure the guilty must be booked but why the fanfare about probes? Is it by design put down the military any which way by showing it in poor light?

Readers may want to know what constitutes the ‘deep state’ of India, but all that is required is to read the1993 Vohra Committee Report which while establishing the nexus between governmental functionaries, political leaders and others with various mafia organization and crime syndicates, enabling development of significant muscle and money power to operate with impunity, had finally opined that “leakage whatever about the linkages of crime Syndicate senior Government functionaries or political leaders in the states or at the centre could have a destabilizing effect on the functioning of Government”. So there was no follow up to this report. So the current brouhaha about putting checks on black money and funding of political parties including the announcement that an individual can donate only Rs 2000 to a political party; these are all peripheral measures.

Legislative assembly elections are due in Punjab, UP, Uttrakhand, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Goa, Manipur next year and battle lines are tightly drawn where every vote will count. The only viable option for the military to catch the eye of the polity anyway is to make every soldier vote. Why voting cannot be made mandatory for the military when even a state like Gujarat has passed a law for compulsory voting. This should be the resolve of the three Service Chiefs. Sure political parties are not comfortable with the military voting because soldiers vote without consideration to caste, creed, religion in true spirit of ‘India First’. But then ballot is the fundamental right of every soldier and the Election Commission has authorized them to vote at the place of their posting. Military advertisement attracting youth more often than not read “Do You Have it in You”. On the question of ensuring every soldier cast his vote, the question to Service Chiefs is the same – “Do You Have it in You?”