Indian Defence Review

For the purpose of pension, defence personnel remained equated with civilian employees, consequently condition of 33 years of service to earn full pension stayed. First nearly 90 percent of military men were compulsorily retired at the service of 17/24/28 years and then told, sorry you can’t get full pension because you did not serve for 33 years. This in short has been government of India’s version of justice and fair play for its defence personnel.

Not to do less than what the earlier pay commissions did, the Fifth Pay Commission took away the ‘running pay band’ granted by the Fourth Pay Commission and further lowered the status of service officers. It too did not subscribe to the concept of ‘X factor.’ It sought views from IDSA, an organ of the MoD, which made a host of outlandish recommendations. These ranged from reducing the strength of the army by 35 percent, disbandment of RR battalions etc and that too at a time when the army’s commitments in J and K and North East were on the increase and the security scene was getting all the more dismal. The Pay Commission axed every one other than the chiefs and army commanders, not without a purpose!

Successive pay commissions, aided and abetted by the government have made the service in the military so unattractive that besides lingering deficiencies of nearly 12000 officers, there is near exodus by those in service. Amongst short service commission officers approximately 25 percent decline to accept regular commission. Between 2001 and 2004, in all 2000 officers sought release from service. These included 2 Lt Gens, 10 Maj Gens, 84 Brigadiers and the rest being Majs / Lt Cols/Cols. The situation in the IAF, where large deficiencies existed, was no better. How many from the IAS/ IPS etc have opted to leave!

“¦nearly 90 percent of military men were compulsorily retired at the service of 17/24/28 years and then told, sorry you cant get full pension because you did not serve for 33 years.

It has often been stated, within the military circles, that while this gradual degradation of military’s status was going on, the higher command in the services did little to arrest the slide. Not really so. Gen OP Malhotra as Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, in a note to the Defence Minister in 1981, expressed serious concern at the long pending issue of warrant of precedence and highlighted the fact that the order of precedence had been repeatedly changed to lower the status of service officers and this exercise seems to coincide with India’s wars, i.e. 1948, 1962, 1965 and 1971.

On the issue of lowering the status of service officers, the committee of secretaries which decides on the order of precedence, recorded that (please hold your breath,) “military officers had been placed unduly high in the warrant of precedence, presumably as it was considered essential for the army of occupation to be given special status and authority.” Pray, was it only the perception of a few babus or that of the government of India that the Indian army was an army of occupation in India !

Gen Malhotra, on the other hand pointed out that this committee of civil servants, while expounding the theory of ‘army of occupation, ’ ‘failed to realize that high place was accorded to the civil servants in the colonial bureaucracy, because they were the trusted paladins of the imperial power. It was the British Prime Minister, Mr Lloyd George, who referred to ICS as the steel frame of the British administration in India. It was the civil services and the police which were the British instruments of oppression and were the willing and enthusiastic tools employed to crush national spirit, fervour and freedom movement.’ Remember the incident in Lahore where police arrested a tongawala for merely urging his lazy horse to move faster; at Hitler’s speed, (chal Hitler thee chalay.) It was they who were more loyal than the king!

On the other hand it was the Indian Army that held at bay for a hundred years, those wild tribes from the North West, who for a thousand years had ravaged the Indian subcontinent. It later stemmed the advance of Japanese army at Imphal and Kohima. The Japanese army was barbaric in the extreme. Indians in Andaman and Nicobar Islands and prisoner of war had a taste of cruelties of that army. Indian soldiers made tremendous sacrifices to keep the Japanese army at bay.

It was the mutinies in the army and navy which had much to do with the hastening of British departure from India. Therefore, it is nothing short of blasphemy to call Indian Army, ‘army of occupation.’ Later when the status of civilian officers working in Army Headquarters was enhanced, to the disadvantage of service officers working in the same set-up, General Rodriques as Chairman Chief of Staff Committee made a strong protest to the defence minister, but it elicited no response. May be the service chiefs could have done more: perhaps used the ultimate weapon of threat of resignation! Officers and troops have unwavering confidence and faith in service chiefs and the belief that they would not barter the interest of troops.It is through this sustained, calculated and deliberate efforts of the politico-bureaucratic combine that has brought about a situation where the more suitable youth in the country does not want to join the military’s officer cadre. It is indeed a sad state of affairs and does not bode well for the future security of the country. The security environments of the country are anything but reassuring and as such correctives needs to be taken, sooner than later.

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Failing to get the government (after independence) to accept military service as a special calling and recast or arrest attempts the equivalence with the civil services, the military has been going about tempering with the rank structure and bringing about some proliferation of ranks. It is near impossible to come anywhere close to the civil services in this area, without dangerously damaging the military’s working systems. Even whatever is attempted, little as it may appear, will, in the long run damage the military’s functional aspects. Reversion to the pre-partition equation with the civil services would resolve most of the problems. Pay should be related to length of service to an extent (what running pay band was aimed to achieve) with due compensation for X factor, both for pay and pension.

“¦on demobilization of American Army at the end of Second World War, every soldier was given free college education. These men, who had faced dangers, innovated under adverse conditions, had acquired leadership qualities”¦

The argument that pay has to be related to work and scope of responsibility, as argued by the bureaucracy is belied when tested against the reckless proliferation of ‘higher level jobs’ in the police and civil services. Small sates have as many as 6 to 8 DGs in the police and 12 to 14 as IGs. Almost the same is the case with the other civil services. Surely their can be no jobs of appropriate work and responsibility for so many. As a minister from Kerala laments, that 30 percent of civil service employees simply do not work.

Thus having failed to convince the government to improve service conditions in the military, services have been tempering with the internal, such as lowering intake standard for the officer cadre etc. In an attempt to draw young men into the officer cadre, army has been using the services of advertising agencies, paying crores of rupees. These agencies using the ‘soap selling’ techniques and market oriented advertisements are promising a lifestyle of glamour, golf, riding fine ponies, waltzing with beautiful ladies in grand officers messes, para gliding etc and finally throwing at the prospective candidates, the poser, “do you have it in you, to take it all.” This desperate and perhaps ill advised and expensive step to hire advertising agencies is ill conceived and has fetched no worthwhile results.

While the deficiencies persist, there has been distinct fall in standards of intake. This is obvious from the increasing numbers who fail in the internal promotion examinations in the army. During the exams in 2009, out of a total of 4603 who took part B exam, only 23 percent passed and in the case of Part D exam, out of 3903 who took the exam, a mere 29 percent made the cut. In all there were 1944 officers who failed in every subject. Cases of malfeasance and bad conduct have been on the increase and that has much to do with the quality of intake and spanning the culture of corruption by these very officers who have entered the military due to lowered intake standards.