by Lt Gen Harwant Singh (retd)
On the obligation of the higher command in the military towards
their command, Winston Churchill wrote, “The Indian army is not so much an arm
of the executive branch as it is of the Indian people. Military professionals
have a duty and an obligation to ensure that the people and political leaders
are counselled and alerted to the needs and necessities of military life. This
cannot be done by adhering to the notion that the military profession is a
silent order of monks, isolated from the political realm.”
In India, the higher command of the military has never projected
forcefully enough the needs and necessities of the military. Consequently, the
military’s downward slide has continued and the government continues to remain
oblivious of the true state of national security: both in terms of wherewithal
with troops and their morale.
The British gave place of pride and honour to the military and
were able to draw on the right material and create a world-class military.
However, since Independence, a concerted effort has been afoot to denigrate the
military, strip it of honour and pride: the two essential prerequisites for any
worthwhile military. The fact that the intake standards into the officer cadre
have fallen is obvious from the number of unsavoury incidents that have taken
place in units in the recent past.
At Independence, an army man drew 70% to 75% of the last drawn
pay as pension, due to the ‘X factor’, while a civil servant got 30% of the
last pay drawn as pension. A brigadier drew more pension than the chief
secretary of a state. A decade later, this chief secretary had the stature of a
two-star general and now of an army commander.
NO ALARM RAISED
The disparity in promotion prospects, retirement age, allowances
etc. between the military and civil services and their consequent effect on the
sum total of emoluments when both reach the age of 60 years is too well known
to be repeated. What is less known and a highly disturbing aspect of all this
is that a soldier’s life expectancy is down to 61-62 years, while that of his
equal in the civil services is 71-73 years. This ought to have shaken up both
the nation and the military authorities. While the politician remains
unconcerned, the military authorities should have raised the alarm.
Philip Mason (1906-99), an Indian Civil Service (ICS) officer,
in his book, ‘A Matter of Honour,’ dilating on the long history of military
defeats of armies of India, lays the blame at the door of politics and the type
of governments that had grown up in India. This point about politics and the
type of governments brings to mind their current state in the country.
PAY COMMISSIONS
The Post-War Committee, linked the pay of civil services with
that of the army, evolved the ‘New Pay Code,’ which cut down only the pay etc.
of defence services officers.
The case of defence services was taken up with the First and
Second Pay Commissions not by the defence services but also by a department of
the ministry of defence (MoD). The Third Pay Commission wanted the defence
services to put their case directly before it. This Pay Commission was not
required to go into the service conditions (‘X factor’) of the defence services
for its impact on pay and allowances. The MoD came up with the contention that
the “requirement of discipline in the armed forces does not permit them to put
their case direct to the Pay Commission.” Service chiefs accepted this patently
absurd stance of the MoD! The Pay Commission also came up with the incredulous
conclusion that advantages outweigh disadvantages of service in the military.
DISCREPANCIES GALORE
The Sixth Pay Commission assembled about 150 officers from
various services (postal, BSF, forest etc ) to work out the nitty gritty of the
report, but took none from the defence services. It gave higher pension to a
brigadier than a major general and other innumerable discrepancies. One may
like to find out how many defence officers have been co-opted with the Seventh
Central Pay Commission for preparing its report.
That service in the armed forces has become unattractive can be
seen from the fact that between 2001 and 2004, 2,000 officers in all sought
release. These included two lieutenant generals, 10 major generals, 84
brigadiers and the rest lieutenant colonels and majors. This trend has
continued since then.
On the issue of lowering the status of service officers, the
committee of secretaries, which decides on the order of precedence recorded,
“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.” How absurd babus could get!
OROP DELAY
The bias of the bureaucracy continues to this day and it is
presently over-busy confusing the political executive on the simple issue of
one rank, one pension (OROP) and its financial implications. No one raised even
an eyebrow when nonfunctional upgradation was granted to more than four dozen
class-A services with its enormous financial implications. The political
executive is oblivious of the long-term adverse impact of this vacillation on
the grant of OROP. There is an increasing feeling among the veterans and the
serving officers that the higher echelons in the armed forces continue to fail
in standing up for the troops and their officers.
Our political executive needs to carefully read what Churchill,
that great architect of victory in World War 2, wrote, “Armed forces are not
like a limited company to be reconstructed from time to time as the money
fluctuates. It is not an inanimate thing like a house to be pulled down or
enlarged or structurally altered at the caprice of the tenant or the owner. It
is a living thing. If it is bullied, it sulks, if sufficiently disturbed it
will wither and dwindle and almost die and when it comes to this last serious
condition, it is only revived by lots of time and money.” How far are the
Indian defence forces from this last stage mentioned by Churchill!
by the kind courtesy of
http://www.hindustantimes.com/chandigarh/defence-matters-let-down-by-military-top-brass/article1-1357767.aspx
The English were concerned about the fate of the victorious army they had created over two and half centuries and their concerns were proved right by the gradual degradation of the military due to poor understanding of national security by the political class and self induced isolation of the military brass mostly converting to self before service syndrome. The slide is amazing and alarming. 1973 will go down in military history as the lowest point of manmanagent when reduction in pension of soldiers was accepted even after 71 war and brass rewarded with ambassadorship subsequently. Degradation is not the fault of the Netas and Babus but only that of military brass. That continues even today.
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