Author: Prafull Goradia
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 9, 2008
The apathy towards defence personnel is unwarranted
The long-declared dissatisfaction in the armed
forces with the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission was ignored when
the pay slips were being prepared for September. This apathy towards defence,
if not also callousness, on the part of the Government is legendary.
An ancient proverb goes : Any king who cannot
defend his country has no right to be on the throne. Little wonder that it
is difficult to remember an Indian regime having defeated a foreign power
since Chandragupta Maurya drove out Nicator Seleucus, the Greek, in 303 BC.
Defeating Pakistan would be like winning a civil war. Uncannily, even Muslim
conquerors could not win after they had settled down in India. For example,
Ibrahim Lodi with one lakh soldiers could not in 1526 defeat Babar with his
13,000 men army. Nor could the Mughal emperor defend Delhi against Nadir Shah
in 1739. Emperor Alamgir II could not stave off Ahmed Shah Abdali, the Afghan,
28 years later.
There must be some flaw in our ethos whereby
we keep getting defeated at foreign hands for 23 centuries. Perhaps there
is a clue in the manner in which the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations
have made the soldiers, sailors and airmen unhappy whereas the civilians feel
well-paid and happy. Evidently, the priorities of the Government are lopsided.
It is well-known that a primary reason for India's slow progress when compared
with Japan and China is our enormous, inefficient, if not also counter productive,
bureaucracy. Yet the civilians are pampered.
We also know that the Indian Army has 40 per
cent fewer officers than what is actually needed. The numbers that join are
inadequate and many of them retire prematurely. Evidently, the profession
of arms is not attractive to the Indian middle class of today. Yet no attempt
was made by the Pay Commission to upgrade the officer ranks to levels equivalent
to their civilian counterparts. Nor was the Ministry of Defence sensitive
enough to tell the rest of Government to rectify the lacunae left by the Commission.
The Defence Minister appears to have behaved like a postmaster, passing on
what he had received. Although, TV viewers have watched for weeks the dissatisfaction
reflected by the chiefs of all the three wings - Army, Navy and Air Force.
Do we not realise that the soldier's training
is longer, tougher and therefore his entry into service more difficult than
a civilian's? And then, his promotion is slower except in war time. It takes
up to 35 years to rise to be a Major General whereas to become a Joint Secretary
can be a matter of only 17 years. Thereafter, the soldier retires early, the
Major General four years earlier than a Joint Secretary; a Colonel as early
as 52. The soldier has to remain in continual training; the civilian can sit
back, take life easy after securing his appointment.
Not to speak of the risk and the roughness of the battlefield.
The root of the discrimination could well
be the vantage point captured by the ICS officers who were the representatives
of the masters of India, namely the British. The IAS officers inherited the
sceptre of authority; their importance grew in inverse proportion to the decline
in the quality of the politician. Today, how many Ministers have a true grip
over the subject of their portfolios? The disproportionate power and influence
that has thus fallen into the lap of the bureaucrat are reflected in what
the successive Pay Commissions have been recommending.
During the same British rule, the armed forces
were under the Commander-in-Chief and not directly under the Governor-General
or Viceroy. In the bargain, the soldier remained on the sidelines of Government
and, incidentally, had to tolerate the status of a national chowkidar in the
eyes of the bureaucrat. To illustrate the point, look at Pakistan. There,
with the advent of Field Marshal Ayub Khan to civilian power, the soldier
ceased to be a mulazim and became a malik. The civilian slipped to a subordinate
position. This is not to suggest that such an equation is desirable; certainly
not. Nor, however, is the situation in India. A balance of importance is the
answer.
We must not forget that so much of our territory
is in Pakistani and Chinese hands and a great deal more is under claim by
Beijing. The Kashmir Valley is a bleeding sore while the Maoists and the Islamists
may well provoke military intervention at some stage. Assam, Mizoram and Nagaland
did require army help in the course of time. Pakistan may not pose a live
danger while the Al Qaeda and Taliban are at the tail of Islamabad but what
if these extremists were to cross the Indus? How can the people of India tolerate
their armed forces being discounted collectively and disgruntled individually?
