The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Making Army an attractive career
The challenge of tapping talent
by Kuldip Singh Bajwa

THE Army is finding it increasingly difficult to attract suitable manpower into its ranks. This decline in the popularity of the Army being considered a satisfying career started in the mid-70s.

A whole bunch of direct as well as indirect causes has pushed the soldier way down in the scale of career choices. The resultant reluctance to bear arms has grave implications for the security and integrity of the nation. The causes and the corrective measures needed demand profound and immediate consideration. A well-conceived national plan must be adopted to restore the prestige of soldiering.

During the tenure of the British Raj, the ruling power had assigned a unique position of authority and privilege to the Indian Army. After 1857, the hardy peasantry, especially from the northern zone of India, invested with the stable qualities of a work ethic and the traditional honour that bearing of arms carried, was chosen to provide the manpower pool for the Army.

Many were the inducements held out to woo this human resource. Perhaps the most potent of these was the prestige accorded to the soldier by the rulers all along the chain of governance. This very visible equation in turn created an exalted place for the soldier in the Indian society. To be a soldier came to be considered a signal honour, fully recognised in the administrative and the social milieu. This was a powerful motivator to don the uniform of the Indian Army.

Moreover, to serve their purpose of creating an Army which would remain loyal to them and which they could depend upon, the British rulers assiduously fostered the very distinctive concept of the martial races. To make the spectrum easily manageable, their choice of the source of manpower was confined to a narrow band of land-owning classes with whom they could develop a community of interests. The end result was that there was no dearth of aspirants and the Army could pick and choose the intake.

By the time we became Independent, national pride had taken deep roots. Immediately in the wake of Independence, the emergence of external and internal threats to the security of the nation acted as a powerful catalyst to generate an upsurge of patriotism. This collective national awakening soon replaced the traditional narrow loyalties to foreign ruling power.

From 1947 to 1971, the soldier stood out as a symbol of our resolve to defend our freedom and territorial integrity. Young men came forward to join the ranks in large numbers. I recall that whenever I went on leave, droves of aspirants for recruitment in the Army would come seeking my help.

The decline started a few years after the Army was at its pinnacle of glory in December, 1971. All tangible threats to our security had been taken care of. The generally perceived need for the soldier had started receding.

The first detrimental blow was struck by Babu Jagjivan Ram, the Defence Minister in the first Janata government that came into power in 1977. In a self-serving populist move, he introduced a quota system for recruitment based on the percentages of recruitable population of different regions of the country. This attempt to evenly divide the employment offered by the Army drastically reduced the intake of the north-Indian peasantry. These classes drawn to soldiering by temperament, inclination and tradition were forced to look for alternative employment avenues. The rather visible distrust and discrimination against the Sikh peasantry in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star further alienated this rich source.

Before the partition of India, the undivided province of Punjab was a nursery for soldiers. The province lay in the path of numerous invasions of India across its western frontier. To defend their hearth and home, the largely agrarian population, deeply rooted in the land, had perforce to be prepared to exchange the plough-share for the sword and the spear.

In this environment, soldiering came to acquire a place of honour among the people. The British, embarked on their territorial expansion northwards, had, for the first time, met their match in the Punjabi soldiers. The Khalsa army practically defeated them in the battles of Mudki, Ferozeshah, Sobraon and Chilianwala.

The British succeeded in turning their defeat into victory through chicanery aided by betrayal by some of the Sikh generals. Realising the very high potential of these soldiers, the British especially cultivated the Punjabi peasantry for enrolment into the British Indian army.

After the Partition of the country, we have faced unabated hostility from Pakistan. The Indian Punjab, both before and after its reorganisation, had once again become a frontline state in the face of a more virulent hostile threat. Till the late 70s, soldiering continued to remain a preferred choice as a profession for the rural population.

The quota system introduced by Babu Jagjivan Ram had greatly reduced the recruitment of the north Indian peasantry into the Army. This enterprising manpower has found other avenues of gainful occupation. Besides ever-widening search for self-employment, entry into industry and enrolment into other uniformed services, a large number have immigrated abroad. In this process, it is sad to see that the country has lost and continues to lose the services of a very dynamic cross section of soldier- resource, which has served the nation with singular grit and valour.

The social ethos of the country has undergone vast changes since 1947. The Indian life with its roots in the rural areas, which was almost static till 1947, is on the move. The opening up of the Indian economy has created many avenues of high gain employment. Long held social and moral values are breaking down under the pressure of a search for a better economic deal. There is an ever-upward revision of economic goals.

Soldiers now drawn from a more resurgent cross-section of the nation fully reflect the new set of aspirations and expectations. Moreover, while most of the soldiers retire at a fairly vigorous age and need a gainful employment to sustain themselves economically, very few post-retirement opportunities are open to them.

There is also a deepening concern with personal liberty. Any employment with irksome constraints on personal conduct or an authoritarian style of executive regulation is liable to be less attractive. Other environmental factors such as harsh discipline, isolation from community life, long hours of work, hard living conditions, service in remote areas, prolonged employment in counter insurgency operations and the general disruption of family life, also act as considerable deterrents.

An even more powerful negative factor has been added by the systematic degradation of the prestige of the soldier by the power and status hungry civil services. The politicians in power, still inflicted with the unfounded distrust of the soldier handed down by the leadership at the time of Independence, have tacitly gone along with this process of down-grading. Apart from the occasional upsurge as was witnessed during and soon after the fighting in Kargil, the soldier has slid way down the national prestige scale.

In the past, the prestige of soldiering combined with their stable background enabled the peasants turned soldiers to adequately cope with the unattractive aspects of the service life.

It is not that the youth have lost their spirit of adventure and daring. It is just that in the prevailing money and power ethos in the country, their sights are set on upward material gains. Under these conditions, the media campaign unleashed by the Army built around the challenge “Do you have it in you” has produced only limited results.

However, the successful Army operations in Kargil and the wide-ranging media exposure did generate some enthusiasm for the uniform. It is doubtful if this fervour will last very long. A concept that service life with many harsh aspects offers only limited economic satisfaction seems to have taken root.

The Army, stripped of a great deal of its prestige, has generally become an unattractive career choice. However, till as long as the state of economic development of the country does not significantly enhance the employment opportunities, the Army would somehow keep meeting its general manpower needs, though the quality may not be of the desired level. But in order to attract the best source material and even to get the best out of the available human resources, it will be increasingly essential to tone down the harsh conditions and resolve some of the apparent conflicts between the job requirements and the individual needs.

It would also be necessary to lift the manning of the Army out of all the regional and parochial considerations. This employment avenue must remain open to the best possible human material no matter to which part of the country it hails from.

Enlightened understanding of the conflict factors and good executive leadership, particularly where unhygienic conditions cannot be altered to an appreciable degree due to particular task needs, will be at a premium.

(The writer is a retired Major- General).

Adding punch to India’s armoured might
by Himmat Singh Gill

WITH the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir more or less troop-saturated on both sides of the border, the Pakistani build up in the Sir Creek area of Kutch presents a rather disconcerting picture that military planners in India would do well to take timely note of.

The anniversary of the shooting down of Pakistan’s reconnaissance Atlantique aircraft deep in Indian airspace a year back, and our neighbour’s propensity to try and score some kind of an advantage point in world fora only add up to the dangers of the possibility of another unthought of misadventure by them.

The Defence Minister, Mr George Fernandes, has already assured us that “all is taken care of” about this little-known operational sector, the Rann of Kutch, where a great deal of the terrain affords good armour country. In plain language, the ground is suitable for mechanised operations.

It is in this context, therefore, that we need to examine the state of our Armoured Corps, or the Mechanised Forces, and ensure that this match-winning fighting corp stands us in good stead, just as the infantry showed its mettle in the mountain heights of Kargil.

India possesses an “X” number of T72, Vijayanta, T55 and Arjun tanks and is reported to be well on the way to receiving another few armoured regiments worth of the latest T90 tank from Russia. A tank regiment has over 50 tanks in its hold. Leaving the figures and numbers aside, what does our tank punch add up to?

The Vijayanta, or the “victory tank”, which was first inducted in the late 70s, has now considerably aged. It has limited cross- country mobility, is prone to overheating in the desert and carries the 105 mm gun that has long been outgunned by other superior armament mounted on our adversary’s tanks. More than anything else, the armour thickness that it provides is not what anyone would ever call the ultimate in tank crew protection satisfaction levels.

The T55, though having been equipped with the 125mm gun, also suffers from over-age and paucity of essential spare parts as the erstwhile Soviet Union and the Socialist Republics have themselves stopped producing this vintage.

In battle, the non-supply or timely replacement of tank spares can be most crucial. The mainstay of the Indian armour, the T72 tank, mounting a 125mm gun, weighs over 41 tonnes. It has seen years and years of field service with the Indian Army and requires major upgrades to keep it in the race with the T80 and others which Pakistan possesses.

Finally, to round off the Indian inventory of AFVs, the possession of a dozen or a little more of the 120mm gun, Arjun, that we parade annually on the Republic Day, is just not reassuring enough a thought for any seasoned tankman.

The story of the selection of the Arjun as India’s Main Battle Tank (MBT) makes for some interesting reading. The project commenced in the mid-70s and envisaged deployment by the mid-80s. Any project of the kind has what is termed a General Staff Qualitative Requirement (GSQR) which lays down the user-acceptable parameters that must be adhered to in the making of the AFV before it can be inducted into operational service.

The major factor that governs the making of the GSQR is the Threat Perception, meaning which country or countries we are likely to go to war with and in what type of terrain. The threat is also directly linked with the country’s diplomatic stance and how far our diplomacy can reduce the number of our potential adversaries.

Regrettably, in the case of the MBT Arjun, the threat perception seems to have been changing rather frequently resulting in unacceptable delays in the tank’s mass production. Besides, of course, it has escalated the cost per tank to gigantic proportions.

The Arjun weighs an elephantine 58.5 tons (nearly 14 tons more than the T72 weight), is wide-bodied requiring appropriate “rolling stock” or tank flats from the Railways for rail moves and switching over from one gauge to another, and has a 4-member crew when most other tanks the world over make do with a 3-man team.

Even if all its other basic requirements like a 100 per cent accurate gun with a high first round hit probability, and a sturdy engine for maximum mobility in rugged terrain has been now taken care of, it would not have been battle-tested, like many of the “T”series Russian tanks, or for that matter the British-made workhorse of the 60s and the 70s, the Centurian, which did exceptionally well in both the Indo-Pak wars.

If the Arjun was (or is) to be the Indian MBT of the 21st century, it needs to lumber up a little and be there in large numbers in field service to be of any use to our mechanised forces.

Having said this bit about the Arjun, we may now get down to the much talked about T90 Russian tank that we are expected to shortly add to our armour fleet. A low silhouetted, rugged and crew-friendly AFV, with a maintenance infrastructure know-how in the family of tanks already existing in the defence establishments in the country, would be an added advantage. But then the immediate question that comes to mind is why we have spent crores and crores of rupees on the Arjun and yet not mass produced it in any effective operational numbers? Secondly, at least now, we must take a valued decision whether we need to close down the MBT Arjun Project and, cutting our losses, build up on the “T” series of tanks and its various derivatives bringing in some kind of uniformity in our armoured fighting vehicles. This would also ease off the training, ammunition, spares production and other overhead costs.

But if the Arjun is still our MBT, it makes little sense importing and building up on the T90 and its subsequent series. If the T90 import is a one-time measure meant to tide over the ageing T72 and T55 fleet then the culminative discard 25 years hence of the bulk of the Indian armoured corps must be taken into account now. This is essential lest we are once again left high and dry in 2025 when the Arjun (if and when it is ever mass produced) has long overaged from its inception stage beginning 1974 onwards!

It has to be said in passing that decisions of this kind would need to be taken by the right kind of people placed in the right kind of slots in the upper echelons of the Defence hierarchy and Policy Planning. Interestingly, not a single Army Commander is from the armoured corps to advise government appropriately at the highest level on such corps matters.

The role of the National Security Council, the Chiefs of Staff Committee, COSC, and a host of other organisations would need to be examined so that they monitor and advise the Raksha Mantri and the Prime Minister on such issues like the Threat Perceptions and the shape of the Armed Forces. For the time being, however, it is important that we take a final view on what should be our MBT for the first half of this century and move on in this direction in real earnest.

(The writer is a retired Major-General).

DELHI DURBAR
Musical chairs in Raj Bhavans

THERE is every likelihood of a gubernatorial reshuffle before the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, leaves on an extended visit to the USA in September for a summit with the American President, Mr Bill Clinton, and making his presence felt at the millennium summit of the United Nations. Soon after the two-day Governors’ conference specially convened by the President, Mr K.R. Narayanan, on July 12 and 13, some constitutional heads have reportedly sought transfer before the Assembly elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu scheduled to be held in the first half of next year.

It is learnt that the Governor of Tamil Nadu, Ms Fathima Beevi, has requested for relocation to a Raj Bhavan in north India. Simultaneously, the Union Railways Minister and the firebrand Trinamool Congress chief, Ms Mamata Banerjee, has strongly petitioned the Centre for changing the West Bengal Governor, Mr Viren Shah. She is believed to have pleaded that the seasoned bureaucrat and former Tamil Nadu chief secretary, Mr M.M. Rajendran be posted in the Raj Bhavan in Calcutta. Mr Rajendran is currently the Governor of Orissa. Ms Banerjee has capped her TMC with successes in recent elections in West Bengal. She has reservations that Mr Shah’s continuance as Governor of West Bengal might adversely affect the prospects of the Trinamool Congress in the upcoming West Bengal assembly elections in 2001.

PMO calls the shots

The Prime Minister’s Office is calling the shots in pushing the second stage of the economic reforms. Major decisions are being taken by the PMO with the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, himself making the grandiose announcements. This has caused resentment among those overseeing the functioning of some key economic ministries and departments like telecom, chemicals and fertilisers. Needless to say, all roads lead to Mr N.K. Singh, Secretary in charge of economic affairs in the PMO. Thanks to the writ of the PMO in matters economic, the Union Communications Minister, Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, and the Shiv Sena’s Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers, Mr Suresh Prabhu, have had to take a back seat.

A case in point was Mr Vajpayee’s dramatic announcement of complete deregulation of national domestic long distance telephone operations without any ceiling on the number of operators on July 15. The previous evening, Mr N.K. Singh and Mr Sudeendhra Kulkarni, Officer on Special Duty in the PMO, met Mr Paswan at his residence and informed him that the Prime Minister would be making such an announcement. There was little Mr Paswan could do especially when it was decided that the Prime Minister would make the announcement of far reaching import.

There is hushed talk that the ubiquitous mandarin in the PMO, Mr N.K. Singh, along with a small group are merrily treading on the toes of those vested with the authority of deciding matters connected with core economic areas and the infrastructure sector. It is another matter that Mr Prabhu has resigned from the Union Council of Ministers along with two of his Shiv Sena colleagues in protest against the decision of the Congress-NCP coalition government in Maharashtra to prosecute Mr Bal Thackeray for allegedly stoking communal riots in 1993 in the aftermath of the carnage in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. Mr Vajpayee has not accepted these resignations.

Govindacharya turns ‘Pracharak’

BJP General Secretary K.N. Govindacharya, who has had excellent equations with newspersons, had a different experience recently when a correspondent of a leading English weekly magazine interviewed him. The correspondent was very happy with his one-to-one with the BJP leader and so was Govindacharya. But as soon as the interview hit the stands, the BJP leader was in for a shock.

Govindacharya, who was a pracharak with the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh before he came to the BJP, was so upset with the way the interview had been handled by the correspondent that he decided to don his old mantle of a moral preacher. He decided to give a lesson or two on journalism itself.

In a letter to the magazine Editor, the BJP leader said: "The write-up and the interview are a classic lesson to students of journalism on how not to distort facts and put questions out of context”.

He said that distortions may make for controversial and saleable copy, but they do not enhance the reputation of the newsmagazine, much less to the ethics of journalism.

Unfair policy

The recent crash of the Alliance Air Boeing 737 at Patna has generated an interesting debate in the Capital. Delhiites were quite surprised when they came to know that the Boeing 737 was around 20 years old. They recalled the Supreme Court’s order banning the plying of eight-year-old buses with effect from April 1, 2000.

The apex organisation of truckers, the All-India Motor Transport Congress, went one step forward in making the issue a rallying point for its demand. “When more than 15-year-old aircraft are allowed to operate, that too transporting precious human lives, our trucks transport only cargo. Why there should be a ban on 15-year-old trucks?”, the organisation asked. As for the Civil Aviation experts they felt such talk arises only because of people’s ignorance of flight maintenance and safety issues.

Animals refuse to leave Maneka

The Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment, Mrs Maneka Gandhi, was in the news for all the wrong reasons. The recent death of tigers in the Nandankanan zoo in Orissa brought her to the limelight once again. Grapevine has it that at a meeting of Shiv Sena leaders, she was criticised for the death of the tigers. However, one of the participants clarified that she was no longer the Minister in charge of the zoos.

As for the Minister, she is amused when people refer to her even today as the Minister of Environment and Forests, a portfolio she held a decade back. The animal rights activist says some persons have even gone to the extent of asking her why she has not cleared a file related to environment or wildlife. Maneka asserts she has done better work in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, her present portfolio and wonders why nobody pays attention to her contribution to the social sector. She is surprised why nobody asks her about the old, the infirm and the disabled?

(Contributed by TRR, Satish Misra, T.V. Lakshminarayan,
Tripti Nath and P.N. Andley).

When Lara gained from designer’s advice
From Rashmi Chakraborty in New Delhi

IT’s not just Ritu Kumar’s richly embroidered four-piece ensemble that helped win the Miss Universe title for Lara Dutta. It was also the designer’s advice. “Be yourself, do your job and wear your clothes well,” was what Kumar told a nervous Dutta before she left for the Miss Universe contest in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Dutta recalled the advice at a homecoming lunch hosted by designer Kumar. As part of the event, she also showcased the outfit designed by Kumar that was the runner-up in the national costume category at the Miss Universe contest.

The Bangalore girl was honest enough to admit that she was rather petrified before she left for the contest because the expectations were too many. Kumar’s advice to “be her confident self” definitely worked.

In the past seven years, Kumar has dressed over 20 Miss India contestants. Twelve of them have won the Indian crown and five have won international pageants. Four of her costumes have won the “Best Gown” award.

Kumar said that winning at international pageants was becoming a quite a habit with the Miss India contestants. Although proud to have contributed to Dutta’s victory, a modest Kumar maintained that the success of an outfit also depended on how well the wearer was able to carry it off.

Dutta, she felt, had “lovely shoulders and a wonderful waistline, it was her entire personality that stood out.” The designer felt that it was this personality that helped her win the crown.

When asked what was her first reaction after victory, Dutta flashed a disarming smile and said that it was nothing but relief. “It was 6 a.m. in the morning and I just wanted to sleep!” she added laughing.

The popular face behind Siyaram’s, Synergie and many other famous brands said that the year 2000 had been among the best and luckiest years of her life. When asked if she was going to break the pattern of other winners venturing into Bollywood, she promptly replied that she had plans to do something in the same field but behind the camera. As a director of documentaries!

Kumar linked up with Femina Miss India in 1994, designing costumes for Miss Universe Sushmita Sen and Miss World Aishwarya Rai. “Back then, when we had our press conference with Sushmita here, no one had an idea what the Miss Universe contest was about,” she said speaking of the long way the contest had come since then.

Like Kumar, almost everyone who watched Dutta at the Miss Universe contest was struck by her personality, poise and confidence. “One look at her and I told my mother that she would be the winner,” said ex-Miss India, Manpreet Brar.

Brar was present at the event along with fellow ex-Miss Indias, Ruchi Malhotra and Preeti Mankotia, all of whom have been dressed by Kumar for the contests they represented India in. According to Brar, Kumar’s outfits are a wonderful reflection of what India has to offer in terms of tradition.

Despite a fair sprinkling of Delhi society, the limelight obviously was on the reigning Miss Universe, resplendent in the gorgeous rust and burgundy zardozi lehenga, a stylishly cut choli and an odhni draped like an angavastram. Antique kundan jewellery completed the look.

What added to the exotica of this ensemble at the contest were intricate henna patterns painted on Dutta’s hand, feet and shoulders. The dress, inspired by the formal court costumes worn by the royalty of Jaipur, was Dutta’s first step towards winning the crown.

— India Abroad News Service