Manning system needs revision
By Pritam Bhullar

AT present, more than 50 per cent of the defence budget is spent on manpower. This is because of the most expensive system of manning that the Army had adopted a number of years ago. Until the seventies, a jawan served in the Army for seven years, the period called, "colour service", after which he was transferred to reserve for eight years. During this period, he was liable to be recalled to colour service in case of a national emergency.

Since most of the soldiers remained unemployed after they were sent on reserve, the colour service was increased from seven to 17 years in the late 70s. By adopting this system, we made everyone eligible for pension, least realising that even affluent countries cannot afford this luxury.

The only way to save on defence budget is to revert to the old system of manning. After seven years of colour service, the men should be absorbed in the Central Police Organisations (CPOs) where they should serve until the prescribed age of superannuation, that is, up to 60 years. The Army should have a lien on their service as reservists for a period of eight years.

The adoption of this system will result in several advantages, that is, we will have a younger army, the CPOs will get highly trained and disciplined manpower, the pension bill will be cut by more than half. This amount can then be spent on modernisation of the Army, which is badly suffering at present.

This system, notwithstanding its advantages will never be accepted in India, thanks to our "all powerful" bureaucrats.

A sad reflection

Sadly enough, in all our conflicts since Independence, our adversaries were better-equipped than us. This also holds good for counter insurgency operations.

In a disturbing revelation in The Sunday Island from Colombo, Dayan Jayatileke, who was a member of the EPRLF-led government in Sri Lanka in the late-80s says: "It is little short of incredible that the Indian military high command thought that a light infantry armed with archaic self-loading rifles (SLRs) could go after M-16s and AK-47s. Sri Lankan policemen on their beats in Colombo were better armed than the IPKF personnel".

Dayan also says that though RAW had supplied AK-47 rifles to LTTE and other Tamil militant groups, the Indian Army did not have them. Lt Gen (retd) A.S. Kalkat, overall commander of the IPKF, has said that "The elite Indian para commando units could be equipped with AK-47s only if and when they were captured from the LTTE".

Another flaw noticed was that the Indian troops hardly ever used tactical air power in close support role because there were no MI_24 helicopters. Gen Kalkat told Dayan in Delhi that there were only five MI-24s in the Indian Army of which he could get just two after great difficulty. Mr Dayan also says that the LTTE would not have mauled the IPKF as much as it did, if the Indian soldier had AK-47 rifle.

Incidentally, we had over 1300 soldiers killed and three times as many wounded in our "peace keeping" operations in Sri Lanka. Whom do you blame for this?

Medical camps

Good civil-military relations go a long way in making a country strong. Nothing can win over a person more than restoring him to good health when he is ailing.

Seeing some of the sick and suffering poor villagers of the border areas in Punjab dying due to lack of medicare, the Army authorities in these areas started free medical aid camps about a decade ago. Initially, the villagers were hesitant to come forward for treatment to the camps. But in a few days these camps became so popular that the villagers always requested for more of them to be held.

Since then these short medical camps generally of three days duration each have become a regular feature and three to four of them are held for a group of villages every year. Apart from the medical examination and treatment, minor operations are also carried out at these camps. Arrangement is also made for some of the deserving cases for a long term treatment. While some medicines to the patients are provided by the Army, the others are arranged from the civil medical authorities.

In some of the villages, the Army has adopted schools for providing medical aid to the children. This includes periodic medical inspection and treatment of those children who need it.

Granted that the civil medical authorities also hold occasional eye camps and family welfare camps. But these are not enough to cover all the rural population. Despite the limited resources of the Army Medical Corps (AMC), the formation commanders in the border areas have made it a point to help the sick and the old villagers with medicare.