Tortuous tale
of LCA
By Pritam
Bhullar
THE Ministry of Defence (MOD) in
its seventh report of Parliaments Standing
Committee on Defence tabled in the Lok Sabha on April 21,
stated that the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) has been hit
by the US sanctions and would be testflown in July this
year. How have the post-Pokhran-II US sanctions come in
the way of the LCA which was to be inducted into service
by 1995.
It was in 1978 that a
scientist , Dr Kota Hari Narayana, had promised to start
the production of the LCA in two years. The MOD now
states that the final operational clearance for LCA would
be given in 2005.
Why do we call it an
indigenous project when its engine is supplied by the
USA, the avionics by France and the radar by Sweden? We
have been hearing for the last 10 years that the American
II (GE-404) engine would be replaced by the Kaveri engine
which is being developed by the Defence Research and
Development Organisation (DRDO) we have also been hearing
about the other components.
It was wrong for India
to think that it could develop an ambitious project like
the LCA single-handedly. Even the leading industrial
countries like Britain, Germany, Italy and Sweden are not
trying to built high-performance combat aircraft because
of the development costs of these aircraft being beyond
their individual capabilities. These countries generally
go in for pooling of resources as we have seen in case of
the Jaguar, the Alfa Jet Trainer (AJT) and now the
European Fighter Aircraft (EFA).
The LCA project is one
of the several such projects on which we have been
pussyfooting for the past many decades. Would we ever
learn from our mistakes?
Justice
in uniform
In April, the Punjab and
Haryana High Court reduced the sentence of an Army Jawan,
who was convicted by a general court martial ( GCM) from
three years to one-and-a half years for the reason that
he was tried under a wrong section. This is one of the
many examples where the High Court has found a lacuna in
the military system of delivering justice. Perceptibly,
three reasons can be ascribed to such anomalies.
One, today even a Jawan
knows what his rights are and when he feels that justice
has not been done to him, he rushes to a civil court to
seek justice. Two, military officers, barring the
officers the Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs)
Branch, are not legally qualified and have only a working
knowledge of the Military law. Three, discipline takes
precedence over justice and fair play in the armed
forces.
This is because
discipline is the life breath of an army. The peculiar
exigencies of military service often place unlimited
demands on the members of the armed forces, which can be
met only by enforcing strict discipline.
Be that as it may, a
check needs to be kept on the "draconian
handling" of disciplinary cases where some
overzealous officers push justice to the backseat in
their attempt to stamp out indiscipline from their units
or formations.
The Law
Commissions recommendation that an appellate
tribunal, headed by a retired civilian judge with two
members from the armed forces a retired JAG and a
serving JAG of the rank of a Maj-Gen or equivalent from
the other two services, as applicable, should be
appointed to review court martial cases. This
recommendation being sound, should be accepted.
Cardiac
care
A question often asked
is why cant the command hospitals be provided with
the latest equipment that is available in most civil
hospitals. The answer is simple : it is the resource
crunch that makes the defence forces work on a shoestring
budget. This disadvantage notwithstanding, concerted
efforts are always made to improve upon the diagnostic
and treatment facilities in military hospitals.
Take for example, the
Command Hospital Chandimandir where neither a
cardiologist nor the tread mill test (TMT) machine was
available in 1994. Over the years, the hospital has
continued to inch forward in providing better facilities
to the patients. After a cardiologist was posted to the
hospital a few years ago, came one of the best
computerised TMT (Mortara) machine. Soon after that was
added the facility of plain eco-cardiography. Equipments
like 2D-eco (colour doppler), Holter monitoring and
catscan are likely to come shortly.
Not only that, a cardiac
care van fully equipped with all the resuscitative and
monitoring facilities is always ready and can be made
available on call to carry heart patients.
As for the TMT, it is
one of the most widely used methods in the diagnosis of
ischaemic heart disease (IHD). The basic principle of
this stress test is to progressively impose increasing
stress on the cardiovascular system by graded exercise
(brisk walking on inclined plane ) and observe changes in
the heart rate, blood pressure and electrocardiogram
(ECG), which are constantly monitored during the
exercise.
Revision
of pension
The Problem that is
agitating a sizeable number of ex-servicemen, widows of
ex-soldiers is that their pension/ family pension has not
been revised because their application forms, indicating
the revised pension as per the recommendations of the
Fifth Pay Commission , have not come back from the CDA
(Pensions) or the record offices concerned so far.
This problem is more
pronounced in case of personnel below officer rank
(PBOR). To quote only three of the several such examples,
an ex-serviceman L.S. Gill (rank not mentioned ) writes
from village Bela, Ropar district that the forms of a
large number of them sent in November and December 1998
have not come back from the record offices.
In case of Hav Bhagat
Ram and Flt Sgt Om Prakash Mahajan, both from Panchkula,
these forms have come back from the Record Offices
concerned with the remarks that Part II of the form has
not been completed by the Pension Disbursing Authority
(PDA) nor has the office stamp been put on them. A large
number of forms have come back with these remarks.
The Defence Pension
Disbursing Officers (DPDOs) should scrutinise the forms
before despatching them to the Record Offices. The record
offices would do well to send a bimonthly progress report
to the Army Headquarters specifying the date upto which
the forms received by them have been disposed off. A
periodic press release on the disposal of these cases by
the Army Headquarters would go a long way in bringing
satisfaction to the ex-serviceman.
This
feature was published on May 16, 1999
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