The Sunday Tribune - Spectrum

A view of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington For the present course, there are 427 officers — 341 from Army, 69 from Navy and 78 from the Air Force. Six are civilian officers from the IAS or IPS. There are 33 officers from the foreign countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Botswana, the Czech Republic, France, Indonesia, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Saychellus, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tanzania, Uganda, U.K., USA, Uzbekistan and Palestine.

As the entrance examination is tough, so is the training for these soldiers. They try hard to live up to the dictum prescribed by the great Indian political thinker and military strategist, Kautilya. In Arthashastra, he defined an officer as the one "possessedof the need for application of science, is intelligent, preserving, dexterous, eloquent, bold, ready witted, energetic and powerful and is able to withstand stress. He is upright, friendly, firmly devoted, a man of character, strength, health and spirit, devoid of stiffness, amicable and not creating animosities."

Up to now the college has trained 12,334 Indian and 1,223 foreign officers. Some of these are now in the top-rung of the armed forces.

The DSSC was set up in India in 1905 as the Army Staff College at Deolali (near Bombay); and by 1907, it was re-located in Quetta — now in the North Western of Pakistan. On the partition of the sub continent, the Indian element moved to Wellington in 1947. By 1950, it was progressively transformed into a fully integrated Staff College, imparting training to officers of the three services, besides the Indian Civil Services, para military forces and friendly foreign countries.

"In DSSC, these officers work together and devote a major part of their training to inter-service and intra-service studies. Since modern warfare embraces all branches of national life and is affected by the economic power of a nation, its industrial base, progress in science and technology, and the morale and national characteristics of its people, the Staff College has a broad- based instruction programme covering all important aspects of war and peace," Lt Gen Aiyengar said.

The training philosophy is based on the tutorial system and is founded on the principles of self learning and self advancement. The officers of the course are divided into syndicate groups of not more than 10 students each. A member of the Directing Staff (DS) is placed in charge of the syndicate. He is responsible for presiding over discussions within his syndicate and generally guides them in their deliberations. The DS maintains a close professional and social relationship with his student officers.

For each new tutorial, syndicates are broken up and re-formed so that every student gets the opportunity to know and work with other student- officers and DS. Other methods of instruction followed in the DSSC include indoor demonstration models, outdoor exercises, central discussions, group presentations, lectures and so on. Student officers often work in sub-syndicate groups for submission of written assignments.

Training instructions areimparted in national security and strategy, warfare in different terrains; special operations-- like airborne, heliborne, maritime and amphibious --, low intensity conflicts, including UN peacekeeping operations, defence management, leadership, military intelligence and administration in war and peace. Approximately 50 per cent of the time is devoted to joint syllabus and the remaining to the respective wing syllabus.

On an average, 35 to 40 guest lectures by eminent persons from all walks of life are programmed for every course. In addition to the central college lectures, the three service wings also schedule 15 to 20 wing specific lectures each for student- officers of their respective wings. Wives of trainee officers can also participate in these lectures.

Computerisation has been introduced in the college in a big way. Student officers are encouraged to use computers during the course. Computer aided wargames are conducted at appropriate stages of the curriculum.

All students are taken on an industrial and demonstration tour to Bombay, Pune, Ahmednagar, Deolali, Bangalore, Secunderabad and Chennai.

They visit a number of defence establishments as well as public and private sector industries.

The officers also get an opportunity to witness naval exercises from close proximity during their ‘day at sea’ as also a display by the air force. These visits give the student officers a clear and a practical insight into the capabilities and limitations of the Indian industry.

During the course, student- officers go on a tour of about 12 days to some army formations and units in the high altitude border areas to enable them to appreciate how the troops are deployed and maintained.

The DSSC has a modern, well stocked library with more than 30,000 books dealing with diverse subjects of professional as well as general interest. Student officers are given access to the computer disks (CDs) available for reference. Audio cassettes of all guest lectures of the course are maintained in the library. They can be borrowed for study and research.

While Lt Gen Aiyengar maintains that the course has to be packed to the maximum as information is exploding all around us, student-officers carry a general feeling of pushing "too much in too short a time." While no trainee wishes to come on record, fatigue is writ large on their faces. It is morning to evening to midnight and even the rest days are given to update and brush up or to complete what could not be done during the weekdays. "Time is short and the instruction level high and the courses lengthy. Sometime it is just touch and go. Digesting the subject matter is a real problem", a senior General in Delhi commented.

Another issue that nagged during an informal chat with trainee-officers was that of too much regimentation. The ladies also feel the pinch.

Lt Gen S.R.R. Aiyengar, Commandant of the Defence Services Staff College, is so soft spoken that he could easily pass off as a wise university teacher, and, teacher he is. This is why he must have, perhaps, been selected to lead this prestigious defence college.Excerpts from an interview with Gobind Thukral:

The Defence Services Staff College has rightly been called as the premier inter-services training institution. What role does it play?

Consequent to the dismal performance of the British expeditionary forces in the battle of Crimea in 1854 against Russia, they constituted a commission in 1856 to examine the "Training of the Staff Officers to improve military efficiency". The members visited military training schools in France, Australia, Prussia and also the Department of Royal Military College at Sandhurst, compared the syllabus but did not recommend any radical changes in training. However, the commission recommended the formulation of Board of Military Education at War Office. Lt-Gen SRR Aiyengar

Later, the Duke of Cambridge appointed a Commanding-in-Chief to set forth the qualifications of Staff Officers. Thereafter, the Council of Education arranged for an entrance examination, to admit student-officers to the senior department which was, henceforth, called Staff College — thus was born the Staff College.

Initially, the Staff College was set up in the building of Royal Mil College at Sandhurst in 1858, which was later shifted to Camberley in 1862. The possibility of establishing a Staff College in India was first discussed in 1868. However, the idea was dropped and Indian officers were sent to Camberley to attend the course.

Lord Kitchener assumed the office of the Commander- in-Chief in 1902 and reorganised the Indian Army. His proposal to establish a Staff College for Indian officers on the lines of Camberley got approved in 1905. Pending the construction of a building in Quetta, now in Pakistan, the College was temporarily set up in Devlali. It later moved to its permanent location in 1907. After Partition, the task of identification of a suitable place to locate the Indian Staff College was given to Col S.D Verma, who selected Wellington. The College moved to Wellington in November-December 1947. Brig S.D Verma, who was promoted during that period, was a pioneer in establishing the Indian Staff College, handed over the charge to Maj. Gen W.D.A Lentaigne, as Commandant on March 10,1948. The first course, known as the First Indian Staff College Interim Course, commenced on Monday, April 5, 1948.

What is the aim here and how are the instructions imparted at the College?

The aim of the Staff Course is to train selected offices from three services and a few officer from the Civil Services, paramilitary forces and friendly foreign countries in "command and staff functions, both in peace and war." The Commandant is responsible for necessary integration of training programmes and ensuring their implementation.

The college conducted a seminar in April 2000,"Jointmanship under the New Technological Environment". What do you really mean by ‘jointmanship’ and what does it entail?

The nature of warfare has changed considerably and this demands that the three Services fight as an integrated team. Defence of the nation is the fundamental basis for military service and joint warfare is indispensable for that. Owing to rapid advances in technology, forces on land, at sea, and in the air now reinforce and complement each other more than ever before. It is up to the armed forces to capitalise on this synergistic value and forge a war machine that can successfully wage war across its entire spectrum.

Jointmanship is a progression of the principle which aims at all the three services working together in a complementary way to achieve the overall national security objectives. The term ‘synergy’ has been used to describe joint operations. This means that the joint effort is greater than the sum of the single service parts. However, true synergy can only obtain if each of those parts is strong and competent in its own right.

It is stated that Information Technology (IT) brought about a revolution in military affairs thereby adding a new dimensions to warfare. How is this aspect stressed at the DSSC?

The College has rightly identified that the requirement of training the future generation of officers is Information Technology keeping in mind the operations that target or exploit information media to win some objective over an adversary. This is also keeping in step with the drive towards creating an IT awareness and fully IT literate manpower in all the three Services.

At the DSSC, besides providing state of art IT tools to the student-officers for their use during the course. The training also lays emphasis on using information as a tool in future conflicts.

With a view to ensure effective utilisation of the networking facilities available in the country and to enable student-officers to interact with other institutions for research, a V-SAT terminal providing high speed data and voice channels on the ‘National Informatics Centre’ (NIC) net has recently been procured. A local area network interaction between students and their Directing Staff besides being used extensively for conduct of War Games and running of Tactical Exercises. An ‘Infodrome’ enables the student-officers and the faculty to utilise the vast data and other facilities available for their studies and research work.