The sad saga of the uniform

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The way India treats its armed forces is nothing but blasphemy

Are there lessons for India from the paramilitary (BDR) mutiny that happened in Bangladesh? Even though there have been several instances of suicides and fratricides in the Indian armed forces including the paramilitary, the fear of such a mutiny happening in India is to a great extent unfounded. The reasons for the same being that the average paramilitary personnel here gets a far better remuneration than the pittance his counterpart gets in Bangladesh and that India’s effective counter-intelligence system would unlid such a conspiracy much before any thing like that can ever happen in India. And most importantly, unlike in other parts of South Asia, India’s military and paramilitary organizations are extremely professional and devoid of any kind of radical influence that has plagued defense institutions of Bangladesh and Pakistan. Yet for the all the sacrifices and professionalism that India’s armed forces have displayed over the years, the key question that needs to be addressed is whether this country has actually taken care of its men in uniform in the best way possible.

When it comes to remuneration, India’s archaic and often irrational rules equate the armed forces at par with the civilian employees of the government. It’s irrational because unlike the professionalism in work and the hardship all through the service tenure that the armed personnel go through, it needs no elaboration how much toil most of India’s civilian employees in government jobs actually put in. Had they been even half as professional as the armed forces, India would have been a far better nation today. It's an unwritten norm for most civilian employees to come late in office. They never need to risk their lives, get the right to protest against anything through unions and often take the nation to ransom through strikes in essential services like postal system, banks, civil aviation and railways to name a few. And yet the government tries its best to appease them. The armed personnel on the contrary perform duty in some of the most difficult terrains of the country, are forced to live without their families for months, have hectic working hours and suffer from severe stress due to hostile environment and non-cooperation from the locals. And above all they risk their lives all the time for the nation. Yet when it comes to remuneration, the poor foot soldier gets no reward for his sacrifices and is equated with that work shirking civilian government employee who enjoys life more than he deserves. Ironically those who are the first to lay down their lives in case of a national emergency, who are nation's last resort during calamities when other government machineries collapse, are the ones ignored the most when it comes to doling out monetary rewards. Be it the army or mostly in case of paramilitary forces like CRPF, BSF, SSB, ITBP or Assam Rifles, throughout the service tenure, the jawans either live in borders or disturbed areas. The government can afford to waive off Rs 70,000 crore of farm loans (its impact is doubtful as farmer suicides continue), waste billions on subsidies which never benefit the poor, but finds it difficult to spare a few thousand crores to give hardship allowances to paramilitary personnel or a military service pay to army jawans or create a few family accommodations at the Border Out Posts. Sadly these are never election issues in a country where rabble rousers are rewarded while the disciplined and faithful men in uniform are literally punished for their diligence and discipline.

Pathikrit Payne

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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