The following appeared as an OPed in ‘The Tribune’ on 26 June 2012:-
PERSONNEL POLICIES : ARMY
SHOOTS ITSELF IN THE FOOT
Military turning against the
military: In personnel policies, the Army is fast becoming its own greatest
enemy
Major Navdeep Singh
Humans are alike. Wearing a uniform may suppress, but
not fully insulate them from corruption, greed, power-play et al, vices
inherent to human race. But besides grit and courage, what sets military
personnel apart from the others is the sharp ability to self-destruct and to
invent self-defeatist masterstrokes as far as welfare, manpower and personnel
policies are concerned.
Whichever side one may be, what the Army Chief’s age
row has brought fore is that there is a belief doing the rounds, factual or
fictional, that meticulous surgically incisive processes are constantly at play
where careers of those who may pose a future threat are played with crudely and
ruthlessly and all this happens behind closed doors under a cloak of secrecy
marked ‘national security’ which is not actually in consonance with the age of
transparency we live in. The lucky few in key appointments have their way and
others can only pull their hair in despair. The number of cases pending before
Benches of the Armed Forces Tribunal and other Courts, and the kind of
strictures passed on such matters bear testimony to the chaos at work. It is
yet another matter that even in well-rounded verdicts, the system, out of
egotism, tries its best to wear out its own personnel by litigating till the
highest court.
While military officers are quick to point fingers at
the bureaucrat, it is their own arbitrary and parochial attitude and policies,
without any basic understanding or training for administration, that are to be
blamed. In the bargain, the military becomes the military’s own greatest enemy.
The examples are many. Recently the Supreme Court
reportedly reprimanded the Army for creating artificial hurdles for its own
officers when an appeal was filed against a lady officer of the JAG whose case
had been allowed by the AFT granting her promotions and permanent commission.
Till date, the Army, based on an internal artificial interpretation by the MS
Branch, is promoting Short Service Officers commissioned prior to 2006 as
Captains in 9 years of service while those commissioned after 2006 are being
promoted to the same rank in 2 years. The impediment was not created by with
the Ministry of Defence, but by the Army. When the Military’s medical
establishment was directed by Courts to grant medical facilities to its elderly
retired Emergency Commissioned Officers based on an already existing Government
Order, the Army itself was quick to challenge it before the Supreme Court.
Imagine, the Army approaching the Supreme Court with a Prayer that the same Army
may be directed to withdraw medical facilities from its own officers, some of
them in their 80s.
When the Navy and Air Force vouched for
implementation of Non-Functional Upgradation for the defence services, as
already applicable to civil services, which guarantees the pay of a Lt Gen in a
time-bound manner to superseded officers, the Army was the first to oppose
putting across the banal argument that if implemented there would be ‘no charm
for higher ranks’. When all Doctors of the Central Government were granted a
‘Dynamic Assured Progression Scheme’, the Army itself tooth and nail opposed
its implementation for its own doctors on the pretext that doctors would then
start getting higher salaries than other officers. While the civilian
establishment is constantly blamed for degradation of status of military
officers, the Army, in the Military Engineering Services (MES) itself places
senior promotee military officers of the rank of Major and lady officers of
similar rank as Assistant Garrison Engineers, an appointment tenable by
Subedar-equivalent civilian officers, while directly commissioned officers of
the rank of Major with much lesser length of service are posted on higher
appointments such as Garrison Engineers, all again based on an artificial,
faulty and forced interpretation of existing rules.
Recently, based on a decision taken by the PM, young
army officers, both Permanent and Short Service Commissioned, upto 35 years of
age with 5 years of service and in fit medical category, were sought for
lateral induction into the Indian Police Service through a statutory gazette
notification. But rather than moving with the times, the Army HQ, based on an
outdated policy promulgated in 1987, issued a circular pointing out that only
those Permanent Commissioned Officers would be permitted to apply for the IPS
who had only two years of service left (that is, who were 50 years old), or who
were in low medical category, or who had completed 18 years of service but had
not passed their promotion exams. Needless to say, it’s a no-brainer that all
such categories ‘allowed’ by the Army HQ were actually ineligible to be inducted
into the IPS as per the gazette notification.
Whenever there is a welfare oriented proposal or
proactive personnel policy under consideration of the Government which elements
in the bureaucracy would not like to see implemented, they simply throw it in
the court of the defence services for a consultative process for they know that
first the Army, Navy and the Air Force would start struggling between
themselves, and then the fight would shift inter-se between the fighting Arms,
then it would be fighting arms vs support arms and finally arms vs services.
The end product would be zilch resulting in sniggers from the ringside. So
where does the fault lie? Is it because of the stiff competition and ACR
oriented ‘smile up – kick down’ culture or is it because of plain lack of
understanding of finer aspects of personnel management and lack of
administrative acumen or downright foolhardiness? The answer is hard to find.
It seems that in a nation with the psyche of public servants deriving power by
imposing obstacles, red-tape and impediments in the ordinary life of a common
citizen, officers holding key appointments in the military feel powerless when
they compare themselves with their civilian counterparts. Hence the only way to
feel powerful is by posing hindrances in areas of policy where the pen can be
used as an authoritative instrument of damage, and that damage unfortunately is
restricted to within the uniformed services. As a sequel, creation of
restrictive clauses and provisos becomes a tool of ego empowerment through
which the policy writer feels potent. Liberal construal is abandoned for sadism
and a sub-culture emerges where cribbing is rampant and peer happiness is not
tolerated.
The Army has to wake up and smell the coffee. The
obstructive, inward-looking conservative approach has to go, times are such.
Camaraderie has been the hallmark of defence services but the same is not just
meant for the battle field but for normal day to day life too which actually
and practically affects personnel and their families. A recent positive example
would be the strong efforts of the Army’s Personnel Services Directorate in
reducing litigation and convincing the Defence Ministry to withdraw appeals
filed against its disabled soldiers bringing succour and kudos to the
organisation. The positivity must spread and must spread fast to other spheres,
otherwise the self-inflicted injury to the heretofore seemingly strong
foundation would make the organisation a laughing stock leading to a spectacular
derailment of the only institution every Indian has been unconditionally proud
of.
The writer is a practicing lawyer of the High Court and
former President of the AFT Bar Association.
