INDIA AT THE CROSSROADS

The instrumentality of the military

By Maj Gen S.G.Vombatkere (Retd)

India today
It is common observation that the levels of discontent and disaffection among most
sections of society all over the country are on the increase. There is a feeling
of injustice among the people not only at the social level but also at the
economic level. This is evidenced by the rising ground swell of social unrest and
anger that shows as verbal and physical militancy among unempowered people, rural
and tribal people, and people working in the unorganized sector like hawkers and
roadside vendors, construction workers, and domestic workers, who constitute over
75% of India's population. The daily protests at various places across India
against government policy measures like SEZs, and large dam, infrastructural,
industrial and mining projects are being termed as the “million revolutions”, only
some of which continue to be fought on the basis of non-violence. Common people
are losing faith in the constitutional executive, the legislature and the
judiciary. Governments giving tax breaks to industries and increasing expenditures
on governance while pleading insufficient money for education, public health or
poverty alleviation only heightens the feeling of injustice and of being
neglected. In this situation, in 2006, the Planning Commission of India ordered a
study on the connection between poverty and militancy. The Report of the Expert
Group on “Development issues to deal with causes of discontent, unrest and
extremism”, published in April 2008, shows close correlation between poverty and
militancy or extremism.
In the situation obtaining today, which includes long-standing and on-going
insurgencies and latterly, “terror attacks”, the Prime Minister has very recently
made a statement to the effect that he will “not allow terrorism to destabilize
the country”. It might appear that the statement is an outcome of the unexpressed
fear and anguish that the possibility of destabilization does exist. It would not
be wrong to say that apprehension of destabilization is also shared by many
thinking people. Most of India's immediate neighbours are unstable, failing or
failed states and India is the sheet anchor of South Asia as of now. At this
critical juncture, instability in the Union of India may result in unpredictable
and irreversible internal changes in neglect of the Constitution of India, and
day-to-day unpredictability as in some Middle East and African countries. As it
is, political actors in several states within India are behaving as if there is no
Centre. While one says that north Indians are not wanted, another does not want
the Railways to recruit applicants from a neighbouring state, yet another refuses
to share river water with a neighbour (while grandiose plans are afoot to
interlink all national rivers!), and a fourth demands that only his language must
be seen on vehicle licence plates and in public places. Governments are apparently
unable to impose the constitutional obligations on them while, in response to Raj
Thackeray's attack on north Indians in Mumbai, a Union Minister is reported to
have threatened to stop trains to and from Mumbai.
Notwithstanding “comfortable” economic growth figures nearing 10%, in its current
weakened internal situation, India also faces quasi-military threat from Pakistan
and economic and military threat from China, besides political machinations from
other powers. The global financial crisis will affect India sooner rather than
later and the overall situation is likely to deteriorate considerably before it
begins to get better. The concurrent, on-going effects that climate change will
inevitably have on the Indian subcontinent can only exacerbate the socio-economic-
environmental situation, with consequent internal and external political
repercussions. Thus, put bluntly, India is at a crossroads, and it is small
consolation that India is not alone.

Decline in governance
Some would have it that the problems that India faces internally are due to
adopting an inappropriate and non-inclusive pattern of development that is the
price of globalization through liberalization and privatization. Whether that
contention is right or not, and whether or not there is intent to change it, there
is no option for any political party or coalition in power at the Centre, other
than to maintain law and order and a semblance of the rule of law in the country,
while it plans and implements changes according to democratic, constitutional
processes. In order to maintain stability of governance, the primary instrument of
the Union government and governments in the States is the bureaucracy (IAS and
State AS) along with the state and central police forces, which comprise the civil
administration. Because of a combination of several reasons, perhaps the most
important of which are political interference and corruption, the demonstrated
performance of governments' primary instruments over the decades since
Independence has been in decline, with self-evident effects.

Trump card
It is precisely because of poor and declining governance standards provided by the
elected executive through the bureaucracy-police, that the military (or more
familiarly, the fauj, this term referring to the army, navy and air force or the
defence services, whose personnel of whatever rank are termed herein as faujis)
has been frequently called by the civil administration in “aid to civil power” to
solve a variety of problems or handle emergency situations. This is not to argue
that the military should not be called out. After all, the military is a national
body that is meant to serve the nation and its people. However, it is necessary to
point out that though the primary role of the military is to defend national
borders and maintain India's territorial integrity and sovereignty, it has been
and still is very frequently deployed in its secondary role of aid to civil power
because the civil administration has failed in its primary duty, which is
governance.
The secondary role tasks assigned to the military range from flag marches to quell
social or communal violence, handle insurgencies, undertake relief operations in
natural disasters like floods, cyclones or earthquakes, undertake relief in man-
made disasters, or provide rescue and accident relief in railway accidents,
building collapse, children falling into tubewells, etc. And all this, it may be
noted, is undertaken and executed despite an overall and growing shortage of
officers which stands at 14,264, with 11,238 in the army alone, mostly at the
ground-working levels. These situations are caused by wrong governance
(insurgencies or communal conflict situations) or inadequate governance (rescue
and relief operations that can be undertaken by police), at the root of both of
which are the central and/or state civil administration. For example, as reported
in the media, after the warning of the mega-cyclone that hit Orissa in October
1999, the senior staff of the District Administration had themselves fled to safe
places, leaving the citizenry to their fate at the peak of the crisis. Once the
military is called out, it can be observed from media reports, that the civil
administration most often does little or nothing.
Ever so often, when an emergency arises, or law and order is threatened or
deteriorates, governments at Centre or in the States are paralyzed into inaction.
The most recent display of this was during the terrorist attack in Mumbai
commencing November 26, 2008 (or “Mumbai 26/11”). In other instances which need
not be elaborated here, governments have displayed “masterly inaction” and even
complicity for political or ideological reasons. It is in such situations that the
use of the military in aid to civil power to restore internal stability is an
instrument of last resort like a “trump card” for governments in the States and at
the Centre. And it is the traditionally apolitical, secular and professional
character of the Indian military over the decades since Independence that has made
the restoration of internal stability possible.
The view within the military
The military is a somewhat closed system, like any strongly hierarchical
organization is bound to be. Unlike any other organization or body in India, the
relative insulation of the military from the rest of India's society is due to its
traditions, ethos, training and deployment which have made it what it is – to
repeat, it is apolitical, secular and professional. Faujis are subject to Military
Law and are therefore denied the right to freedom of speech and expression to
communicate with the media under Constitution of India Article 19(a), and are
denied the right to form associations or unions for collective bargaining under
Article 19(c), that are guaranteed to ordinary citizens including the bureaucracy
and the central and state police forces. Thus, faujis are in fact extraordinary
citizens. But serving faujis do communicate with their colleagues, and civilian
friends and relatives when they meet them. Thus most veterans are upto date
regarding faujis' grievances, their fears and anxieties, their desires and
aspirations, their moments of pride and achievement and their motivations. After
all, every fauji in service today is tomorrow's veteran.
The grievances, fears, etc. and the pride, achievements etc. of faujis do not
reach the upper echelons of governance partly due to the insulation of the
military because of denial of constitutional rights, and partly due to the several
(unnecessary??) layers of the military and bureaucracy. The result is that the
inner-most thoughts of the simple jawan at the base of the pyramid or the junior
officer who has the most direct contact with him rarely, if ever, get known
outside the military. These are the thoughts that, when put together, indicate the
individual fauji's morale and when aggregated, the morale of the military unit and
of the military as a whole.
Apart from training, team-spirit and regimental tradition that are a part of
motivation and morale painstakingly built up within the military, there are two
external factors that contribute towards morale of the individual fauji, namely,
status (more appropriately described as “izzat”) and salary. Pay scales are
important to faujis, but anybody with the least familiarity with the military
knows that izzat is always more important. The first is to satisfy the corporeal
and temporal needs of the fauji and his family, and the second is what motivates
him to fight for national causes and if need be, sacrifice his life. And the two
are inextricably linked. It is necessary to clarify at this point that the present
paper is not an oblique attempt to make a case for pay parity or status parity,
though both these issues have a great and immediate bearing on a much more
important issue that follows. Rather, it is to focus on the current situation that
may degrade, even invalidate, the “trump card” that government has been using with
abandon.

The focus
The centre-piece of this paper is the worsening morale of the serving fauji in
general, his feeling of being let down by government, and the ramifications on
internal and external national security. The serious negative effect of lowered
individual morale on the morale of military units and formations does not need
emphasis. The concatenated effect of lowered fauji morale on goverment's continued
ability to use its instrument of last resort to maintain internal stability or in
withstanding external aggression, can be ignored only at the cost of national
security.
This is the assessment of many military veterans, many of whom are very senior
general officers. They would agree that the proximate cause of lowered morale is
the Sixth Central Pay Commission (6CPC) and the fact of there being no fauji
member in the 6CPC to represent the faujis, who form not only the single largest
majority of people affected by the 6CPC, but who also form the only group that is
denied the fundamental freedoms under Articles 19(a) and 19(c), and have terms and
conditions of service, promotion and retirement that are adverse when compared
with any other category under consideration of the 6CPC. Live issues such as
physically and psychologically trying service conditions especially during IS
duties, insufficient living accomodation, Jawans having to retire at the age of 38
and most officers below the age of 54, and promotions (to which pay is linked)
being very limited especially in the officer cadre, have been borne without much
murmur in the past. But now the dissatisfaction in the military is at a high
pitch, although this may not be seen by those outside “the system”, not even those
who have access to intelligence reports, because most intelligence agencies tell
the boss only what is “music to his ears”.

Bureaucratic control
The hard fact is that rightly or wrongly, most faujis and veterans harbour a
grudge against the bureaucracy which they understand as the hand behind consistent
denial of what they see as their just and fair demands. Admittedly, every person
would feel that his demand is just and fair. But here we have to see the great
dissimilarity between what the fauji does, how he lives and works with risk to
life and limb on the one hand, and on the other hand, bureaucrats who live
comfortable lives, receive assured promotions, draw higher salaries and earn more
during their much longer service life.
The load on the exchequer for providing military personnel status-cum-service-cum-
salary parity with the IAS or Police at all levels is not unaffordable
considering, for example, the huge tax holidays and concessions being freely given
to commercial and industrial corporations. While he freely accepts being under
control of the Union Cabinet through the Defence Minister, the fauji resents the
real-time control that is exercised by the bureaucracy to his personal detriment
and the izzat of his Service. He feels de-valued, neglected and insulted by the
sarkar. This state of affairs is positively harmful for the country's internal and
external security.

Military Veterans
Pension is based upon pay drawn at the time of retirement. Ex-servicemen have held
a long-standing demand for “One-rank-one-pension” (OROP), which means that
regardless of when a fauji retired, those who retired with the same rank and the
same length of service should receive the same pension. This demand is based upon
the fact that faujis who retired long ago draw much less pension and are in
difficult economic circumstances than those who retired more recently. OROP had
not been acceded to by successive CPCs, even though OROP had been agreed to in-
principle by several elected representatives in various Union Governments. Faujis
continue to believe that such refusal has been the unofficial stand of the
bureaucracy. It is learnt that, while discussing the OROP issue recently, a senior
official of Defence (Finance) has said, “Finances are not an issue” or words to
that effect, since the amount in question may be a mere Rs.600 crores. This view
from the Finance angle clearly reinforces the fauji's apprehension that the
bureaucracy is at the root of consistent refusal.
Hitherto, military veterans had always silently accepted whatever the CPCs have
dispensed by way of pension and allowances over the decades. The CPCs have always
been headed and dominated by bureaucrats, who have little idea of and even less
interest in the working and living conditions of the fauji or the ex-fauji, and
have made decisions for the single largest segment of central government servants
without their representation in the CPCs. The unfairness of successive CPC
dispensations was not lost on military veterans, but their long-ingrained habit of
acceding to “superior authority” hitherto ended in simple grumbling, mostly at the
personal level. It needs to be noted that the worst sufferers of the neglect of
ex-servicemen are the Jawans who, after retirement at a young age, are too busy
trying to reconstruct their lives to be able to afford time to join hands to make
demands concerning their pensions.
However in late 2008, following the 6CPC, military veterans have organised
themselves to agitate vigorously and have taken the unprecedented step of offering
satyagraha by relay fasting at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi since mid-December 2008,
and also in metros, cities and towns elsewhere in India. Veterans' fasting unto
death – recently withdrawn, though the relay fasts continue – has been kept out of
the media possibly due to bureaucratic influence on government. Thus, Veterans'
are even more disillusioned since nobody appears to care about them. Earlier,
senior retired officers of general rank, demonstrating silently in the Boat Club
area with prior intimation to the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Police, were
arrested by the police and taken to the Tilak Marg Police Station. The continued
stonewalling by government including the arrest of veterans mentioned above has
turned the mood of military veterans from unwilling acceptance into one of
disappointment and demanding anger. It may be argued that the voice of the
military veterans is not important in the future of the country, but such an
argument neglects the fact that the serving fauji is well aware of the socio-
economic conditions of military veterans, and also knows all too well that he will
one day join their ranks. Hence, today's neglect of military veterans is
tomorrow's neglect of the serving fauji, and this is taking its toll on the morale
of the fighting man.

Today's fauji
The position of fauji officers in the Order of Precedence has been steadily
falling over the years relative to IAS and Police appointments. Government may
deem this necessary, but it is viewed by the fauji as deliberate devaluation of
military rank and as part of loss of izzat. This by itself may not mean much (at
least to a bureaucrat) but in the matter of pay equivalence with bureaucrats and
police officials lower down the military hierarchy and the skewed recommendations
of the 6CPC, it has resulted in police officers who hitherto drew less salary than
their fauji peers, drawing more salary than them, despite less years of service.
At the operational level in J&K and the North-East states, there are reports of
police officers refusing to serve under army officers of the rank of Lieutenant
Colonel since they (the police) now draw higher emoluments according to the 6CPC.
This has also happened between navy Commanders and Coast Guard officers. Herein
lies serious risk of operational failure and consequent national security risk,
and worse, further lowering of the fauji's morale.
Now consider the serving military personnel with lowered morale especially in the
present circumstance of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan following
Mumbai 26/11. Almost all faujis would have followed the media coverage of the
attack and the sacrifices made by the NSG (SAG) commandos. In fact, many faujis
serving in counter-insurgency operations are personally under direct fire from
militants and witness to such actions much more often than is reported in the
print or electronic media. And they see the cause of their exposure to such
difficult or life-threatening situations as being due to poor governance, more
specifically failure of civil authority (the political executive and the
bureaucracy-police) to handle political violence or law-and-order situations,
necessitating frequently requisitioning the military in aid to civil authority.
Thus, among serving personnel, there is an undeniable, general feeling of
dissatisfaction plus a deep-seated feeling of injustice plus the feeling of
helplessness plus the certain knowledge that many of the people in the higher
echelons of government are callous or corrupt. One might argue that such is the
feeling even among the general public as demonstrated most recently following
Mumbai 26/11, but then members of the general public are not required to carry out
onerous, life-threatening tasks as part of duty.
A not unlikely situation of open hostilities between India and Pakistan exists in
the wake of Mumbai 26/11. Most citizens oppose war, and no soldier anywhere in the
world is in favour of war or hostilities, because most bullets have soldiers'
names written on them. He goes to war because he has to do so, not because he
likes it. India's military remains staunchly apolitical and professional unlike in
some countries in India's neighbourhood. Hitherto, our faujis have displayed
exemplary courage, fortitude and hardiness since Independence in all wars thrust
upon us, and are respected within and outside India, and counted among the top
fighting forces in the world. But in the fall-out of the 6CPC and the generally
negative, even sullen mood obtaining, in a forthcoming war with Pakistan, should
there be even a temporary or local reverse in the military situation, it is quite
likely to be interpreted as a failure of morale by our (irresponsible??) media,
and the canker of lowered morale can rapidly spread through the branches of the
military. This can be much worse than military defeat both for India's military
and for India. From already rapidly growing regional pressures, a weakened India
will be easy meat for superpower ambitions in South Asia.

Conclusion
Sociologists widely accept that conditions of dissatisfaction plus the feeling of
injustice plus the feeling of helplessness plus certain knowledge that many of
those in power are callous or corrupt, are a potent social explosive. Such
conditions are obtaining today among Veterans, especially after the 6CPC, and the
events following it. Government's continuing refusal to give status parity
especially with the Police, and refusal of OROP are issues that could well cause
any far-seeing person to fear for the Union of India because, as argued above, it
is the apolitical and secular Indian military that is holding India together, not
the bureaucracy, not the police and not the politicians. A demoralised or
fractious military denied the right to free speech, cannot be in the best
interests of the nation. Restoring the izzat of the military and providing faujis
at various levels salary commensurate with their onerous duties on a consultative
basis appears to be possibly the most important and urgent step that government
needs to take at this juncture, to rejuvenate its instrument of last resort.
Kautilya is said to have advised Emperor Chandragupta as follows, “It is my
bounden duty to assure you, My Lord, that the day when the Mauryan soldier has to
demand his dues, or worse, plead for them, will neither have arrived overnight nor
in vain. It will also bode ill for Magadha. For then, on that day, you, My Lord,
will have lost all moral sanction to be King. It will also be the beginning of the
end of the Mauryan Empire.”
The present situation is not merely a matter of the demands of military veterans
or the needs of the serving faujis who are bound to silence due to Military Law,
but a matter of the utmost urgency concerning devaluation of the instrument of
last resort that affects national integrity and security. This paper is a humble
attempt to apprise those in the highest echelons of governance about the
seriousness of the situation, in the hope that they will cease rearranging the
furniture when the house is smouldering.
(3,785 words of text)

**Major General S.G.Vombatkere retired as Additional DG in charge of Discipline &

Vigilance in Army HQ AG’s Branch, New Delhi