Transactional Military Leadership Leading Army to Certain Demise

This blog is essentially to share my anguish on the lack of spine and forethought shown by senior military leadership. The absence of guts among the general officers of the Army is old story, but needs to be recounted periodically so as to arouse some reaction from some of us if we want this great institution called the Army to survive.
You all know that as part of devolution of financial powers IFAs are being posted to various Corps and Command HQs. Being from Defence Accounts, these people are civilians, who are governed by rules applicable to civil services. Which means:-
(a) They are not expected to do combat duties.
(b) They are not expected to not go out for exercises or undertake daily military routine of organised physical training, firing, administrative duties, station duties and so on.
(c) In a nutshell they are not to command troops or engage in any activity emanating there from.
(d) Their sole job is limited to rendering sound financial advise to the commanders so as to ensure correct utilisation of funds.
(e) There office routine is 9-to-5 spread over five day week.
(f) To perform his/her official duties each IFA has been given requisite support staff in terms of office superindent, clerks, daftaries, peon and so on.
(g) To commute from the home to office and back, they are entitles to transport allowance.
(h) To meet routine office expenditure including travel on duty they are entitled to requisite public fund.

Simply put, the IFA like any other civil government official has been given wherewithal by the Government of India to carry out his/her duties efficiently.

Despite having been given all necessary office staff and equipment and budget, the IFAs are getting army vehicles driven by combatant drivers and soldiers as runners curtsey the GOC/staff of the HQ the IFA is attached to. Question arises as to why are the vehicles being diverted from the military duties and combatant made to perform jobs of runner and duftaries in civil offices?

Now some of these worthy general officers/their staff would make two arguments. First that it is being done for the good of the Army. After all if IFA is happy, the proposals would be processed quickly. Second, it is really a non-issue because it involves a minuscule number of vehicles (may be 40 – 50) and about 100 soldiers.

My response to these arguments is as follows:-
(a) Firstly at a functional level this practice of illegally assigning combatants to civil offices is totally wrong and must be stopped forthwith. Such diversion of WE equipment and soldiers will not only impact on battle worthiness of the Army but also set a precedent for the IFA staff at Army HQ (and other civilian staff associated with the Army at various levels) to demand similar facilities.

(b) Secondly at, more substantive level, these arguments sound like a justification for bribery (please do not be surprised, because it is so). Every public servant is required to work efficiently without fear or favour. So if IFA gives concurrence for questionable proposals solely because he is gratified with combatant driver and runner then he (the IFA) is being disloyal to his country and is guilty of conniving in squandering public funds.
Counter argument to my plea would be that India is India and here the bureaucracy can be extremely insensitive and successfully stall even legit proposals through a simple mechanism of petty procedural objections/observations.
I agree that bureaucracy in India and more so the IFA variety exercises veto power over schemes of government of India and is considered law onto themselves. But my point is simple, succumbing to shortcuts or kowtowing the IFA may give us short term gains in terms of approval for the proposals which were either not well prepared or were a waste, but in the long term such acquisition or practice will lead to serious damage to character of the officer cadre and internal efficiency of the Army. After all it can be nobody’s case that we should encourage `transactional’ leadership.
If the Army as a institution is seen to be promoting free-enterprise system, wherein only the results in the form of profits matter, the transactional ethos would rein supreme and military ethics which form the basis of trust between the soldiers would vanish.