Wednesday, February 3, 2010

And Quiet Flows Teesta

There have been numerous reports, articles and debates on the merits and demerits of the case against four senior army officers in so-called `Sukhna Land Scam'. I have no comments to make on that.

I have been prompted by two outstanding write-ups, that is, one in HT of 03 February 10 written by Lt Gen (retd) Vijay Oberoi and the other a blog titled `You are in the Army now' by Anubha Bhonsle on Ibnlive.in.com (http://ibnlive.in.com/conversations/topic/61431-1-1-29) These remind me of a cliche and a fable.

First the blog by Anubha reminds me of the cliche that if you pay peanuts - you get monkeys. Essential point she makes is that the Army is one of the last institutions standing in this country and that Army Act 1950 has been the main pillar on which the edifice of discipline in the Army stands, which in turn makes the officers behave better than others. Second, the people of India have a right to expect much higher standards of personal probity from the army officers as compared to any other strata of the society. She may be right on both counts. But we need to remember two caveats as well:-
1. If you want the Army men to behave better than average, please pay them better than average. Today a civilian government employee has (a) more job security, (b) better working hours, (c) better working environment, (d) better representation through the unions and (f) equal or better pay package. It is a fallacy to think that Canteen etc are real advantages. These are available to all government employees in form of Canteens for Central Police Organisations and Super Bazars for the civilian employees. In so far as the leave is concerned a civilian government employee works five days a week (104 days leave)as also gets numerous holidays (minimum 10) besides 30 days earned leave and 12 days causal leave, (Grand total 156 days) while a soldier only gets Sunday off plus 60 days annual and 20 days casual leave = 132 days (operational situation permitting).

2. If you want a motivated army, you have to look at `motivation' and not the Army Act 1950 for inspiration and motivation comes from high morale and high morale comes from sense of Elan and sense of Elan comes from feeling of being special and this feeling comes form factors like better job security and pay etc.

Now coming to Lt Gen (retd) Vijay Oberoi's article, this piece reminded me of the story about the monkey who ate away the food the two cats were fighting over. If any outside elements, be they the much maligned bureaucrats or any one else, are able to show the Army and its senior leaders in poor light, please remember that they are only taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the internecine warfare afflicting the higher echelons.

No comments: