The Standpoint

LOOK DEEP WITHIN

By

Shubham Bose

Recently, a record number of ex-servicemen numbering roughly over five thousand handed over their proud possessions, to the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces the President of India. The possessions in question are the medals won by these veterans often putting self, family and above all their very life in the line of duty to protect their motherland.

To say that such developments demoralise an already stretched army would be an understatement. Presently, the armed forces are grappling with a double-edged sword. On one hand there is a shortage of around fifteen thousand officers and on the other an increasing number of serving officers are putting in their papers of premature retirement.

The latter in this case are those who willingly and knowingly joined the army for what it is, less pay and more work, but are now pulling out saying that this is not what they signed up for. In such a scenario, the irony of setting up a second OTA seems to be lost on the army top brass. The idea is to stem the exodus and bring in new recruits by making SSC more lucrative.

However there is an inherent flaw in the design. The military is essentially a service, a career, which requires total dedication vis-à-vis a ‘job’ that starts at 9 ends at 5 and gives handsome monetary returns at the end of the day. What is it to do with SSC, you may ask; in fact, a person who signs up for SSC is someone who is looking for the “best –of-both-worlds” and an “ex-army” tag to take him places later on. Of course exceptions are always there but categorically speaking, such people wouldn’t want to be soldiers by career and hence treat it as job rather than a service.

Another facet of the issue that needs to be examined is how ‘real’ are the army’s issues? The army till date carries the colonial mindset; a belief that with the practice of things, for instance having ‘sahayaks’ can pump the officers’ pseudo importance. Also with changing times the military today is no longer dominated by the elite classes. In fact more and more officers today come from small towns and civilian backgrounds. These developments are seen by certain quarters in the military as dilution of standards and hence worthy of contempt.

This ultimately brings us to the major point of this issue. Whenever there is talk of officers’ shortage, the cynics are quick to point out that the youth today is just not interested in joining the military. This is a myth and will be exposed rightly so, the facts speak for themselves.

Every year over five lakh candidates appear for various entrance exams to join the military. Out of these many candidates a little over forty thousand pass the written tests. The successful candidates are further tested at various SSB centers. Typically in a batch of about a hundred candidates only 4 candidates make it to the academies. Obviously, the rejection rate is a mind boggling 96%. In fact there have been instances wherein entire batches of successful candidates have been rejected by the SSB centers. Nothing wrong with that, the standards should be high. However this brings to mind the much touted incident wherein a record number of successful candidates (108 at NDA 164 at IMA) did not join the academies. The youth is usually blamed for it, but naturally the question arises, who is really to blame? Is it the myopic selection procedure which fails to select the right candidates?

As of now, the army should take a good hard look at the issues at hand, set their own house in order, and then take care of the bureaucratic mischief at play by regaining their lost leverage with the establishment.