Mumbai: The formidable reputation earned by the Indian military in two great wars and many post-Independence conflicts owes much to the unquestioning obedience and loyalty that the Indian soldier, sailor and airman have traditionally rendered to their officer. Our young officers have returned the compliment by invariably leading from the front in battle, suffering unusually high casualty rates. Although a vast majority of our million and a quarter “jawans” (I use this term generically for the three services) come from rural backgrounds, a few years in uniform are enough to make them smart and worldly-wise. Therefore, even the least educated serviceman is, shrewdly, able to size-up a good officer when he sees one.
How does he do that? Through gut feeling, instinct and actual observation, the jawan, essentially, seeks three traits in his officer — professional competence, integrity and loyalty. Loyalty extends upwards to the unit, service and the country and downwards to his men. The Army has encapsulated these sterling qualities in the nostrum “naam, namak, nishaan.”
It is against this background that the services need to reflect upon the consequences of increasing number of officers approaching courts of law. Those who seek legal redressal for denial of promotion, or stake claims to prized appointments and extensions of service, no doubt feel deeply aggrieved. But in an organisation steeped in the martial ethos there is need to consider how the troops and younger officers will view an individual who is placed in a leadership position through a court order. Since military leadership is all about personal example, it is possible that a court-mandated “leader” may fail to inspire the respect and loyalty of his men with serious consequences in peace as well as in war.
Ever since courts of law started accepting service related cases in the early 1990s, the military leadership has been haunted by some difficult conundrums. Is the rank and file of the armed forces being set a poor example by litigious officers who decide to ignore the National Defence Academy motto “Service Before Self”, and go to court? Will a day come when a soldier questions a battlefield command and then approaches a court to justify his actions? Should that happen, won’t it undermine the foundations of discipline and command in our armed forces? While the constitution of the Armed Forces Tribunals has helped resolve many issues “in house”, the apex court still remains available to litigants.
Once considered a rare and unusual phenomenon, even a dishonourable act, taking recourse to legal remedies for redressal of service-related grievances has become common amongst military personnel. Only the short-sighted will fail to discern that the increasing intervention of courts in what should be internal affairs of the armed forces will damage their morale, cohesion and fighting spirit for two reasons.
Firstly, whenever an officer wants to represent his case convincingly in court, he will have to show both his service and his brother officers in a poor light by making allegations. He will also feel the need to enlist bureaucrats and politicians to support his cause and the media to wash dirty linen in public. The service, in order to defend itself, will be compelled to make counter-allegations. All this will happen in full view of a dismayed rank and file of the service.
Secondly, the task of the judiciary being to weigh the evidence presented in a fair and dispassionate manner, it will disregard abstract factors like customs and traditions of service, esprit de corps, the morale of the military. Judicial decisions will be delivered on points of law and could result in grave collateral damage to the prestige and honour of the military.
While recourse to law is a civil right that cannot be denied to a soldier, there are many corrective actions that the military can, and must, take to mitigate the need for litigation. This is especially relevant in the personnel management arena where justice, equity and transparency are essential. If the “system” is seen as fair and above-board, it will reduce, if not eliminate, the need to approach courts.
First, the appraisal system, currently implemented through periodic “confidential reports”, needs to be revamped. Assessments must be open, comprehensive and transparent so that an officer not only receives periodic feedback and counselling about his performance, but is also informed of his standing relative to peers throughout his career. Secondly, promotion policies and criteria for critical appointments must be standardised and made transparent. Thirdly, merit must receive a clear edge over seniority. And finally, processes must be shorn of arbitrariness by reducing discretionary powers of individuals that create suspicion about putative “lines of succession”.
While it is easy to make suggestions from the detached perch of a commentator, experience has shown that implementation of reform is extremely difficult because vested interest tend to resist change. This is especially true of the military — the ability of service headquarters to bring about significant change is severely circumscribed by the stranglehold exercised by a powerful ministry of defence bureaucracy.
According to the Delhi rumour mill, the defence portfolio has been assigned to the finance minister to ensure resource availability for long-delayed defence acquisitions. The truth is that the defence ministry has suffered, not so much from a shortage of funds, as from a leadership deficit; the inability to spend its allocated budget being merely a consequence.
Re-starting the defence acquisition process is, no doubt, a priority task, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be well-advised to urgently identify a strong, self-confident and capable person to take charge of the defence ministry. The new minister’s first task should be to ascertain the roots of the hydra-headed malaise affecting our defence and national security structures, and then address them not with a 100-day agenda but with a 10-year roadmap.
The writer is a former Chief of Naval Staff
