Conduct unbecoming

"Whenever I visited my hometown in Punjab, I used to proudly display my Army ID, but now I will have to hide my identity,"says Jagdish Salaria, a former Drill Subedar Major at the Indian Military Academy in Dehradun. "That is the kind of shame these people have brought on us."
Honorary Captain Salaria retired from the Army in 1996, but the sense of pride and belonging is strong even now.Talk to any ex-serviceman, and you get that same feeling: a pride that’s ingrained into every jawan from the moment he is inducted, a pride in one’s uniform and unit, a pride that is reflected in his bearing, the way he walks, the way he acts and one which extends beyond the call of duty — and even beyond his service tenure. "There used to be a fear of seniors and respect for one’s uniform, the paltan and the CO Sahib," says Salaria. "One had to always strive to earn laurels for one’s paltan — both in battle and otherwise."
That was then. Today’s shame story: jawans push out five people to their death from a train in UP; a Major cooks up enemy encounters in Siachen; a ''Ketchup Colonel'' fakes killings in Assam to win gallantry awards.... Whither pride?
The Army dubs them as ''aberrations''. Are these incidents just a case of the Army getting sucked into bad situations? Or, have standards of discipline and integrity in India’s last bastion of dignity and valour taken a beating? Has the general venality and corruption all around finally caught up with the man in olives as well?
If there is one word that could sum up all that ails the Indian Army today, ex-generals and senior officers would have you believe, it would be Kashmir. Peacetime is extracting a bigger toll than a full-fledged war, they say.
"The Army’s under tremendous strain because of its continuing involvement in internal operational duties and counter-insurgencies in Kashmir and the North-East. It would have broken any other army in the world," says former Army chief, Gen Shankar Roy Chowdhury, from Kolkata. Under such conditions — a very real threat from terrorists, combined with lack of rest and relief — the jawan is all ready to blow a fuse.
Among the defence services, the Army is the most hardpressed: at any given point, one-fourth of the 1.2 million-strong Army is in J&K and another one-fourth is bound for there. So half the Army, in effect, is involved in J&K operations. But there’s more to the problem than the K-word, say defence experts and analysts.
"Fighting against terrorists and fighting Pakistan are totally different ball games," agrees Pravin Sawhney, editor of Force, a monthly magazine on national security. But he sees something graver in these ‘stray’ incidents: a shaken confidence in the Chain of Command.
"What''s unique about any organisation that wears a uniform is the Chain of Command. Unlike civilians, they wear their rank on their shoulders, there’s no ambiguity about who’s senior, who’s junior. A jawan has to have confidence in his commanding officer, who in turn has to have confidence in his superior. "What’s happening now, he says, is that the chain of confidence is being shaken.
The reasons: increasingly less interactions with commanding officers, the quest for gallantry awards and a top brass that is getting politicised. "Everybody is too careful about maintaining their own record instead of looking after their juniors. So why should they respect their seniors?"asks Sawhney. "Someone has to revise the whole process of gallantry awards. More than preparedness against Pakistan, it’s the Army Chief’s duty to restore confidence in the Chain of Command."
While there are not many cases of indiscipline or bad morale on the frontline — which would be a sign of breakdown of the Chain of Command — there is an increasing lack of command and control at the mid-level, says Maj Gen (retd) Afsir Karim. "Senior Army officers have to think about tightening it. Man-management has to be a constant effort."
As a career option, too, the Army has taken a considerable beating: a large number of promising and brilliant officers opt for premature retirement, to take up alternate careers. The Army has been losing a sizeable portion of its manpower trained at great cost, causing a lot of concern, say insiders. A lot of jawans also refuse promotions so that they can retire after 16 years. There’s a continuing shortage of almost 12,000 officers, say sources.
Major (retd) R S Rana, 76, who joined the ranks in 1948 after doing his Indian Army special training at King George’s Royal Indian Military College, Jalandar, remembers the days when things were stricter and no one dared to say ‘no’. "Those were the days when the atmosphere in the Army was a British legacy. One didn’t dare disobey even someone who was just one rank senior. The punishment was severe. Where there is strict discipline there is bound to be law and order. And where there is laxity, there can be none."
Most agree that physical and moral discipline is no longer what it used to be. And that it’s for senior officers to set an example for juniors to follow.
"Basic training in the good old days was very strict,"recalls Rana. "It was drilled into our heads that orders were meant to be given and followed. That helped in making us disciplined soldiers — not merely while we served but even after retirement."
Perhaps that''s what the Army needs today. So that the jawan can walk with pride, wearing his ID on his sleeve.
(With inputs from Anjali Nauriyal, Dehradun)