A Viewpoint of an Officer - Perception of the Army

                                                                       An article by a serving Colonel

I was all of 48 yrs when I was superseded in my present rank. At a social-do, I was asked by this pretty girl, ‘Just 48, and the end of the road for you! What has Army really given you? You’ve never been paid well in the Army. And see what they have done to you now!’

I appraised her from top to bottom. I must confess she was a pretty sight. What I told her was this.

'Army, my dear, is a way of life. It is not about making a living. As far as supercession is concerned, lady, that is way of army life. You can’t complain just because your personal interest, as you perceive it, has not been looked after. Army has wonderful, time-tested evolved systems. You don’t fight personal battles for the heck of it. And it is about selfishness, dear – Service Before Self is our motto'..

Remember it is a Service (seva). There are no expectations of rewards in Seva, for Seva is considered its own reward. ‘What has Army given me?’, you asked. It has given me a glimpse and understanding of dimensions you, in the civil sector, can only wonder and feel over-awed about. Have you any idea of camaraderie?

When you see a soldier brave the shower of artillery shrapnel to rush to rescue his bleeding colleague just wounded in the shelling you KNOW the meaning of the word ‘camaraderie’. When you are lying in a hospital on a DI List, and there are 20 blood donors of your blood-group spending the cold night in the verandah of the hospital, just so that any emergency call for blood to save your life may be attended to, that is camaraderie. Camaraderie implies selfless help and support to someone who is not necessarily a friend.

You have to cross Banihal, my dear, to understand all this.

Do you know the holy significance of the word ‘command’? It is a sacred word. And who can know the meaning of it other than a person in uniform? Even the CEO of a Fortune 500 company can’t comprehend the significance of this sacred word. When you are in ‘command’ you are God. Can you comprehend what being God can be like? It is not about the authority, it is about responsibility. The authority comes into play after you have rendered your part of the deal of unflinching loyalty displayed towards your subordinates. Now when you signal him – not ask him or tell him or order him – to dash-down-crawl-observe- fire, and in the process subject himself to imminent death, he does so without a second thought. This is when you REALIZE what is so sacred about command. Even before you can move your hand to the door of the car/ gypsy, the driver jumps from his seat and beats you to the door, is what command gets you. Such are the rewards of command.

Do you know the meaning of ‘being a gentleman’? In the last thirty years in uniform one has witnessed a proliferation of designations in the civil environment. There have been Executive Officers, and there have been Managers – General Mangers, Assistant Managers, and a whole spectrum of them. There are CEOs and Vice Presidents. In the Army we have only ‘Officers’. Some are General Officers and some just Company Officers. Even at the induction level we have Young Officers. What it means to be an ‘Officer’ is something you can’t comprehend. Hollywood tried to bring about a differentiation, calling the phenomenon, ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’, little knowing that being a gentleman is inherent when you are an OFFICER.

Being a gentleman is his primary nature, not second-nature.

His behaviour is bhadra – i.e. kalyan-kaarak swabhav, guna, aur karma. Army imbibes this peculiar quality in us when we are as young as 17 to 20 years only. I’ll explain with an example. An officer once held the door open for a particular lady. She, trying to be smartly polite said, ‘You don’t have to hold the door open for me just because I’m a lady.’ He replied, ‘Ma’am, I’m not holding it for you because you are a lady, but because I’m a gentleman.’ We may appear to be ruthless egoists, but we are Enlightened Egoists.

In the corporate world have you ever come across the word ‘honour’? In uniform we serve only for honour, not the ‘package’. Naam, Namak, Nishan – are alien words in the corporate world. You know what it means to serve for honour? When a subordinate, who already has a bad ankle, is told of a mission which entails 12 hours of walk in the most rugged terrain; and when he expresses reservation on account of his current physical condition, is told that if we can’t do it, it will be a smudge on the regiment; AND THERE IS NO ONE TO REPLACE HIM. He says he’ll do his bit. He climbs 10 ropes ahead of everyone else only to find that there is no one behind him and the mission is thus called off. He reports from the top, only 5840m (nearly 20000 ft!), that he with two others of his team are on top and no one is in sight, either behind him or ahead (enemy). He comes back to the base two days later – and what an ankle he has! A swollen ankle with 10-inch girth!!! That is working for the honour.

Army has commanders at every level – langar commander, section commander/ detachment commander, platoon commander/troop commander, and up the chain to Brigade Commanders, and General Officers Commanding in Chief. The General Officers in command of field forces are the best in their league. What is implied by the term ‘commander’? Maybe something you in the corporate world will never get to know. To be a commander implies responsibility, complete responsibility. As a commander you are responsible for every dimension of your command – right from his morning cup of tea, his toilet facilities, his professional training, his mental makeup, his family’ well being and his spiritual requirements. In the Army we first train young boys, and now even young girls like you, to be an Officer and then to be a Commander, in that order. Can you get an idea, even an iota of it, Lady? Can you get a feel of why we feel distinctly proud, and display it, when we say, 'We in the Army'.
"Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance"

Higher Education – A National Curse

Education is said to be an answer for all social evils and I wonder how? The fundamental reason why one seeks education is to get employment and enhanced standard of living. As against this, education is only creating a frustrated India. Traditionally, due to limited numbers only the meritorious could enroll for higher education and eventually got jobs. The rest of them settled for vocations that best suited them and thus the country was endowed with both types of labor, white and blue collared. The present day pseudo education has changed the entire landscape of the labor market. Today, by making education reachable to all and sundry, the country is producing far more engineers, doctors and other graduates than that can be employed gainfully and privatized education has miserably lowered the standards making them disguised educated who are worthless to say the least.

The impact of this has been profound on the rural populace. With monsoons being erratic, thanks to climate change, a consequence of global warming, coupled with poor irrigation system even after 6 decades of planed economy, thanks to swindling of money meant for irrigation by vested interests, the rural community is disengaging from their primary occupation and want their children to get educated and seek employment in the cities. As a result, they sell everything in their possession, primarily land and cattle, to educate their children with a hope that they will get employment and take care of the family, though the reality is, such children barring exceptions, are just not employable in the private sector. That leaves them with the only choice of somehow getting into a government job and the supply-demand disparity has created enormous opportunity for corruption. Virtually every post is sold for a price and there is an informal auction that takes place. The ones who can afford get in and the others are left in the lurch. There are other indirect forms of corruption too. Every time there is a government examination, the trains overflow and the ticket collectors do brisk business at the cost of reserved passengers and even the AC coaches are not spared. Effectively, the family looses their priced possession in return for a pseudo educated child/children who can’t get employment and are not willing to do small jobs. While wealth has changed hands leaving the poor poorer, it has robbed the youth’s willingness of doing vocational jobs.

Here is some revealing statistics that appeared in the local news paper. Of the 14000 students admitted in engineering colleges affiliated to Nagpur University in 2009-10 only 4366 students took final year examination of which 3956 passed and shamelessly the university is boasting of 90% results. The reality is that almost 10,000 students fell by the wayside after spending a lot of money. The infrastructure of some of the engineering colleges are so pathetic that the High Court had to order a ban on them. One such institution belongs to former AICC General Secretary and minister in the Maharashtra government. 

These colleges attract rural students with 40-45% in standard XII and provide no teachers and conduct no classes. These institutions also share laboratory facilities with other institutions to optimize cost. Can such students studying in such third rate institutions can ever become employable engineers? As a result, on the one hand we get to see thousands of engineers, doctors and other graduates sitting at home waiting for a miracle to happen and on the other hand there are  large number of frustrated youth floating around directionless. As a consequence society struggles to get blue colored labor even for day to day maintenance work. 

I wonder how education has contributed to this country, except for developing a false pride with eventual frustration in the youth and creating wealth for the rich and the corrupt. Though late, thankfully this realization is gaining ground and hence these so called institutions of higher education are forced to shut shop. 

Hopefully, this will correct the labor market situation in the next few decades at least!!!!