Is the Mass Exodus a Sign of Systemic Collapse?

Few subjects demand as much continual questioning, appraisal and review as do the policies and performance with regard to manning the armed forces. At a time when sophisticated technologies, forward deployments and rapid responses are indelible facts of national security, military preparedness depends critically on forces-in-being. One can augment those forces rapidly in time of emergency, but a credible defence begins with the ability of a nation to steadily attract and retain the men and women who would assume the initial burden of a fast breaking war. For this the country depends on the size of the youth population and in the sense, on demographics set in motion eighteen to twenty years ago. According to a written reply to Lok Sabha by defence minister A K Antony in Mar 2011, "the extent of shortage of officers is around 12,349 in the Army, 1,818 in the Navy and 837 in the Air Force. The shortage of pilots in the Air Force is about 426." This figure was 11,238, 1,339 and 1,528 respectively in 2007. To make the matter worse the vacancies are all in the Lt Col and equivalent ranks of the three services who actually lead troops into war and counter insurgency operations. It is evident from the above that even with the population of over one billion in the country the armed forces are finding it difficult to recruit the required number of youth as Commissioned Officers. More alarming is also the fact that a large numbers of those who join the armed forces want to leave prematurely and many continue indifferently even though they have no promotional prospects.

The selection system of the armed forces has traditionally been assessing the person-organization fit based on technical skills and personality traits. The process is very elaborate and yet what perplexes is that a person selected after thorough scrutiny and trained extensively looses interest in the job and wishes to leave prematurely. Questions that beg for an answer are (a) what trigger the turnover intention? (b) Is it the personal values that are in conflict with that of the organization? or (c) Is it that the organizational values as perceived at the time of their entry were different than how it is perceived after joining These questions assume greater significance to the armed forces because personnel hiring in most cases is for life and once joined it is not easy to leave. This means a person who joins the armed forces but does not feel motivated will have to maintain organizational membership irrespective of his motivation and thus he is likely to exhibit less commitment. Is it desirable?

Since I was one such officer sitting on the fence for over 10 years decided to undertake an empirical research to unravel the truth. Having served in the selection system, I knew for sure that there is a conflict of values that are espoused and promoted in the armed forces. Hence, I choose to examine this hypothesis scientifically. I asked 220 officers of the Indian Navy of three branches namely Executive, Technical and Administrative and across three service tenures i.e. 1-7, 8-16 and 16+ years to rate a value taxonomy on a seven point scale firstly, as to how important the 24 values in the taxonomy are to them as a guiding principal in their life and secondly, how they perceive these values to be promoted in the organization. The results were indeed revealing. It was seen that across the spectrum, officers attached great importance to just 4 of the 24 values namely Openness, Fairness, Logic and Moral Integrity. This goes to prove that the selection system is by far selecting the right material whose guiding principles in life are fairness, openness, logic and moral integrity. However, their perception of how these values are promoted in the organization said it all. Once again across the board they feel that the organization promotes these values to much lesser extent. What does this imply?

It is a well established fact in psychology that a person placed at odds with his values will not be comfortable and the turnover intention will set in or he may continue to maintain organizational membership for lack of other opportunities or for his investment in the organization which may be important like waiting to earn his pension etc. Does it surprise anyone now as to why so many officers wish to leave the armed forces prematurely and also why so many continue regardless of their progress in the organization. For complete details of the research work you may like to read my book “Values, Organizational Commitment and Job Satisfaction – An Empirical Evidence” listed on Amazon.com.  

The Beginning of an End

Incidents of corruption, malfeasance, fake encounters, indiscipline, etc from one end of the country to the other and right across the rank structure, suggest that all is not well with our armed forces. Recently a junior commissioned officer was caught on camera accepting wads of currency notes for various class ‘D’ jobs at the National Defence Academy near Pune with a colonel operating in the background. A maj-general was caught red-handed taking money from a contractor in J&K. Earlier we had the case of Sukna land scam where a few Lt-Generals were involved. The DG, Supply Corps, a Lt-General rank officer was court-martialled on charges of corruption. A few very senior officers of the Army and the Navy are involved in the Adarsh housing society scam. Definitely these are not cases of aberration as being suggested by senior brass but a sure case of falling standards. This article examines the issues that are causing such widespread rot within the military echelons.

Intake of Officers

Looking back at the history, potential military officers were traditionally picked up at an early stage of their life when they are still impressionable. Till the 70s, the entry level qualification for the NDA was 11^th and not 12^th. These young boys were then put through rigorous military training for four years before they were made officers. These four years of grueling training instilled in them the way of military life and the spirit of soldiering. Since this happened at a tender age of 16 to 20 the habits learnt then never died or died hard and thus the military officers of the yester years exhibited standard behavior patterns characterized by dignity, decency, discipline, compassion, forthrightness, integrity, honesty etc. Later on, to meet the growing requirement of officers the military decided to take university graduates and cut down their training to just about one year. This shortcut was apparently done as a cost cutting measure. In the early 90s this was further diluted by taking graduates directly from the campus for short service commission and further reducing their training to just about 24 to 28 weeks. Going by the theory of psychology, the personality of a person begins to form early in life and the development continues till about the age of 21 and thereafter it is very difficult to change the basic set of a person. By bringing full grown adults from the civil streets who have imbibed the values of civilian life and putting them through abridged training of just one year or less was the biggest folly of the military system. This is not to suggest that all graduate entry / short service commission officers are bad. It is just that the military way of life requires a certain indoctrination which can essentially be done only at a young age and over long years of training. All those who are getting ready to shoot me down, please hold your horses. I am sure a lot of you must be wishing to suggest that most of the tainted officers are the so called thorough bred which may even be true but there are several other reasons for the same which are discussed subsequently. Some may wonder why the selection system could not weed out bad elements in the first place? This brings me to the next point i.e. the selection process.   

Selection Process

The selection system looks for 15 Officer Like Qualities uniformly in all the candidates irrespective of the entry / service tenure. The selection threshold is the same for both NDA and graduate entry candidates with a very minor consideration for training duration. Hence, in a way we believe that the university graduates are readymade officer material who requires just a military orientation course of about 24 weeks before being made an officer. This is far from true and one can imagine the value system of the present generation coming from the civil streets where corruption is a way of life. All those who still believe that the Armed Forces is attracting bright candidates must know that most engineers who come for SSB have had backlogs and could not manage a campus placement. With talented youth shying away from the forces and the shortage increasing to alarming proportions, the selection system was gradually brought under pressure. The top brass started focusing on the numbers and the dictate is quite clear - ‘milk the bull’.  

Traditionally, of the 15 officer like qualities, 6 qualities were identified as core qualities which are very difficult to train. These qualities are power of expression, social adjustment, cooperation, sense of responsibility, liveliness and courage. Later, power of expression was removed from this list and the other five were taken seriously. At the selection stage while all the other qualities are required at a level of 7 in a scale of 10, these five qualities were required at a level of 6 owing to their importance and more often than not otherwise good candidates were dropped for weaknesses in one of these five qualities. However, under pressure to meet the numbers the Defence Institute of Psychological Research (DIPR) proposed a theory without empirical basis, that all qualities are equally trainable and the organizational top brass started hammering on the selectors to clear candidates who are rated 7 in the core qualities too. Now imagine the conduct of a candidate rated 7 in ‘sense of responsibility’ and put through just one year or even less of training and commissioned as an officer.

Though there are three pronged assessment at the services selection boards comprising of psychologist, interviewing officer and the group testing officer (GTO), the characteristics of each of this community needs a mention. The psychologists are mostly civilian scientists of the DRDO who may lean with the dictates of the DIPR. The interviewing community is the senior lot occupying the positions of Centre Commandant, President or the Dy. President of the selection centre/boards. They are accountable to the headquarters for the numbers and are most gullible. The GTO community comprises of youngsters who defy the baseless dictate of equal trainability of all qualities and when it comes to core qualities they seldom budge and thus have been publically branded as a ‘pack of hounds’ by one of the former centre commandants of major-general rank and I am proud to have been one such hound. It is therefore not surprising that a vast majority of candidates who pass at the SSB are actually cleared by two assessors only and more often than not such candidates are held back by the GTO / Psychologists. In many cases candidates cleared by single assessor also find their way into the Academy because the academies are under subscribed. While I can quote statistics on this, I feel it suffices to make this point.

The Navy found a better way of putting the ‘hounds’ in place. During my tenure at the services selection board, I was once called up by a senior officer heading the manpower planning and recruitment directorate at New Delhi to remind me that I have not cleared a single candidate in five consecutive batches as if it is mandatory to do so irrespective of the quality. The signal was clear that I am being watched and that I must wakeup. I was retiring by then and hence it did not matter to me much. But, I wonder what must be happening to the ones who have to stay in that billet as their children are studying in various classes and need stability. He was also instrumental in getting more assessors trained through coercive means and after I retired, I learnt that all officers who have a low selection rate are being replaced by the pool of new assessors created for the purpose. Now the present state is, all those who liberally clear candidates stay for six to seven years in the selection system and those who do not clear candidates or assessors in the making are replaced. Thus, quality has completely been compromised for by quantity. Hence, what we get to see in the media now is only a precursor of a major collapse of the system in the offing. 

Proximity to Civil Society

Traditionally military officers lived within the cantonments which were located far away from the city and their lives were confined to their units/regiments. The media was not as pervasive as it is now. Hence, they could retain their uniqueness as their behaviors were reinforced by similar behaviors of others in the unit/regiment. However, urbanization has brought the city closer to the cantonments and in some cases has even engulfed the entire cantonment thus enhancing the interaction of people from the armed forces with civil society. In the past officers’ mess used to be a happening place but now it wears a deserted look. Young officers prefer to go out, meet their friends from the civil streets, share notes on their pay and perks and starts believing that their friends in the civil streets are far better and thus the disgruntlement starts. Such interactions between the spouses result into ugly comparisons and often the men in uniform get beaten down and the ‘race for more’ begins. The only piece of supremacy that the spouses of officers that too only Army Officers get to flaunt to their civilian counterpart is the ‘sahayaks’ (servants) which too is proposed to be replaced now.

Exposure to Bureaucracy

The exposure to bureaucracy is the most damaging of all. The moment a military officer is posted at Integrated Headquarters or anywhere near a bureaucrat, he loses his self image. I was once offered a below scale accommodation by the Station Commander (Naval Commodore) even when a house of my scale was available in the station because he wanted to offer that house to the Financial Advisor from the IDAS cadre who had not even reported to the station and had just 2 years of service whereas I had 19 years of service. If this is what the uniformed people do to show you down, one can imagine what these bureaucrats must be doing?

Towards the fag end of my career, I happened to visit the house of an IAS officer who was keen in mating our dogs. I was firstly not invited inside the house and was dealt with in the sit out itself. Secondly, there were at least half a dozen official servants in the house and two official cars parked at the garage. He had 6 different dogs and two maids just to look after them. Interestingly, his present wife was formerly married to an army Brigadier whom she dumped to marry this IAS officer the second time over.  

When the uniformed person sees the position being flouted and misused in the name of perks across the entire spectrum of babudom, he wonders why should he be left behind and this gradually leads him to corrupt practices. Over time when the junior officers see their seniors behaving this way and calling it their rank privilege they start emulating the same and thus form rank privileges at every level which then becomes the norm. Thus, the rot flows down from top to the bottom.

When I reported to the Selection Centre Central in 2008, we were given a small shanty (erstwhile horse stables) as temporary accommodation. We lived there for nearly six months with half a dozen buckets positioned strategically inside the house to prevent ingress of rain water. It was indeed subhuman. On the other hand lakhs were spent on decorating and furnishing the Commandant’s official house each year as part of his rank privilege. I once proposed in the general body meeting that these temporary accommodations be done up from the centre resources if not through MES to which the Commandant delivered a good moral lecture on probity.

Growing Tolerance to Corruption and Misconduct

During my service career, I had once officially put up my Commanding Officer for initiating a false citation for an officer to ensure that he is promoted to the next higher rank. Naïve that I was, I expected the system to pin him down and bring him to books. But nothing of that sort happened. I even wrote to the Chief of the Naval Staff then because I thought ‘breach of trust’ was the worst crime that a military leader could ever commit. Though the then Chief made tall claims, nothing happened on ground. Eventually, these officers were promoted and one is a Vice Admiral now and the other a Commodore waiting to be a Rear Admiral and I retired as a Commander. Incidentally, both the then C-in-C of the command and the Chief of the Naval Staff who ignored my complaint are now named in the Adarsh Scam. Also, the wrongly promoted officer was shunted out overnight by at least two C-in-Cs in the past for his extraordinary caliber but none decided to sack him. It is a clear case of lack of will to bring corrupt officials to books and this happens because the senior officers have no moral standing themselves as their own conduct is questionable.

The leniency also has a reflection on the class system within and the culture of coterie that is rampant in the forces. There is a distinct class system within the armed forces and each class strives to protect its own flock. Some of the most well known clans are the alumni of Rashtriya Indian Military College, Sainik School, Military School and the National Defence Academy. The allegiance and loyalty to their clan, forces the seniors to ignore the telltales and even major acts of omissions and commissions which results in the unscrupulous elements grow bolder.

When there is dilution in the conduct of officers, there is no way to keep the men in check. No wonder a unit at Nyoma in Ladakh revolted against officers leading to physical fights between them. While the Army may hush it up and call it an aberration, I have no doubt that such incidents will only become much more frequent and eventually the system will crumble sooner than later. I know many senior officers will brand me as ‘disgruntled’ but that is fine with me.  

May god protect our nation!!!

My Personal Experience with the RTI Act

I decided to quit the Indian Navy for the second time in 2010 and submitted my resignation in May 2010 for release in Mar 2011. As per the so called ‘resettlement scheme’ of the Armed Forces, I had applied in May 2010, for a course at IIM Ahmadabad commencing in Oct 2010. However, the Navy decided not to grace me and kept the decision on my release pending till Feb 2011 causing severe anguish to me and my family. It forces me in Oct 2010, to seek some uncomfortable information through the RTI Act in an attempt to draw their attention towards my pending application. As expected, the RTI made the magical impact and soon enough they took a decision to release me. However, I decided not to give up on my quest to know some of the well forgotten secrets and the urge to expose the buried skeletons grew stronger.  

As expected, the Indian Navy initially did not provide any meaningful information and blocked/scuttled it through their malicious ways. It soon became a tussle of sorts and I started sending appeals to the Chief Information Commission. One such RTI application initiated in Oct 2008 was to get information on the Redressal of Grievance submitted by me to my superiors in 2002. There was a sudden lull as the Navy chose not to respond. After a month, I appealed to the appellate authority and again there was complete silence. After allowing for reasonable time to respond, in Mar 2011, I sent the second appeal to the Chief Information Commission which was finally heard on 06 Jul 2012 along with all my other cases, after I wrote a letter to the Chief Information Commissioner threatening to go public.

Digression from the issue, I would like to point out that the appeal at the CIC took 16 months to be heard. This is an apt example of how the bureaucracy establishes unaccountability for itself. Without doubt the RTI Act must have been drafted / vetted by some bureaucrat before it was enacted. While the Act stipulates a stringent 1 month period for the Public Information Officer and the Appellate Authority, the act does not stipulate any time frame for hearing the appeals at the CIC. I am sure the job of PIO is far more difficult and time consuming as he has to coordinate with various departments to provide information whereas the Information Commissioner heard five of my cases in just about 45 minutes and yet it took him 16 months to do that with no one questioning this delay. Further, the notice of hearing dated 16 Jun 2012 was received by me on 04 Jul 2012 through speed post, when the hearing was slotted for 06 Jul 2012. When the appellant has provided his email address in the application, I wonder why the notice of hearing could not have been sent through e-mail. I could have at least saved Rs 13,000/- spent on flight tickets.  

Coming back to the RTI application, after about 22 months of my seeking the information the Chief Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the Indian Navy claimed to have forwarded the application to the Public Information Officer at Southern Naval Command whose is responsible to reply in this case. Interestingly, there is no record of any such communication with me or the CIC. The CIC did initiate a letter to the CPIO in May 2012 (after 14 months of my second appeal) asking as to why the Indian Navy is not responding and to this there has been no reply and the CPIO claimed to have not received this letter even though it was sent by speed post. It was a clear case of malaise and yet the CIC did not impose any penalty. The act has a penal clause wherein if the PIO does not provide information within one month he/she can be asked to pay a penalty proportionate to the delay, which will be recovered from his/her personal salary. In my case while both the CPIO and the Appellate Authority did not provide any information for so long, it did not attract any penalty. This is another example of callousness with which the bureaucrats function. No wonder the law and order in our country is so poor. Taking a casual stance, the Information Commissioner ordered the Indian Navy to provide relevant information within 4 weeks and disposed off the case. To my utter surprise, I was later told, off the record, that my application was stalled by the person who was occupying a senior position at the Southern Naval Command then, against whom the original Redressal of Grievance was initiated.

While, I am determined to dig the truth out even if it means flying to Delhi a hundred times, I wonder what is the use of such Act for a common man? This is a classic example of how the bureaucracy fails every policy in this country and then they boast of their brilliance. Unless the intent is one of public good their brilliance can only prove to be a curse to our society. 

The Plight of Teachers in India

I have been reading the views of Shri Darda, Education Minister in the Government of Maharashtra in the local news papers, who is concern about teachers taking private tutions which according to him is immoral and he promises to chase this practice out. While it is very moralistic of the minister to take such a stand, I urge him to take note of this article and at least realign his views on the subject, if not initiate action against the real culprits.

Firstly, let us consider school education. I have a school in my neighborhood which is well known in the entire country for the notoriety of its students. They have a pre-primary section with a fee structure of Rs 2500/- PM and each class has a strength of about 35 students. They hire two teachers per class and a maid to assist the teachers. As against a monthly revenue of Rs. 87,500/- from this class, they pay a meager sum of Rs 9000/- per teacher and Rs. 3000/- to the maid, a total of Rs 21,000/- per month.  According to the CBSE scales, they are suppose to get at least Rs. 16,000/-+perks. In order to maintain the standard of the school, they hire qualified and experienced teachers with a promise that they will review their salary after one year of probation but the probation never ends. There are teachers in this school working for the last four years and are still on probation. The teachers on probation are not issued any appointment letters and this school hires at least a dozen teachers each year for the pre-primary section alone because the old teachers after waiting for their rightful dues, leave the organization in disgust and this is not a stray incident but a norm in the school education sector, barring a very few. I wonder how one can expect honest work from teachers?             

Let us now look at higher education like the Engineering and MBA. The situation here is even more pathetic. There is a norm laid down by the AICTE with regard to salaries, appointment etc and each institution is required to maintain a certain student-teacher ratio and there are also norms for the ratio of junior vs. senior professors. However, most institutions do not fulfill this norm. They resort to hiring fresh pass outs who are available at throw away prices. Some institutions even hire their own students who could not get a campus placement. Engineering and MBA teachers are paid as little as Rs 10,000/- PM as against Rs 35000/- (Approx) as per 6^th pay commission. Most institutions do not even have a Director/Principal because the Honorable High Court ruled in a case, that in view of the acute shortage of senior faculties in the country, it is possible that some institutes do not get Professors and Principals but such institutions may still have students and thus in the interest of these students the institutions cannot be penalized for not meeting the faculty norms. Exploiting this ruling the institutions now advertise every six months but do not appoint any Professors / Principals and their usual plea is that they are still in the lookout for a suitable senior faculty. In many cases the institutions are also resorting to appointing faculties on paper. To curb this practice AICTE introduced recording the thumb impressions of the appointed candidates. But the institution owners are so ingenious that they have a counter measure for every such measure. All such ‘on paper’ faculties are paid a monthly honorarium for their services off the record and a hefty salary on record which is taken back each month through post dated cheques. Under such circumstances, I wonder how we can ensure integrity of this supposedly ‘beacon of light’ of the society i.e. the teaching community.

The actual situation on ground today is that while freshers are getting teaching jobs easily, there are no takers for the seniors and experienced ones because the institutions do not wish to pay and the regulators do not wish to question. I wonder under the given circumstances how education in this country will ever improve and how teachers can be expected to behave morally. No wonder the present generation of students don’t respect the teaching community.

One of my professional friends who is a Director in a leading management institution owned by a politician, recently shared his intent of quitting the job because he has been issued a show cause notice for not implementing 6^th pay commission norms in his institution when they have sufficient admissions and are charging exorbitant fees from the students. When he went to face the AICTE with the logic given by his management, he was asked by the AICTE to give an undertaking in a stamp paper to the effect that they will implement 6^th pay commission norms with the next academic session. However, the management agreed to introduce the new scales only on paper. Fearing that this may lead him into trouble later, he decided to quit. I wonder at the rationale of the AICTE of taking an undertaking from an employee of the organization instead of the employer. Obviously, the employers are mostly politicians, sitting MLAs/MPs and even Ministers.

The exploitation does not end here. Given the cutthroat competition in the educational industry, young teachers are necessarily hired for their ability to get new admissions more than their ability to teach. Shri. Darda must know that tuition teachers command higher salary as faculty because they are likely to get new admissions for the institution. Many institutions even have an incentive scheme for teachers who get admissions and this can be as high as Rs 15,000/- per candidate depending on the fee structure of the institution. I wonder if it is right to blame the teaching community, most of who have been converted into touts by the system.

I am sure we all know where the fault lies and if anything needs to be done it is at the institution level instead of conditioning the weak, which has been an age old tradition of this country.