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!!!