Kurukshetra Training Area
Indian Army’s Air Defence College
The east coast of India

It is 8 am in mid-January but the training ground seems like a baked sheet of concrete under the scorching sun. If the 28 young women and men in the middle of the ground were not officers of the Indian Army, they would have preferred to laze on the tree covered beachfront close by.

But for these officers -- 9 women and 20 men -- between the ages of 21 and 25, this is part of a regular training day.

As only the second batch of women officers inducted in the Air Defence Regiment, the women are doing the gun drill with their male colleagues, part of the YOs or Young Officers course.

Dressed in fatigues and berets, their skin is tanned, and beads of perspiration cover their brow. With every crisp command of the Junior Commissioned Officer on the microphone, they do and redo the drill many times over on guns one only sees in battle scenes in the movies or at the Republic Day parade.

Reportage: Archana Masih. Photographs: Jewella C Miranda