COMMENTARY
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ARCHIVES

The Rediff Special/Major General Ashok K Mehta

Unsung coffins of soldiers are an insult to the army and a slur on the nation's conscience

The Fifth Pay Commission report has short-changed the armed forces, and the prime minister has let down the service chiefs.

The initial reaction to the FPC from the armed services ranged from "No comment" (due to an official gag order) to "Feeling let down" to a grudging, "Some of the demands have been met".

The hike in pay seems impressive, but is terrible when compared to a similar increase in other central services. Meetings attended by the service chiefs, the prime minister and defence minister allegedly took place soon after the award was announced, the latter claiming the chiefs were satisfied. In fact, the army chief was in the Northern Command.

One of the main hurdles for the armed forces was the composition of the FPC and its member secretary, M K Kaw, an Indian Administrative Services official. The Commission had no representative from the armed forces and the member-secretary has since been promoted to aviation secretary, having doggedly maintained the principle of civilian supremacy over the military.

So impressed with him were his two colleagues on the pay panel that they added to the report a seven-line citation: "His comprehensive knowledge, wide-ranging administrative experience and dynamic leadership..." The Commission had some eminent and mature members. It does them no credit that they allowed themselves to be led.

The civil services have always envied the military over its authorised (free) rations and batmen. The FPC tried to whittle down the ration by giving, in its place, the paltry government rate of Rs 19 per day as cash allowance. It is quite another matter that the quality of those rations for the amount sanctioned is so poor that service officers find themselves afflicted with high cholesterol and blood pressure.

The batman is an old military institution and cannot be matched by a 'telephone attendant' the IAS had sought. These are just two petty examples of IAS deviousness. Fortunately, the government has maintained the status quo.

Consider the prevalent internal situation in the country: the armed forces are fully embroiled and overstretched in low-intensity conflict in the North-East, proxy war in J&K and restoring law and order elsewhere -- all these at the cost of their operational efficiency against an external enemy.

In June alone, 74 coffins left anonymously through the cargo area of Delhi airport. The figure till date has risen to 94. This does not include bodies cremated in J&K and in the North-East. The soldiers dying fighting for the integrity of the country were being equated with police constables and given a field allowance of Rs 300 which took nearly eight years to be sanctioned.

By contrast, a civil servant transferring from one air-conditioned office in Delhi to another one in Dimapur will now get a dislocation allowance varying from 20 to 30 per cent of his salary.

But comparisons are unnecessary. The service career is unique though no longer enviable, especially in the troubled times that have befallen this country. Civil service rules cannot govern the service conditions which shape the life and future of a solider.

Two of the main reasons for the sharp increase in causalities during a proxy war are stress and decline in leadership. There is a shortage of nearly 13,000 officers in the army. It cannot be made up till the armed forces attract quality leadership. The stress factor is increasing. Soldiers are going berserk, shooting their own officers and men.

This too has a bearing on environment and leadership. Instead of attracting the right material for the forces, serving offices are seeking premature retirement, especially at the junior level, which represents the cutting edge of the army.

The FPC was expected to take cognisance of the unique nature of service life, its risks, hazards and turbulence and provide an adequate package of compensation matching sufficiently the lifestyle and ego of their peers in the civil and corporate services.

In short, a comprehensive remuneration, regard and respect package to boost the sagging image and morale of the army and attract quality leadership was the need of the hour. Such a deal is not easy to articulate within existing Indian service rules. So the short answer is to constitute a separate Armed Forces Pay Review Body.

In the meantime, it is instructive to recall the demands of the Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum to the government following the three-volume 2,054 page tome of the FPC. In a historic protest note, the service chiefs demanded the rationalisation of the Fixation and Fitment Formula, ensuring no further disturbance in relativity and equation of status, granting group status to the infantry solider, a risk and hazard allowance, restoration of integrated pay scales, trebling of rank pay, service and salary benefits at the military academy, a fair wage structure free from anomalies and a two-year age increase.

In the Fourth Pay Commission, the services had pointed out seven anomalies in the award. While three were rectified, four ambiguities remained in areas like assured career progression, status and relativity vis-a-vis civil and police services, compensation for risk and the demand for a separate AFPRB. These anomalies were not rectified and therefore carried over to FPC because in the anomalies committee, there was no representative from the armed forces. This is a glaring omission.

Kind courtesy: Sunday magazine

While all civilians can serve till 58 years, 80 per cent of servicemen retire earlier -- officers at 52 and the men at 35

Tell us what you think of this feature