Lest we forget

Sobbing wives, broken mothers, stoic fathers, bewildered children. Lists of the dead. Flag-draped coffins of officers and jawans coming home. With unrelenting regularity, these tragic images of the Kargil conflict fill the nation8217;s consciousness. As the last bugle sounds, TV came-ras pick up the ineffable sorrow of the moment, its microphones record a brave soundbite, newspaper reporters are at hand. A father says, 8220;My son died for the motherland, that8217;s enough for me.8221; A young widow looks at her four-year-old and whispers, 8220;When he grows up, he too will defend the nation like his father.8221; Glowing tributes about the sup-reme sacrifice that the dead man made fill the air. For that moment at least, there is a public recognition of a very personal loss.

The question really is, what happens when the gaze shifts to the next felled warrior, and the next, and the next? What becomes of the nation8217;s concern over the death of a particular major or a particular jawan? Does it get translated into significantmeasures of relief or will the inscrutable ways of the bureaucracy conspire to make a mockery of a nation8217;s sympathy? After all, there are veterans of the 1971 war who still complain about how the pledges made to them were broken. Will the families of those who sacrifice their lives at Kargil today express these same frustrations two decades later? These are questions that the co-untry must answer and do so right now. Politicians are always anxious to cash in on the moment and make grandiose announcements of ex-gratia payments, promises which they may or may not keep. There is need to go beyond these ad hoc pledges and put a system of relief in place that is both viable and easy to access. Many questions regarding compensation require clarification. For instance, since war has not officially been declared, will the families of soldiers engaged in the action in the Kargil, Drass and Batalik sectors receive the compensation due to war casualties, which is considerably more than that given when soldiers arekilled or disabled during peacetime? It is over technicalities like this that many are deprived of what is justly due to them.

While both the Central and state governments provide compensation measures, the onus of rehabilitating these families ultimately rests with the state from which the officer or jawan came from. Some states have proved far more sensitive to the issue than others. Not surprisingly Punjab, as a border state, with its close realtionship to the armed forces, is one of them. It had put an enhanced compensation regime in place long before the Kargil flashpoint. What8217;s more, it has rightly dispensed with the distinction that has traditionally been made between an officer, a JCO and a jawan and now sanctions an ex-gratia grant of Rs 2 lakh to the next of kin of all those killed in Jamp;K. Besides this, a member of the slain soldier8217;s family is entitled to a government job as well. The loss of a life is incalculable. No compensation package, no matter how handsome, can replace it. But it is,nevertheless, an important token of the deep gratitude that the country owes to a person who has laid down his life for it. Like the Amar Jyoti 8212; or the eternal flame that lights the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Capital 8212; this gratitude must remain eternally alive.