The enemy within

In 1994, six Indian soldiers serving with the UN forces in Somalia were killed in an ambush. At the Indira Gandhi International Airport, th...

In 1994, six Indian soldiers serving with the UN forces in Somalia were killed in an ambush. At the Indira Gandhi International Airport, their bodies were received only by their families and Army officers.

Not a single representative of the government was there to pay his respects, to pay the debt of honour that the State owes to the men who protect its interests with their lives. The attitude that the government revealed then has not changed in the three years since. It still refuses to acknowledge its debt to the men who lay down their lives in Siachen and Jammu and Kashmir, or in the North-East. Their last rites are performed by friends, colleagues and family, without the State honours that should accompany them.

And their passing is noted only in the personal columns of the newspapers, again at the initiative of family and friends. While the success of Border does indicate that people respect men in uniform, they are robbed of that respect by State indifference.

The incident in Jammu and Kashmir in which a jawan went berserk and shot his own officer is only one of the more obvious results of this indifference.

Cut off from the rest of the nation and restricted by their own terms of service, the jawan has always depended on the support of the government to see him through everyday problems. A letter from the commanding officer to a district magistrate was enough to settle a property problem back home. When he went on leave, his railway warrant was all he needed to get a good berth.

Today, the letters go unanswered, and ticket-examiners need to be bribed. Pay packets which have not kept pace with inflation spell poor savings, and pensions are patently insufficient to live on. After all, they retire at a comparatively young age.

Besides, over the last 15 years, the Army has been deployed on duties for which it was never intended. The job of dealing with insurgency and border infiltration is that of the central police organisations and the Border Security Force. The Army is intended for deployment in open war with external aggressors, not low-intensity conflicts within our borders.

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By handing these functions over to the Army, the government has shown its lack of confidence in its other security organisations. Yet it continues to bankroll them while the Army, after dealing with capital account expenses, has very little of its budget left over for upgrading facilities or increasing preparedness. Having denied the soldier security, a family life, a decent standard of living and the backing that a professional needs, the government adds insult to injury by denying him dignity. It is hardly surprising that servicemen no longer send their children into the Army. The government regularly moans that the Army has become the refuge of the nation8217;s underachievers, but it only has itself to blame for this situation.

In fact, unless it starts to betray some signs of appreciation, the Army will soon become a sort of French Foreign Legion, with entry restricted to the jetsam of society. And finally, the Indian soldier will become a stranger in a strange land.