Cantt do spirit

Perhaps it is finally time for a stock-taking of the relationship between cantonments and the armys actual operations,and how one affects the other. Certainly,the structures we see today might have made sense,once especially for a regime that needed to be watchful against the people it ruled. British garrisons were explicitly created to protect the factories,ships,offices and residences of the East India Company and,later,imperial interests in the days of the Great Game. Their location says it all erupting like blisters across north India after the 1857 war of independence,everywhere colonial power felt most besieged.

Independent India needs to start the conversation: is what we need a limber,mobile army,close to potential flashpoints? Or a force scattered across the country in deference to history and tradition?