Against all odds

The conditions in which the armed forces work and the government’s record of providing rightful benefits to their personnel leave much to be desired.

Members of the Ex-Short Service Commissioned Officers Society protesting at Jantar Mantar demanding One Rank One Privilege, in New Delhi on January 19.

Erich Maria Remarque’s masterpieceAll Quiet on the Western Front , about the reality of the First World War, makes a compelling case against wars. Its 19-year-old hero, Paul Baumer, realises that no matter who wins or loses, everyone is a victim of war. If only the classic was made compulsory reading in all schools, there would be no armies, and a nation’s leaders would instead fight out their disagreements with clubs, as suggested by Kropp, a soldier in the book. But since that is not the case, there are armies that face unimaginable brutality on the front lines while TV commentators and social media activists dress up nationalism and patriotism.

After the terrorist attack in Pulwama on February 14, the nation erupted in a warmongering furore, with mobs marching through the streets demanding vengeance. Several officers who had served in the military cautioned against such jingoism. In a WhatsApp post that went viral, an army wife posited an important reminder that when one calls for a war, it is neither the person calling for it nor the government that declares it that goes to war. “The soldiers do. Do you have any idea what it is like for the family of the soldiers, when they have to go to war? You declared that this act of terrorism needs to be avenged, the loss of lives of our soldiers need to be avenged. How? By sacrificing more soldiers?” she asked as she went on to list cogent reasons why war was not a viable option.

On February 14, the convoy of 78 vehicles carrying more than 2,500 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel, which began its journey from Jammu at dawn, was moving along the Jammu-Srinagar highway when just 30 kilometres outside Srinagar it was hit by the car bomb. The impact of the blast was felt two kilometers away. Some military experts pointed out that the movement of such a huge convoy had made it a sitting duck and that some standard operating procedures (SOP) might have been ignored.

To questions of whether the force could have been flown by air instead, Lieutenant General Satish Dua, who led the September 2016 “surgical strikes” against Pakistan, told Frontline that such ideas were utopian and logistically difficult to carry out. “The way we used to do it was to start very early in the morning, and before traffic on the roads picked up, by 8-8.30, we would have arrived at our destination. It is true that our armed forces need better vehicles, equipment, protection and other measures. But let’s not wish away our own drill. Some SOPs might have been ignored. Also, as there was some snow melting on the roads, the convoy may have been slower than usual.”

Be it the restive regions of Chhattisgarh or Kashmir, the casualty figures of CRPF personnel are high. From 2015 to 2018, as many as 122 CRPF personnel were killed in left-wing extremism (LWE) and terrorism-related violence, said Minister of State for Home Affairs Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, while responding to a question in the Lok Sabha. Officers of the armed forces concede that paramilitary forces such as the CRPF do not get adequate training as required for their difficult postings. With a demand for more troops to counter LWE or terrorism in different parts of the country, CRPF personnel are made to train with the police in various States. While the police are trained for maintaining law and order, CRPF troops need a different kind of training for counter-insurgency operations in unfamiliar terrain. But this fact is glossed over by policy implementers. Moreover, in 2011, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued an order to replace the term “paramilitary” with Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) to denote the CRPF, the Border Security Force (BSF), the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), thereby equating these forces not with the military but with the police.

Above all, the government has been denying the armed forces personnel their rightful claims of One Rank One Pension, disability pension and benefits under the Non Functional Financial Upgradation (NFFU) scheme. For many years, the government fought the CAPFs in courts to deny them the benefits of NFFU as recommended by the 6th Central Pay Commission. According to the NFFU scheme, if an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer got empanelled with the Central government with an upgraded pay, then all other organised Group A officers equivalent to his position would receive higher salaries and perks despite continuing to work at the same position as before.

While NFFU was meant for the IAS, and the Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Services, CAPFs were left out on the pretext that these services were not organised Group A services. On February 5, the protracted legal battle over NFFU came to a close when the Supreme Court upheld the High Court order granting the status of organised Group A services to CAPFs. The petitions by the government opposing this were summarily dismissed by the Bench comprising Justices Rohinton Fali Nariman and M.R. Shah.

For years, personnel who suffered injuries while on duty have been entangled in legal battles with the government. The physical and psychological trauma faced by the civilian population in Kashmir owing to the presence of the military in their midst has been well documented. The armed forces personnel have not been immune to psychological pressures in the constant war zone that the region has become. Take the instance of Sepoy Suraj Bhan of the Punjab Regiment who was part of the counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir. He developed psychosis owing to the stress and strain of military service. He was removed from service without any pension on the grounds that his disability had no relationship with military service. He was left in the lurch, nursing a severe psychiatric condition.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court directed the government to release his disability pension by ruling that there was a presumption of service connection when a soldier developed a disability during service from the inherent stress and strain of military life. The court said this was provided in the rules too. But despite this, the government appealed against the decision before a Division Bench of the High Court and then in the Supreme Court, which finally dismissed the government’s appeal. There are more than 1,000 such cases where the government appealed against the release of pension to soldiers who suffered on duty.

It took an attack like the one in Pulwama to stir the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to announce that it would withdraw all appeals in the Supreme Court against the granting of disability pension to soldiers. Despite it being an election promise by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for four and a half years its government did not stop pursuing cases against the soldiers and even as late as July 2018 the MoD filed appeals.

Lieutenant General Vijay Oberoi, former Vice Chief of the Army Staff, lost his leg in the 1965 war. In order to offset medical subjectivity which resulted in grant of varied disability benefits for similar disabilities (varied percentages of disabilities assessed by different medical boards), the 5th Central Pay Commission recommended that those with less than 50 per cent disability would be granted the benefit of disability pension/war injury pension calculated at 50 per cent rates, those with disability between 50 per cent and 75 per cent disability would be granted benefits at 75 per cent rates, and those above 75 per cent disability at 100 per cent rates. The MoD denied Oberoi, who was 70 per cent disabled, this benefit on the grounds that it could only be given to those who were medically boarded out and not to those who were retired or reaching retirement age. He filed a case with the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) for enhancement to 75 per cent. Even though the AFT ruled in his favour, the government challenged the verdict in the Supreme Court.

Disability pensions

The MoD under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) filed close to 900 cases on similar lines against disabled soldiers, and the Ministry under the BJP continued with the cases. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed 900 appeals filed by the government on the subject. Even after Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement with regard to the same, it remains to be seen, given the past record of the Ministry, how the disbursal of disability pension happens on the ground.

In the case of Lila Singh, who was badly injured in 1994 while proceeding from his regiment to his village on Night Pass, the Defence Accounts Department did not release his disability pension despite the statutory Court of Inquiry attributing the disability to military service. He won the case in 2012, but the MoD filed an appeal in the Supreme Court, which was dismissed in 2015. The government sanction order was issued recently on the basis of a contempt petition he filed three years after the Supreme Court order, but the amount is yet to be disbursed to him.

Advocate Navdeep Singh, founder president of the AFT, who campaigned to get the government to stop fighting the soldiers entitled for disability pension, said, “This provides closure to a very emotive issue. It is well known and universally recognised how the stress and strain of military service, a regimented lifestyle away from the family and inability to effectively cater to domestic commitments result in aggravation of existing physical and mental conditions of women and men in uniform.”

When this journalist visited the disputed India-Pakistan border of Sir Creek with the BSF in 2009, she was pulled aside by jawans at the outposts in Kutch, Gujarat, who showed her the pathetic conditions in which they had to live. “Why don’t you write about this? Maybe it will help improve our conditions,” they said pointing to a shack that was open to the vagaries of the weather, with little or no space for rest. It was built to be uncomfortable, so that the soldier would not be tempted to relax more than was deemed necessary, they explained. When asked about this, senior officers of the BSF shrugged their shoulders and said matter-of-factly that it was part of the job and everyone had to go through the grind.

The consequences of pointing out shortcomings, however legitimate, in the military and paramilitary can be severe. In January 2017, BSF constable Tej Bahadur Yadav, who was posted in Poonchh district of Jammu and Kashmir, was seen complaining in videos about the bad quality of the food served to the troops. He also said that senior officers sold food supplies meant for soldiers. His videos went viral, forcing the BSF to initiate an inquiry and the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office to take note of the matter. But after three months of proceedings, Tej Bahadur Yadav was sacked from service on charges of making false allegations. A year after the incident, the BSF commissioned the Defence Research and Development Organisation to make an assessment of the food served to personnel of the paramilitary.

Preparedness

Conditions of military and paramilitary forces, preparedness of the battalions that operate out of difficult terrains, and drawbacks in resources and infrastructure are seldom discussed by the Indian media lest it lower the morale of the troops. But the truth is that despite the funds allocated to defence, the standard of preparedness needs to be maintained. The interim Union Budget presented by stand-in Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on February 1 allocates Rs.4,31,011 crore to the Ministry of Defence. Of this, Rs.3,01,866 crore, or 70 per cent, is earmarked for what is termed the defence budget.

In Establishing India’s Military Readiness, Concerns and Strategy, published by the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, Brigadier Harinder Singh, who was commanding a brigade in the Western Sector in 2011, stated that India had since long pursued what was called a policy of “defence preparedness” and this perhaps needed to make way for a more nuanced policy of “military readiness” to meet the unforeseen military challenges of the future. Historically, India has dealt with internal unrest and insurgencies by employing manpower-intensive techniques instead of technology. Consequently, its approach to preserving internal security has not been as effective because the technology to supplement counter-insurgency operations is lacking, he said.

“[In Kashmir] growing instances of public unrest and disaffection are a cause of concern. Maintaining large counter-insurgency forces cuts India’s ability to acquire conventional war-fighting capabilities. Here India might have to make painful choices between the conventional and sub-conventional force levels because of the gravity of its internal security commitments in the future,” he wrote. In order to minimise casualties on the front lines and boost the morale of the forces, the political leadership will have to heed the advice of the likes of Brig. Harinder Singh.