Where Only Brother Officers Close Ranks

Now that it is caught in an unpleasant glare, the Indian Army has decided to do away with the ‘sahayak’ system in non-combat zones and will employ citizens for menial tasks for officers. Will the officers respond with professionalism?

Long before selfie videos by jawans jolted soc­ial media, an army commando once with the Nati­onal Security Guard (NSG), had opened up on the ‘sahayak’ system. Though Lance Naik R. Murugan was a decorated commando, it was only when he was deputed to the NSG that he realised his hopes for a soldier’s life. “The training helped me realise what I was capable of as a soldier. I was not asked to walk officers’ dogs...escort their wives when they went shopping or become a waiter when they partied,” he had said.

In 2008, a parliamentary standing committee on defence denounced the practice as shameful. Then defence minister A.K. Anthony had also told Parliament that the Indian Army HQ had issued orders to officers to not misuse the system. When he was army chief, Gen (retd) V.K. Singh proposed to do away with sahayaks in non-conflict bases.

The sahayak is a remnant of the ‘batman’ and ‘buddy’ system of the old Royal Indian Army. A soldier was assigned to assist each officer during war. The ‘batman’ (from bat-horse man) was to tend to his needs in the camp, including maintaining his weapons, kit bag and so on. During missions, he assisted him so that the officer spent optimal time on operational priorities. Though the officer-servant undertones worked in the highly feudal, class-ridden structures in which old Eur­opean armies existed, the practice has continued in the Indian Army.

The Air Force and the Navy abolished the practice earlier; the Army has also now started the process to replace 10,000 soldiers serving as sahayaks in non-operational areas.

The sahayak system is but one example of the vast chasm between officers and jawans. Though hierarchy in the army is necessary for a clear chain of command, other, colonial practices persist. For exa­mple, jawans, other than sahayaks, do not have permission to go to the living area of off­icers. Even the army canteen is segregated.

This is seen even in the agitation of ex-servicemen, across ranks, to enforce the One Rank One Pension (OROP), where jawans were allowed to speak only till when officers arrived and took over the microphone. Retired jawans are now agitating for more parity with officers in pensions and post-retirement benefits.

There are other issues too, where Indian jawans are thought to be disadvantaged. “Jawans fight on the frontlines.... Nowhere in the world is disability pension calculated based on basic pay or rank. But, here it is a percentage which makes it very difficult for jawans, who have dependants and bec­ome dependants themselves on being disabled in action,” says Nalin Talwar of Sabka Sainik Sangharsh Samiti.

Again, an officer can get up to 24 (+4 months of leave) months leave for higher studies, but jawans are denied the same facility.

After retirement, the Directorate General of Resettlement (DGR) gives security contracts only to eligible officers for opening security agencies, which employ ex-jawans as security guards.

Can abolition of the sahayak system trigger a shift in practice that would, in time, rem­ove all these inequalities?