National

The Creeping Barrage

The military fumes. The MoD establishes a beachhead. And India loses.

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The Creeping Barrage
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The impact of the saga that is General V.K. Singh’s date of birth controversy has been most telling on the delicate and often uneasy relationship between the military and the civilian bureaucracy in the country. An equation that, many acknowledge, has reached an all-time low while engaging with the issue.

When Gen Singh pitted himself against the government, his supporters and several others within the armed forces saw it as an opportunity to put “an end to the civilian bureaucracy’s meddling in service matters”. He was seen within the defence fraternity—both serving and retired—as someone who was finally taking “them” head on. And that if he were to emerge victorious, they knew, it would have a chastening effect on the bureaucracy. But neither has emerged as a clear winner yet and the episode has drawn attention to the increasingly fractious civil-military relationship and the mistrust that exists on both sides. With the perception gaining ground that, if not recognised and addressed adequately, this resentment could adversely impact the nation’s military effectiveness, is it not about time that the political leadership steps in to check the downward spiral before it leads to dangerous consequences?

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In January, a deputy secretary in the ministry of defence (MoD) wrote to the army’s adjutant general, directing it to amend its records, which show Gen Singh’s date of birth as May 10, 1951, to the government-determined May 10, 1950. The letter went disregarded because the matter was in the Supreme Court, but it led to great consternation in defence circles as many viewed it as “temerity” on the part of a junior MoD officer to issue diktats to army headquarters.

This sort of reaction is symptomatic of the deep faultlines between the two sides, which have reached a point where every move is now viewed through an adversarial lens. The date of birth issue is only the most recent of many such run-ins that the military has had with the civilian bureaucracy in the last few years. This was perhaps even more acrimonious than what transpired during the finalisation of the sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations. Says Lt Gen (retd) V.K. Nayar, former governor of Nagaland and Manipur and former director of the Centre for Policy Research, “The government thinks that after the setback in the Supreme Court, the problem is over and they have pushed the chief into the corner they want him in. But the matter now is not just about General Singh, but the armed forces as a whole and its systematic downgrading by the civilian bureaucracy. This cannot lead to good responses.”

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The grievances harboured by the armed forces over the recommendations of the sixth Pay Commission—which led to ex-servicemen returning their war medals to the Supreme Commander (who did not accept them)—and the recent fracas over the DOB controversy are illustrative of the imbalance in the current orientation of civil-military relations in the country. The unease over how the issue has played out has not just troubled people in defence circles, but also civilian defence-watchers.

Writing in the latest issue of Salute, a magazine about the armed forces, Narender Sisodia, a former director general of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) and an IAS officer who served in the MoD, says, “Many in the armed forces believe that since Independence, their status has been systematically downgraded. While no one questions the supremacy of the elected political leadership, there is acute resentment about the civilian bureaucracy.” The areas of friction he identifies are the same as those echoed by army officers:

  • The non-inclusion of the defence forces in matters of security policymaking.
  • Insufficient allocations for defence budgets. There is a perception that the civilian authority does not fully appreciate the gravity of threats to national security and tends to neglect legitimate demands. This attitude, Sisodia says, has adversely affected India’s defence modernisation and made it vulnerable to external threats.
  • The army’s reservations about the greater frequency with which it is called to intervene in internal security problems.
  • The issues of pay and perquisites and warrant of precedence have long been sources of acute dissatisfaction.
  • Affording a greater weightage to the armed forces’ viewpoints in decisions relating to procurement and accomodating concerns at cumbersome procedures and delays.

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Vijay Singh, former defence secretay till 2009, feels that the mistrust has much to do with the mindset in the forces, which have not accepted the fact that the defence minister takes decisions based on advice and inputs from the civilian bureaucracy. “Anything that does not go their way is attributed to bureaucratic intrigue. While the interaction at the top level is fine, below that there is much acrimony. I concede that the MoD needs officers of a high professional calibre because they sometimes ask ill-informed questions of the military establishment. But the civilian bureaucracy is more democratic and transparent in its functioning.” He thinks that the V.K. Singh saga is a fit case for a study in civil-military relations as they stand today.

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The forces have, for long, chafed at having to deal with the political leadership through the MoD, which was not the case at the time of Independence. The military’s position in the security structure had been consciously downgraded since Independence—through a set of reforms that kept the military out of policymaking and also gave the civilians control over all military issues except hardcore operational matters. This was designed to keep the military subservient to the civilian set-up: a systemic bulwark against a potential takeover. Military minds are now questioning the rationale behind retaining such a system. As Lt Gen Nayar points out, “The fear of a military coup is a bogey that the bureaucracy uses to perpetuate its supremacy. After almost seven decades of blemishless professionalism by the armed forces, it is time to junk this bogey and put in place a more realistic and less acrimonious arrangement that gives the military its due place in higher security management.” Another irritant is the skewed Integrated Defence Headquarters, which does not have defence personnel on its staff, whereas the MoD has infiltrated service headquarters by placing its officers in key positions.

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Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar, a security analyst who headed the IDSA a few years ago, says, “The anomalous nature of the Indian civil-military interface follows from the inflexible mediation of the bureaucracy and the determined reluctance of the Indian political class to have any direct contact with the military as an institution—except for mandatory ceremonial occasions such as on Republic Day—or acquire appropriate comprehension about the military as an institution. Progressively, the Indian military has been kept out of the formal structure of state and denied any meaningful or substantive role in national security policy formulation. This, when India is located in one of the most challenging strategic regions of the world and has been militarily scarred more than once. No other comparable democracy in the world has nurtured such an arrangement where the military apex is policy neutered. Sadly, there is little to suggest that the political leadership is even remotely seized with the long-term import of this alarming distortion.”

Then there are those like analyst Maroof Raza, himself a former army officer, who see in the current imbroglio a victory for the bureaucracy. “The system has closed around the chief and this will only embolden the bureaucracy. The fallout will be that at least for two generations, no military commander will raise his head. And the message for military commanders is that it isn’t merit or accuracy of documents that will get them promotions, but pandering to the politico-bureaucratic elite. The last bastion of professional meritocracy in India has crumbled. The damage will be lasting.”

It’s anyone’s guess if lessons are being learnt from the present mess—and if they will be heeded—by those who matter. Or will the political leadership allow things to fester?

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