Soldier, heal thyself

BUSINESS STANDARD

 

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/ajai-shukla-soldier-heal-thyself/390930/

 

I WONDER : I SAID IT EARLIER TOO THE COAS HAS DIAGNOSED THE DISEASE CORRECTLY BUT HE NEEDS TO KNOW THE CAUSE AND ELIMINATE THAT.....

 

Figuring out the state of an army’s morale is easy. All it takes is a couple of drinks with two groups of people: the officers and the enlisted men. If the chatter is mainly about sports and professional competitions, ongoing training and about how much tougher and smarter they are than their rival units, morale is high. If talk centres on pay and allowances, promotions and postings and on the world outside the army, you can bet money that morale is low. Applying this yardstick to the Indian Army I believe the morale of officers is low, while that of the jawans is high.

In this gloomy assessment I have illustrious company. The new Chief of Army Staff, General VK Singh, on assuming office on the 1st of April, has wisely identified the army’s “internal health” as his key focus. Pointing out that an internally vibrant army would easily swat aside external threats, the army chief has promised to revitalize traditions, core values and the army’s ethos.

Earlier chiefs, some as well-intentioned as General VK Singh, have embarked on similar paths. General K Sundarji, on taking over as chief in 1986, wrote to army officers individually, urging them to follow their professional convictions and promising to tolerate dissent. But that led nowhere as actions failed to follow words. Today, as the new chief implicitly accepts, the army has become a personality cult where officers either conform to the inclinations of the boss or get weeded out. Originality and eccentricity, those priceless attributes of a successful military leader, have been rendered extinct by a dull, humourless routine that is set by what the boss thinks his boss wants.

Keeping the officers in line is a terrible God called the Annual Confidential Report before which even the brightest and most capable officer must kneel or be scythed down. While annual reports are an evaluation tool in many professions, the army has accorded the ACR absolute control of an officer’s career. Considering that this primacy is born of the army’s laudable quest for an impartial, empirical evaluation system, it is ironic that the ACR has turned into a monster of subjectivity. If the boss is unhappy with an officer — for any reason whatsoever — a single lukewarm ACR can sink a brilliant career.

Dismantling this tyranny, and unlocking the potential of his officer corps, is the task ahead for General Singh. This is easier said than done. Blocking any radical change is the tribal ethos of the Indian Army. An officer belongs first to his regiment or battalion; only after that is he an Indian Army officer. An army chief’s first duty is towards the regiment and battalion that nurtured him; reforming the army conflicts with the role of regimental patriarch.

When General JJ Singh, an infantry officer from the Maratha Light Infantry, took over as chief, the honour guard that welcomed him to South Block was from the Marathas. So was his aide-de-camp and most of his personal staff. The tenure of his artillery successor, General Deepak Kapoor, saw the Corps of Artillery quickly muscling out the infantry as the flavour of the month. Upwardly mobile artillery officers were quickly posted into friendly environments, under “friendly” superiors, to ease their paths towards higher ranks.

These are only the most recent examples of the army’s longstanding patriarchal tradition that General VK Singh can now embrace or dismantle. A key step would be the creation of a clearly enunciated promotion policy, printed as a manual and sanctioned by the government, to ensure that each successive chief cannot tinker with the policy to suit his constituency. Today, 63 years after independence, the military has no promotion manual; policy exists only in a constantly revised torrent of letters from the Military Secretary’s branch.

The other major change that General VK Singh could implement is the reversing of promotion quotas to higher rank: the “Mandalisation” of the army as it is evocatively referred to. From the institution of the Prussian General Staff in the early 18th century, professional militaries have employed the criterion of merit alone to select their senior command. For over half a century, so did the Indian Army; but recently, in a burst of patrimonial fervour, quotas were instituted to ensure that each combat arm got its share of the senior ranks. Initiated by artillery and infantry chiefs to safeguard the interests of their officers, the quotas are now favouring less talented officers of other arms.

Few chiefs would voluntarily divest themselves of power but, paradoxically, the institution of the COAS would be greatly strengthened by transparency and the absence of discretion in promotions and postings. It would also free army chiefs from accusations of prejudice; a lever that Ministry of Defence officials — and in one well-known case, a defence minister — have successfully employed to demand favours for their own candidates.

Old... But Still many of us are not knowing much about AVS-2

 PIB

http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=43392

In a major step to improve career mobility, to fulfil aspirations and to achieve combat effectiveness by bringing down age profile of commanding officers, the Union Cabinet today approved the Ministry of Defence's proposal for effecting upgradation of 1896 posts in the Services.

Popularly known as Phase-II of the Ajay Vikram Singh Committee Report, the proposals approved today would result in reduction in stagnation. The Defence Minister Shri A K Antony had taken a personal interest in the implementation of the proposal and played a crucial role in evolving a consensus among the Services. The measures taken today will also lead to progressive promotion of junior batches without adversely affecting promotional aspects of senior batches, thereby reducing the age profile of officers in select ranks.

The upgradation will be carried out in the Army over a period of five years, in the Navy over the next ten years and in the Air Force over a period of five years. The total number of posts to be upgraded will be 1051 in the Army, 342 in the Navy and 503 in the Air Force. Of the 1051 posts in the Army, 20 are at the level of Lieutenant General and equivalent, 75 at Major General and equivalent, 222 at Brigadier and equivalent, and 734 at Colonel and equivalent. The corresponding figures in the Navy will be 4 at Vice Admiral and equivalent, 14 at Rear Admiral and equivalent, 324 at Commodore, Captain and equivalent. In the Air Force upgradation will be effected for 6 post at Air Marshal and equivalent, 21 at Air Vice Marshal and equivalent, 61 at Air Commodore and equivalent, 415 at Group Captain and equivalent.

The Cabinet also approved the proposal for the reduction in the regular cadre and corresponding increase in the support cadre consisting of Short Service Commissioned Officers and re-employed officers (for Army) as envisaged in the Ajay Vikram Singh Committee (AVSC) Report and as per requirement of the three Services irrespective of gender.

It may be recalled that the Ministry of Defence had set up a Committee on 16th July, 2001, under the Chairmanship of Shri Ajay Vikram Singh, the then Special Secretary with representatives of the three Services with an aim to achieve 'combat effectiveness' by bringing down the age profile of battalion / brigade level commanders. The Committee submitted its report on February 2003 and the Raksha Mantri accorded in principle approval to the report in September 2003. AVSC Phase-I in respect of non-select ranks i.e. Lieutenant Colonel and equivalent and below was implemented in December 2004.

Promotion IPS

1994 batch IPS officers  to be IG in Haryana.

New chief vows to fix Army's 'internal health'

TIMES OF INDIA

 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/New-chief-vows-to-fix-Armys-internal-health/articleshow/5752194.cms

I WONDER : THE DISEASE HAS BEEN RIGHTLY DIAGNOSED . I HOPE LIKE A PROFESSIONAL DOCTOR ITS CAUSES REPEAT CAUSES AND PREVENTIVE MEASURES TOO ARE KNOWN TO HIM

NEW DELHI: As a third-generation officer, General Vijay Kumar Singh knows the poison of corruption and indiscipline is slowly but surely contaminating the once pristine environs of the armed forces. On his first full working day as the 24th army chief, he spelt out his top priority: improving the Army's "internal health".

Taking charge of the 1.13-million strong Indian Army, Gen Singh said fast modernization to build "a networked force" capable of operating in "a digitized battlefield", equal focus on the two-and-a-half fronts (China, Pakistan and counter-insurgency) and enhanced synergy with Navy-IAF would be his major thrust areas.

The message on day one was loud and clear: he means business on the corruption front. `Crackdown' is too strong a word but yes, the Army needs to ensure it retains its robust moral fibre of yore.

"Army has very strong traditions, core values and way of working, and that is what I want to emphasize. For any organization to do well, it must ensure its internal health is good. Till our internal health is not good, we cannot fight well outside," said Gen Singh.

"We have to set our own culture right. We have to ensure the image and dignity of our soldiers is upheld. To that extent, our core values, our ethos, traditions will receive due attention," he added.

This comes in the backdrop of a flurry of scandals hitting the force, ranging from liquor, meat, cereal, petrol and other scams to even sexual harassment cases, in recent times. The Sukna land scam case, in which as many as four generals were indicted by a court of inquiry, in fact, even cast a shadow on the Army chief's high office.

The oft-repeated argument that the Army draws its rank and file from the society at large, which is facing a general decline in standards of probity and integrity, does not hold water for the straight-talking new chief.
"Armed forces have their own value systems, which have to be different from civil society. As a third-generation officer, I feel that way," said Gen Singh.

Turning to the other challenges ahead, Gen Singh said the new focus on the long-neglected eastern sector did not mean the Army -- which is raising two new mountain infantry divisions and an artillery brigade for Arunachal Pradesh and Assam -- was shifting its priorities from the western front with Pakistan to the eastern one with China.

"As a country, we have challenges everywhere. We are very well prepared to tackle them. It's only that over the last two years, we have realigned the focus in the East, which is the future of India," said Gen Singh.

There is `concern' over China's rapid modernization of its 2.25-million People's Liberation Army, which is not restricted to just the Tibetan Autonomous Region but spreads all across.

"They are working to make their forces more capable of working in a digitized battlefield. We also have to ensure we become a networked force, capable of working in a joint services environment," he said.

The chief will push hard for Army's modernization, stretching from heavy 155mm artillery guns to basic infantry gear, to ensure better operational readiness across the entire spectrum of conflict. "I am looking at ensuring our deficiencies are made up in a shorter timeframe," he said.

He also articulated the Army's well-known opposition to both withdrawal of the iron-fisted Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act from Jammu and Kashmir and being dragged into combating Naxalism, which is more of a law and order, socio-economic problem, "not a secessionist movement".

Apex court slams government for mistreating army officer

SIFY

http://sify.com/news/apex-court-slams-government-for-mistreating-army-officer-news-national-kebtadahfig.html 

 

I WONDER : AGHAST......

The Supreme Court has lashed at the Union government for mistreating an Indian Army officer and denying him his due wages despite the officer suffering crippling injuries in an accident that he met while on duty.

'We regret to say that the army officers and the army men in our country are being treated in a shabby manner by the government,' a bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice A K. Patnaik said Wednesday.

The apex court rued the mistreatment to the army officers and men by the government while dismissing its appeal against a Punjab and Haryana High Court order that asked the government to grant pension to army officer C.S. Sidhu after taking into account his full period of service till June 1978, when he actually retired from service.

Sidhu joined the Indian Army on short service commission in June 1968 and met with a crippling accident in November 1970. The accident eventually led to amputation of his right arm, and he also suffered a compound fracture of his thigh and jaw bone.

As Sidhu met with the accident in 1970, the army while calculating his pension considered his working tenure only till November 1970 despite the fact that he was eventually released from service in 1978.

The army accordingly fixed a very low pension for Sidhu.

'In this case, the respondent (Sidhu), who was posted at a high-altitude field area and met with an accident during discharge of his duties, was granted a meagre pension of around Rs.1,000. This is a pittance,' said the bench.

'If this is the manner in which army personnel are treated, it can only be said that it is extremely unfortunate. Army personnel are bravely defending the country even at the cost of their lives, and we feel that they should be treated in a better and more humane manner by the governmental authorities, particularly in respect of their emoluments, pension and other benefits,' the bench said.

Ordnance Corps headless for 2 yrs

 THE TRIBUNE

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2010/20100328/nation.htm#8

 Army Ordnance Corps (AOC), the key logistics branch responsible for weapons, ammunition and equipment, has been headless for past about two years as four of its senior most generals have been embroiled in graft cases. This is perhaps the highest number of generals from a single branch to face graft charges concurrently.

According to sources, a court of inquiry that concluded at New Delhi a few days ago, held Maj Gen GS Narula blameworthy for lapses in procurement of equipment and recommended action against him. Presided by Lt Gen P. Mohapatra, Signals Officer-in-Chief at Army Headquarters, had investigated irregularities in the procurement of items of personal clothing and personal kits for troops proceeding on UN assignments.

The inquiry had been ordered in December after Lok Sabha member Harsh Vardhan reportedly wrote to Defence Minister AK Antony earlier this year, highlighting irregularities in procurement of supplies for troops on UN missions. According to the letter, some items were procured at double the cost and the loss to the Army on this count was Rs 2.82 crore. Narula was posted as Additional Director-General (ADG) in the Ordnance Directorate at Army HQs at the time the said purchases were made. Earlier, two other Maj Generals, who had also served on the same post as Narula, have been held blameworthy by the courts of inquiries. Sources said summary of evidence (SOE) in case of Maj Gen Anil Swarup is currently underway at Jammu.

Swarup, who has been attached to the Yol-based 9 Corps, was blamed by the CoI for procuring generators, cables and boots at inflated prices. Swarup moved the Armed Forces Tribunal, challenging the proceedings against him and the case is expected to come up for hearing later this month.

The third officer, Maj Gen SP Sinha, at present posted at Chandimandir, was accused of irregularities in the purchase of general stores for the ordnance depot at Choeki. Inferior goods were allegedly bought at inflated prices.

Then there is a case of Maj Gen AK Kapur, against who the CBI filed a chargesheet for possessing assets disproportionate to known sources of income. A Maj General from the AOC has recently been approved for promotion to the rank of Lt General. There are two vacancies of Lt General in the AOC, one of Director-General Ordnance Services at Army Headquarters and the other as Commandant of the AOC Centre at Secunderabad.

1997 IAS Offrs get GP of 10000/- in Tripura

Five IAS officers of 1997 batch have been granted Super-Time Scale( GP 10000/-) in the state of Tripura. They are namely : Dilip , L Darlong, Santanu Das, Kishore Ambuly , Samarjit Bhowmik and Vijoy Debbarma. (whispers)

Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.......

 THE TIMES OF INDIA

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/GENERAL-IN-THE-HOOD/articleshow/5704928.cms

Those who know him say he is a brooder. But those who know him well will tell you that's just one of the layers to the deeply complicated and thinking mind of Pakistan army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. The bluster that marked Musharraf has been dumped for quiet gravitas as the man from Rawalpindi goes about turning friends like the US and Britain into closer allies and outmanoeuvering not-so-friendly neighbours like India and Afghanistan at international fora. In a country brought to its knees by terror, corruption and an inept political system, the former ISI chief is putting up a masterly show as he calls the shots.

Sitting with foreign minister S M Krishna this February, US defence secretary Robert Gates said he was going to Pakistan the next day. So who was he going to meet? Oh, a number of people, said Gates, but his most important conversation would be with Pakistan army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. "Why not Zardari?" asked Krishna, referring to the Pakistan president. "Because Kayani is the most important man out there," Gates said matter-of-factly . And Gates should know - in Washington, he's often described as the most powerful defence secretary Pentagon has had in a long while.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, this low-profile general has emerged from the shadows. The obvious ineptitude of the Pakistan political establishment seems to have finally helped burnish the credentials of the Pakistan Army whose reputation was in tatters in the final days of the last military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf. And with its return has emerged its boss Kayani. Compared to Zardari's gang that just can't shoot straight, many in Pakistan seem to view the Army chief as a better bargain - although it's debatable that they'll want a return to military rule.

As boss of Pakistan's infamous spy agency ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), Kayani had a reputation for being slightly nervous. It would now appear that he was being circumspect rather than nervous. As the civil government got its knickers in a twist every so often, the general quietly plotted the return of the military to its position of pre-eminence in Pakistan society.

He has since quietly started calling the shots. Remember how Zardari promised to send the ISI chief Shuja Pasha to India after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, and how Kayani vetoed him? That was just the beginning of his new assertiveness.

But who is this man really? Is he a bumbling military brass in the mould of Yahya Khan, who lost East Pakistan because of his ham-handed ways, or is he a modern-day version of the suave Ayub Khan, Pakistan's first military dictator who introduced the army to the intoxication of political power? Or is Kayani just a product of circumstances, the man who is willy-nilly filling up the political vacuum created by the messy management of Zardari & Co?

Details about the 57-year-old Kayani are somewhat sketchy. He doesn't have the kind of privileged background that most Pakistan military brass does. His father, Lehrasab, was a naib subedar in the army - in other words, a non-commissioned officer. Born in Rawalpindi in Punjab, Kayani came up the hard way after being commissioned in 1971, the year of the Bangladesh War.

Those who have seen him up close say Kayani is the brooding type. He was given to long, solitary walks until November 2007, when Gen Musharraf named him the army chief - thereafter, it was no longer possible for him to remain unattended. Kayani is a chain smoker - he reportedly lights up every 15 minutes - and is given to long drags on his cigarette as he engages in deep listening during briefings by his trusted commanders. It's said he interrupts only to seek either a clarification or elucidation of a point.

Kayani's slightly unnerving silence contrasts strongly with Musharraf's volubility. But it would be stupid to infer from this that he has little to say. They say Kayani has a lot more going on in his head. He is also a Pakistan army "traditionalist" which means his worldview is India-centric . The eastern neighbour, India, is seen by the army as enemy No1, and policies and responses flow from that basic understanding.

UNFRIENDLY NEIGHBOUR
A strategically shrewd army chief, Kayani doesn't count India among Pakistan's allies - something that is likely to make him appear in New Delhi to be more dangerous than someone like Musharraf. In any case, since it's Kayani who holds the reins, New Delhi would do well to sit up and take notice of this man.

It needs to know whether Kayani's anti-India stance is a strategic move to bind together the army at a time when political parties in Pakistan are slipping fast into an inchoate body of disparate noises, and when the people see the solidity of the army as a source of reassurance. Or is it genetically coded - that come what may, he will be hostile towards India.

Says a top Indian official, "On a scale of 1 to 10 for anti-India sentiment, if Musharraf was at 5, Kayani is at 8." "And as he is seen increasingly to be in control, it's bad news for us."

Kayani started out as an apolitical army chief. Now as he is in the driving seat in Pakistan, he is showing political sense. The way he has latched on to the water issue between India and Pakistan to drum up paranoia about India "starving" Pakistan of water shows he knows how to press the emotive buttons. When India offered foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan, Islamabad took its time to respond, allegedly because Kayani hadn't given his nod; he wanted a composite dialogue that would include Kashmir, and not just terror. And it was Kayani who gave directions to Pakistan's foreign secretary, Salman Bashir, when he came to New Delhi to meet Nirupama Rao.

Significantly, the day before, Kayani told the defence committee of the National Assembly that the army under him would remain "India-centric" . "India has the capability, intentions can change overnight," he told legislators.

G Parthasarathy, who was high commissioner to Islamabad, says, "Gen Kayani represents an institutional hostility towards India because promoting it enables the army to dominate Pakistan without responsibility. Given the fact that he is the de facto ruler of Pakistan, India should be prepared for more covert and overt hostility directed at it from Pakistani soil."

The quiet rise of Kayani hasn't gone unnoticed in capitals around the world. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton spends more time with Kayani than with the civvies. Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who has had a testy relationship with the Pakistani army, is mending fences with it. Pakistan's strategic outreach is being managed by Kayani: He made a much talked about power-point presentation at the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) headquarters in Brussels on how he could help the West get out of Afghanistan; he talked turkey with the Turks on keeping control of a key conference in Istanbul on Afghanistan's future; and he's assumed the role of the point person on 'reconciliation' with Taliban.

This week, Kayani will be the pre-eminent member of the Pakistan delegation at a strategic dialogue with Washington where demand No.1 will be a nuclear deal like the one signed with India, apart from agreements on more mundane matters like trade and agriculture. In preparation for the talks, Kayani presided over a meeting of government secretaries on Tuesday, the first time that top-level bureaucrats have been called to army headquarters in a civilian regime.

WOWING THE WEST
It was not always so, even as recently as in 2009. Through most of last year, Pakistan, and its army, were on the back foot. Terrorists in Swat and other parts of FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) and NWFP (North-West Frontier Province) were on the rampage and inching towards Islamabad, setting off alarm bells the world over. To make matters worse, there was talk of the army playing fast and loose with the Americans as well as with the Taliban. The US media was awash with CIA leaks on how Kayani had described Afghan Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani as a 'strategic asset'.

There was little trust between the two sides.

Cut to January 2010, and the scenario had changed dramatically. Pakistan had 'fixed' the trust problem with the Americans. In July 2008, when Kayani and ISI chief Shuja Pasha were 'summoned' by General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command, to be scolded about Islamabad's misdemeanors, especially the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, it was a low point for a country which had tomtommed its "shared anxieties'' with America.

By the end of 2009, Kayani was taking the US joint chief of staff chairman Mike Mullen and US commander in Afghanistan Stanley Mc-Crystal on helicopter rides in Swat and Waziristan to show progress in his battle against the Taliban. Pakistan had effectively re-established itself in the West as a part of the solution, even as it continued to be a part of the problem.

Kayani's message to the NATO brass in January, made adroitly yet forcefully through a 62-slide presentation, was disarmingly simple: Pakistan had a strategic future in Afghanistan well beyond the US presence and should not be taken lightly. This meant the government in Kabul had to be mindful of Pakistani interests; and India had to be out of Afghanistan, or at the very least, needed to greatly reduce its presence.

Kayani scored another big victory at the January 28 London conference on the future of Afghanistan. The idea promoted by the British and backed by the US, that Pakistan would be the lead player in the Taliban 'reconciliation' process, was met with enthusiastic response. The army chief came out smelling of roses, confident in his belief that he had successfully outmanoeuvered India even as New Delhi fumbled in its opposition to the Taliban being accommodated.

This was quite a contrast to Musharraf's last days, when the army stumbled from one political miscalculation to another and ended up with the disastrous storming of Islamabad's Lal Masjid where radical imams were threatening the state. Meanwhile, the Tehreek-e-Taliban was growing in strength and firepower with a string of terror attacks throughout Pakistan, leading up to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Worryingly for the hawks, Musharraf had also found a common language with Manmohan Singh and back-channel talks with India hinted at some sort of non-territorial adjustment in Kashmir. His 'out-of-the-box' proposals on Kashmir as well as 'tactical restraint' on the Kashmir jihad between 2004 and 2007 undermined the traditional mindset. As both Siachen and Sir Creek remained unresolved, there rose many voices within the Pakistan military establishment questioning the wisdom of abandoning the old position of bleeding India.

BACK TO BRASS TACKS
Enter Kayani, with a 18-handicap in golf and a Plan. Admiral Mullen recently gushed in Time magazine: "Gen Kayani commands an army with troops fighting in what President Barack Obama has rightly called the 'most dangerous place in the world.' He's lost more than 1,000 soldiers in that fight. He knows the stakes. He's got a plan."

Convinced of the centrality of the army as the bulwark of the Pakistan state, Kayani was bringing back to it its robbed glory and quintessential values. He has figured that the only way to regain influence for Pakistan would be to somehow make the Taliban a part of the power structure in Kabul and help the US pack its bags. That would force India to leave Afghanistan and help Pakistan regain control of the region.

Until that happens, Kayani knows the India bogey has to be kept alive and leveraged against Pakistan's efforts at taming the Taliban. Against the US's better judgment, but impelled by recession and public opinion, Washington is giving the Kayani worldview more than a nod and a wink. Washington's approach to Islamabad is old-fashioned bribery: sophisticated military toys are winging their way to Pakistan as 'incentive' to fight the Taliban.

It knows full well that these weapons will actually be directed against India. As an Indian official explained, "Kayani is pegging the modernisation of the Pak army on US money." By end-2010 , Pakistan will get an additional $3.4 billion in military aid from the US, bringing the total up to almost $12 billion since 2003.

IT'S IN HIS BLOOD
Kayani cut his teeth in the army during the Bangladesh war. Thirty years later as director-general military operations (DGMO), he directed the 10-month stand-off with the Indian army. He earned his spurs with Musharraf when he conducted, with efficiency and confidentiality, the investigation into the assassination bids on Musharraf in 2003. Musharraf has himself reminisced that until Kayani took over, the investigation was a mess. It led to his appointment as DG-ISI in 2004.