To write? Or, not to
write? A perennial dilemma for those who are used to criticizing whatever is
not correct or good in their perception. Pessimism? Cynicism? Call it whatever
you might, the fact remains that those who criticize still believe that
whatever is not correct or good can be corrected or made good. They still
believe in the ultimate power of the good over evil. Not so those who refrain
from voicing their views even when things are obviously unacceptable.
I have been trying
seriously to write about something that is good, for a change. I looked around
and yes, in spite of a poor monsoon, the nature around me is green and
beautiful. But…OMG, the roads are slushy and filled with garbage on both sides
in most places. The water authority has been in the process of replacing its
more than half a century old pipelines over a 5km stretch and the work which
should have been over in a week, well before the monsoon set in, is still
dragging along after 3 months. Even with JCBs at hand the progress has been
just a pipe or two per day. Can I take pleasure in the casual approach of the
authorities who have neither planned nor executed this small work in a
professional manner? Not my cup of tea at all.
And here comes a report, "
Govt : Mooted Tax on Disability Pension After Forces' Nudge" (ToI, Jul 3,
2019). Though I am not affected it raised my hackles nevertheless. While the
veteran soldiers were quick to protest, rightly calling it unfair, the Finance
Minister had responded with a tweet that said that the idea had been mooted by
the services headquarters. Army Headquarters tried to salvage the situation by
tweeting a half truth: service HQ does not send such recommendation to other
ministries without approval of Ministry of Defence. A report in the Hindustan
Times of Jul 4, 2019 quotes Maj Navdeep Singh, a lawyer who was on the expert
committee set up by the defence ministry in 2015 to reduce military litigation,
as saying “More than the exemption part of it, I am worried how disabilities in
the military are being demonised to justify the action. Disabilities such as
heart disease etc are covered under rules as affected by stress and strain of
service and we should rather take steps to care for such personnel and improve
the health profile of the army. Instances of manipulation are also grossly
exaggerated,”
The report also quotes Lieutenant
General BK Chopra (retd), who headed the armed forces medical services during
2014-16, as saying that a scrutiny of
records during his tenure showed that before 2006 hardly any of the top
officers claimed disability pension but by 2015, almost 21% of them were
claiming benefits. Maj Navdeep justifies this as being due to the older
ages in which senior officers retire (the majority of the soldiers retire well
below 40 years.) Even the majority of officers used to retire by 50 years of
age till the cadre review introduced time scale promotions upto Colonels and
the age of retirement shot up to 54 in 2004.
To cut the story short, it
is enough that the controversy has been unwarranted as the apex court had
clarified in Civil Appeal 418/2012 (Union of India Vs Ram Avtar) that if a
person was fit at the time of joining the armed forces, any disability he
suffers during his service is attributable to military service.
The latest reports indicate
that the government will have a relook at the new proposal.
But this kind of
controversies have been making the rounds in the media too frequently to be of
comfort or dismissed lightly. Whether it is the canteen facilities, ECHS, Rank
Pay, OROP, NFFU, ration for officers in peace locations or orderlies everything
that appears to be a welfare measure for soldiers have been inviting criticism
from unsolicited quarters. The gullible soldiers, and most of them are, have
been fed on the diet of the babus trying to put down the men in uniform who
definitely command better respect than them among the public. But one thing
appears certain and that is the babus couldn’t have got their way if only the
top brasses of the armed forces had been doing their job right.
To begin our analysis let
us go back to the days of our freedom struggle. The First War of Independence
had been suppressed by the Britons with an iron hand and to reduce its impact
on the urge for freedom it had been dubbed as the Sepoy Mutiny. This is taught
in our schools as part of history lessons. But the last war of independence
does not find such mention. It was the mutiny by the Naval Ratings in Mumbai,
in the after math of the INA trials. It was Clement Atlee, the British Prime
Minister, who had admitted this during his visit to India post 1947. According
to him the Britons could not take the loyalty of Indian troops for granted and
hence the haste with which they preponed the grant of independence from mid
1948 to 1947. The role of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in
the INA trials had been dubious.
Another incidence took
place involving Nehru and the army, post 1947. We all know that after being
anointed as the first Prime Minister Nehru had opted for Mountbatten, the last
Viceroy of colonial India, to continue as the first Governor General Nathu
Singh Rathore. It happened like this.
Wanting to have the then
General officers of the army itself to admit that they needed a British General
to head them Nehru called a meeting of the senior most Indian Generals and put
it to them that India did not have experienced Generals who could command a
large army and it would be prudent to have a Briton to continue as the
Commander in Chief. While most of the General officers were taken aback with
the view of the Prime Minister General Rathore made a direct hit with his ‘Mr
Prime Minister, what experience did you have as Prime Minister when you took
over as the first PM of this free nation?’ This time it was Nehru’s turn to be
aghast. Quickly recomposing himself Nehru offered the post of the first
Commander in Chief to Rathore. But Rathore was made of sterner stuff and he
replied ‘Mr Prime Minister, General Cariappa, here, is senior and more
experienced than me and quite capable of doing that job’. And the mantle of
India’s first C in C thus fell on General Cariappa.
Nehru’s duplicity can also
be seen in his assertion that India did not need a professional army since we
believed in peace and did not have enmity with any other nations. The army and
the Nation paid a heavy price for this folly when the Chinese walked in and out
of the country with impunity in 1962.
Meanwhile Gen Cariappa
himself committed one big blunder by declaring that soldiers were required to
fight wars and not do clerical work in Delhi. One of the important tasks of
administration at the highest level was thus handed over on a plate to
civilians who were out of ambit of the Army/Navy or Air Force Acts. This was
what is well described by the phrase apne
pairon pe kulhada marna. Almost every grouse of soldiers being sidelined and
given step motherly treatment can be traced to this one act of indiscretion by
free India’s first Commander in Chief. Today there could be more soldiers
attached to Army Headquarters to help with pushing files than the civilian
staff authorized to do the same.
The armed forces retrieved
their honour only with the Bangladesh operations in 1971. It was largely due to
the leadership of Gen Sam Manekshaw. In his own words there was a thin line
between his resignation and being elevated to a Field Marshal. The then PM,
Indira Gandhey, wanted Manekshaw to launch operations in the summer of 1971 but
he refused on the grounds of harvest season taking away all railspace required
for moving troops and floods in the then East Bengal making operations
impossible. He had to conclude the arguments with the question: Prime Minister,
do you want me to conduct the operations on my terms or should I send in my
resignation? The rest we know is history.
While Indira Gandhey was
eulogized as Durga, the architect of the victory got elevated to Field Marshal
but he had to wait for his remuneration in that rank till President Abdul Kalam
took personal interest and got his cheque delivered in his death bed, more than
three decades later. Equally alarming was the insensitive manner in which the
nation failed to honour the greatest soldier of free India when he died in a
distant corner of the country at Coonoor, near Ooty.
If the Field Marshal had
been belittled and neglected by those in power, the ordinary soldiers were to
receive their greatest shock too, soon after the war. Quoting the poor state of
the economy due to the war efforts, the political leadership prevailed on the
then top brass of the army to accept a reduction in pension of soldiers from 70
percent to 50 percent. (The soldiers were being given such pension to
compensate for their early retirement, between 35 and 40 years of age after
serving for 15 to 20 years.) Shockingly the same government hiked the pension
of civilians from 30 percent to 50 percent! (Could they have done it without
the complicity of the then top brass is a question that merits an answer at
least now.) And that was not the end of the sordid saga. A new rider was also
added that one would be eligible for full pension (50 percent of the last pay
drawn) only if one has completed 33 years of service. With this the majority of
soldiers were entitled to only less than 25 percent of their last pay drawn as
pension. The civilians would all be eligible for full pension due to their
retirement in their mid fifties or later.
And herein lays the
genesis of One Rank One Pension demand. It is simply a fair and logical demand
in that it seeks uniform pension for soldiers who have retired in a particular
rank with a particular period of service, irrespective of the date of
retirement.
The current budget has set
aside Rs 1,12,079.57 Cr for defence pension. Wow, quite a hefty amount isn’t
it? But does anybody outside the
agitating veteran soldiers know that soldiers who constitute 75 percent of
these pensioners get only 45 percent of this pie and the rest 55 percent is
taken away by the 25 percent civilians in receipt of defence pension?
Incidentally, the IAS, IPS
guys, MPs, MLAs and judges have manipulated to get this OROP long time back.
The bureaucrats have done it by ensuring that the top echelons (and most
bureaucrats who join these cadres directly get to these highest positions by
the end of their service) a single figure pay instead of having a scale. This
ensures that every pensioner of that grade automatically gets 50 percent of it
as pension, irrespective of their date of retirement. A similar situation
prevails for high court and Supreme Court judges too. The politicians have a
different system. For any service below 5 years they get a fixed pension and
for every additional year they get another fixed amount. (Please note that here
there is no minimum service required to be eligible to draw pension. It could
be as less as one day!)
In the armed forces the
chiefs and those Lt Generals commanding army, navy or Air Force Commands, the
Principal Staff Officers in the service head quarters have also been getting
OROP in a manner similar to the bureaucrats.
The 6th Central Pay
Commission aggravated this by creating pay bands (clubbing together of
different pay scales).Then anybody in any of the pay scales in a band were made
eligible to receive pension at 50 percent of the pay at the beginning of the
lowest scale only, subject of course to the 33 years service rider. Thus a Maj
Gen would have received the same pension as that of a Lt Col because both were
in the same pay band. It took a lot of litigation to set this right.
In fact those who had
schemed this even tried to differentiate between Lt Generals holding different
appointments. Lt Generals who were not army commanders were excluded from the 2nd
highest single digit basic pay grade. This naturally was resented and was
resolved by creating a third single digit basic pay grade for them. The bureaucrats
immediately made it applicable for their additional secretaries too.
It is pertinent to narrate
the fraud perpetrated on armed force officers while implementing the
recommendations of the 4th Central Pay Commission, effective from
1986. This Commission had introduced a running pay scale for officers from
Majors to Brigadiers. It also introduced a Rank Pay for the different ranks.
This Rank Pay was in addition to basic pay and was to be considered as basic
pay for calculating other allowances. However those who fixed the basic pay
played foul and after calculating the basic pay reduced this Rank Pay from it
for fixing the basic pay. Almost 40000 plus officers of the armed forces did
not notice this foul play. But later events revealed that then Captain
Dhanapalan, who was responsible for fixing the pay of civilians in the Military
Engineering Services had access to all the relevant documents and he had
brought it to the notice of the then CoAS who had simply snubbed him.
More than a decade later
when Major Dhanapalan got a posting in Kochi he took it up with the Kerala High
Court and got a favorable verdict. Much later, after all the appeals and SLPs,
he finally got his dues.
Soon high courts all over
the country had petitions being filed by groups of aggrieved retired officers.
The apex court transferred all these to itself and made the verdict in
Dhanapalan case applicable for all similarly placed officers. More appeals, SLPs
and finally the apex court ordered the arrears to be paid from 1 Apr 2006 with
just 6 percent interest till date of payment. Some justice this.
The Non Functional
Financial Upgradation (NFFU) is a weird and unique scheme invented by the IAS
guys for self aggrandizement. By this any member of a particular batch of the
cadre anywhere in India would get automatic financial benefits of anyone
getting promoted from that batch. This was made applicable to the members of
the IPS also with a two years delay. (I remember the instance when an IAS guy
who was MD of an industrial unit moved out as a District Collector, he was
replaced by a DG of Police.) The bureaucrats had claimed this was necessary to
compensate for lack of promotional avenues. But if this was the criteria then
the one people who deserved it most were the officers from the armed forces.
Unfortunately even when NFFU was extended to other Group A services of the
Central Government by the 7th CPC in 2016, it has not been extended
to the armed forces.
Right from the beginning
anybody joining the armed forces had been promised free health care for life,
including for dependents. And it was available to all those who were near
cantonments with military hospitals. But for others it was practically not available.
But the civilians did have the Central Government Heath Scheme (CGHS) available
all over the country.
Finally towards the end of
AB Vajpaye’s term as PM the armed forces got their Ex Servicemen’s Contributory
Health Scheme (ECHS) with its polyclinics spread out all over the country,
located mostly at the district headquarters, for outpatient treatment and
empanelled hospitals for specialist and inpatient treatment. In keeping with
the times the services were to be delivered using smart cards. The promise was
you just swipe the cards in polyclinics and empanelled hospitals, get the
treatment and medicines and walk out. But the smart cards have never been put
to use smartly. At the best it is used for biometric verification of
beneficiary at the polyclinic. Also a polyclinic has been designated as parent
polyclinic. And referrals have to be taken from this polyclinic to empanelled
hospitals along with photostat copies of the smart card duly attested by the
officer in charge of the polyclinic. Even as this limited use continues the
card has been changed thrice in the last decade and a half of ECHS. Worse, the
dues to the empanelled hospitals have been growing beyond the sustainable
limits for the hospitals and many have withdrawn from the scheme. Even the
polyclinics are starved of funds and pharmacy racks are mostly empty.
The reasons quoted by the
authorities are always the same- misuse of facilities by the beneficiaries. But
then provisions exist for cancelling membership of those who misuse the system
and even prosecuting them. But this is not resorted to and innocents are
punished for no fault of theirs.
The step motherly
treatment of soldiers is also apparent in the fact that while CGHS has all
systems of treatment authorized ECHS has only allopathic treatment. (It has
been changed on paper but has not come into effect.)
Even in the matter of
grievance redressal there is discrimination evident. While the Central
Administrative Tribunals have contempt powers to enforce their orders the Armed
Forces Tribunals, constituted much later, have not been given such powers and
its decisions are hardly ever seen implemented.
There is an issue of
appointing a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to be a one point reference on
defence matters. It has been on the burner for over three decades. But it has
been subverted by some vested interests. Though the bureaucrats would blame the
service chiefs for not arriving at a unanimous decision, the real reason could
be different.
At present the Chiefs of
Staffs or the Services Chiefs are considered equal to the Cabinet Secretary in
status. Once a CDS is appointed he would necessarily have to be above the
service chiefs and this would upset the apple cart. It certainly cannot be
digested by the babus.
To cut the story short,
there is no wonder that there is a major, about 25 to 30 percent, deficiency of
officers in the armed forces.
It is said that a person
who is not an idealist at 20 does not have a heart and who is not a pragmatist
at 40 has no head.
Looks like, the new
generation, with information on their finger tips at the click of a mouse,
seems to be becoming pragmatists even by 20 years of age.
And this cannot improve
when even the Raksha Mantri employs soldiers to clean garbage from the
Himalayas dumped there by indifferent tourists and left to rot by an
incompetent and corrupt administration.
12/07/2019
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