War-fighting
requires morale though not morality. Soldiers are supposed to be tough. Bravery
can’t be fickle. If soldiers are going to be able to show bravery in battle,
then they should be able to deal with ordinary, everyday corruption.
Perhaps every
nation claims that its armed forces are the best in the world and the soldiers
the bravest. How do you quantify the bravery of the British in fighting the
all-conquering Germans at the beginning of the Second World War? Was it not
incredibly brave of the German soldiers to have accomplished all that they did?
The soldiers of the Soviet Union made a lot of sacrifices too. The Japanese
soldiers were also nothing if not brave including the kamikaze fighters and the
soldiers who preferred to take poison and die rather than be prisoners of war.
Indian soldiers
have not really fought any major war with their back to the wall. India has
never faced an enemy in the six decades since independence who wanted to occupy
the land or the people. The British were war-weary after fighting two world
wars and quit India without putting up too much of a fight. The real bloodshed
that happened in India during the partition years were due to religious riots.
So I’m not so
sure about the bravery of the Indian soldiers. There’s now talk about their
morale being affected. I thought it would be good to list out all the vices, to
get all the skeletons out of the cupboard so that the soldiers don’t get
frightened again when they hear unexpectedly bad news.
I’m not so sure either
about the value of bravery in today’s world. It’s not as if soldiers are
expected to slit the enemy soldier’s throat with the bayonet. Close combat
fighting seems so nineteenth century. It’s all about beyond visual range radar
guided gadgetry now. The guy with the bigger bomb and the faster plane wins. If
both guys have nuclear weapons and use them, then nobody wins.
Now to the
fistful of bad news. Well, the General, the Chief, the guy at the very top, was
offered a bribe. It’s not as if corruption and bribery are foreign concepts in
contemporary India. Even soldiers in their dealings with the civilian parts of
the country must have experienced bribery, may be in some government
department. The offer of a bribe to the Chief of Army Staff is quite logical in
India. It’s about maximizing the opportunities for yourself.
To understand
this one must first get rid of juvenile concepts like patriotism and serving
one’s nation and sacrificing oneself for the country, etc. Everybody knows that
those who join the army mainly do so for the job security it offers. Those in
the officer cadre join as officers to continue a family tradition perhaps or
just to satiate a basic human (mostly male?) competitive instinct.
The competitive
instinct drives the young Indian male to appear for various entrance exams when
he (mostly it’s a ‘he’) is about seventeen years old. Some adopt the path of
engineering or medicine careers. Some join the military academies. Some will go
on later to join the civil services by getting selected through more brutal
competitive exams. Others will go for a corporate career by pursuing an MBA
degree.
So life can
branch out into these broadly predictable careers. Eventually time will turn
the young 17 year olds into old men on the verge of retirement. Those getting a
government salary tend to fall behind the private sector chieftains in terms of
making money. This can rankle. Most people tend to be attached to big houses
and/or big cars, etc. And then there will be the wife as well who’ll tend to
compare her husband’s meager net worth with other more affluent — and therefore more capable — males.
Then there is
the issue of post-retirement perks mostly available to senior government
officials — some become governors of states, others may join the corporate
sector, etc. The other way to ensure a nice post-retirement life would be to
amass a certain amount of wealth while serving the government. This is the
realm of kickbacks. Who doesn’t dream of being a senior person or head of
something or the other who gets to approve contracts and decide vendors. That
is the epitome of achievement in life. Many pursue it and few reach it. He
would be an utter fool to let pass this opportunity to provide a better life
for himself and more importantly, his FAMILY. After all, a government
salary surely can’t pay for the cost of college education in the U.S.
While the
military is a smaller organization compared to the entire government, it’s a
purchaser of stuff too and generals get to award contracts. It’s no wonder then
that generals might be offered some amount just to facilitate everything. This
is normal. Routine practice. Those who wish to go against the norm or attempt
to be extra-honest might become laughing stocks in the eyes of others.
While every
junior soldier doesn’t get to interact with senior officers, they will know of
a junior officer who likes to sell his liquor quota in the open market and thus
pockets a tidy sum. Other officers might leverage their positions in yet more
different ways.
The average
soldier — just like the average Indian — will have found his wife through the
age-old system of arranged marriage. The girl will be a close or distant family
relation and if not, then definitely belong to the same village or a nearby
village. The marriage will only materialize after dowry negotiations reach a
successful conclusion. Clearly, the girl’s father (or the girl for that matter)
won’t choose a lowly foot soldier if he has the option of, say, an IT
professional earning twice or five times as much.
Life is a race
and it’s an unfair one. It’s also about making the best deal you can. As a
soldier, you gotta know when to fight on and when it’s futile and better to
surrender.
I wonder what
soldier dreams about dying for the country so that his widow might get a
license for a petrol pump or a sea-facing apartment in the Adarsh Society in
Mumbai.
Those with a
Western bent of mind might conjure up affairs and imagine the soldiers’ wives
as desperate housewives. But India works differently. Most, especially in the
villages, live in joint families. The wife will be busy with the kids and there
will be a bunch of other folks in the house. The very thought of an
extra-marital relation is apparently as foreign to the demure Indian rural
female as the idea of being abducted by aliens. Thus, Indian soldiers at least
don’t lose sleep over their wives sleeping with the enemy ... or the neighbor
with the hot body.
The Army in
India has a deserved reputation for fostering a sense of national identity
among its soldiers. It offers a lifestyle and a career where men work with men
from different states with different languages and differing cultural
traditions and rituals. What this living together fosters is a ‘live and let
live’ culture. Folks don’t learn to move beyond ancient incantations; they
merely learn that different people pray to different gods and use different
prayer techniques.