Lt Gen faces probe on ex-Army chief’s DoB row

Gen VK Singh (Retd)

Manu Pubby.

A senior serving Lt Gen is under the scanner after the Defence Ministry directed the Army to “fix responsibility” for an official communication that was contrary to the government’s view on the age row involving former Army chief General V K Singh.

The media communication reportedly released by Lt Gen Sanjeev Madhok in September last year, when he was posted in Army Headquarters as a Maj Gen, allegedly supported Singh’s contention that his year of birth was 1951 and not 1950.

The communication was reportedly sent after the Ministry of Defence decided to consider 1950 as Singh’s year of birth, making him eligible for retirement in May 2012.

It is learnt that the Army conducted an inquiry after the MoD questioned whether the communication on a “personal matter” involving the then Army chief can be considered as a “performance of official duty”.

The inquiry, sources said, was carried out by Lt Gen Amarjeet Singh Chabbewal, the Master General of Ordnance (MGO).

Madhok is currently commanding a corps.

Sources said the inquiry has been completed but the Army has not yet fixed blame for the media communication.

The Army will, however, be under pressure as the Ministry of Defence has now categorically asked the Army to “fix responsibility” for the communication.

-via Indian Express.

People inside Army plotted against me: VK Singh

Gen VK Singh

Army chief Gen VK Singh, whose date of birth was mired in a huge controversy, has alleged that a “lot of money” was spent by people within the force to get a “false” birth certificate and tarnish his image as he had stopped their wrongdoings.

He said he had evidence that people within the Army were behind the “derogatory and completely fake” stories against him and action was being taken against them.

“A lot of people went on a drive to tarnish my image because they were not happy with the cleansing action I had taken. You will be suprised to know the amount of money which was spent to get the false certificate about by date of birth,” Gen Singh told ‘The Week’ magazine.

Asked who was spending the money to defame him, he responded, “There were a large number of people. A lot of money was given to a lot of people to do stories against me.

The stories were derogatory and completely fake.” When pointed out that one retired Lt General has already been accused of plotting against him, he said, “He was not the only one. We have identified a number of people.”

He said, “We have evidence of how documents were leaked and how much money was given” and that they were within the Army.

Queried whether he was surprised that serving officers were working against him, the Army Chief said, “In a large organisation like ours, you will always have people who feel left out. There were people who were doing wrong things but after we stopped those things, they turned against me.”

“We have evidence and necessary action is being taken,” Gen Singh said, adding, “If someone has betrayed the Army, there will be punishment. This is the rule of the Army.”

Gen Singh was mired in a huge controversy over his date of birth. The Army’s two branches — Adjutant General Branch and Military Secretary Branch — had two sets of dates of his birth — one having May 10, 1951 and another May 10, 1950.

He always maintained that his actual year of birth was 1951, which would give him nine-month extension from May-end this year, and dragged the government to the Supreme Court on this. However, he lost the legal battle there and will hence retire in May.

Asked about his relationship with Defence Minister AK Antony, the Army chief said, “He was always good to me” and “there has never been a single difference” between them.

“I was plain-spoken with him and he appreciated that,” Gen Singh said.

Whether that relationship was good despite the bugging controversy, he asserted that there was no bugging.

“The fact is that our team came across some discrepancies while checking the Defence Minister’s room on February 16,” he said, adding Director General of Military Intelligence then informed Defence Secretary Shashikant Sharma about it and recommended to him to seek the help of other agencies to verify why there were discrepancies.

“If the suspicion was on the military, the Defence Minister would have stopped MI (military intelligence) from checking his room. We still conduct checking of his room.”

-via ZEE News

Wail the chief

Karan Thapar.

I’ve deliberately waited a week because I want to be confident of my opinions before I share them with you. After all, the issues raised by the army chief’s age controversy concern an institution I hold in enormous esteem. But for that very reason it also behoves me to speak freely and, if necessary, critically.

I want to confine myself to a few points I consider paramount. First, was Gen VK Singh justified in taking his own government to court? My earlier comments may have suggested he was but I’ve come to think otherwise. Let me explain.

Like other citizens, Gen Singh, as an individual, has a right to seek justice from the Supreme Court. If captains, majors and colonels can — and even generals have — so can he. But Gen Singh is not just another soldier. He’s the army chief. As such he not only heads the army but, more importantly, personifies the institution. This imposes certain unique constraints and obligations on him. I believe in going to court Gen Singh overlooked this.

If, instead, he had resigned as chief and then sought redressal from the courts Gen Singh would have been considered both a hero and a martyr. A hero for upholding the high standing of his office at the cost of his own career. A martyr because a seemingly rigid and insensitive government had driven him to this.

But that’s not what happened. Gen Singh went to court pleading his honour and integrity were at stake. The key question he then faced was one he never answered but which continues to haunt him: was his honour and integrity not in question when, no matter how conditionally and no matter what the pressure, he agreed to accept in the army’s interest whatever his bosses deemed to be his date of birth and, then — and this is crucial — reiterated suo motto, four months before becoming chief, that he stood by that commitment?

If taking a stand on his date of birth was critical to his self-esteem surely the point at which he should have done this was 2006, 2008 or 2009, when the army raised the issue? Instead, at the time, perhaps because critical promotions would have been at risk, he found a way of accepting the wrong date. It seems it was only as chief when, presumably, there was nothing more to gain, he mustered the resolve to stand up.

Finally, what should Gen Singh have done when he lost? Remember, he was fighting for his honour and integrity. He identified this goal in terms of the Supreme Court accepting 1951 as his date of birth. But it pointedly did not. Worse, it accepted 1950 as the year the army should maintain in its service records. So, whatever sweet words the judges may have used, honour and integrity, in the terms Gen Singh defined them, were denied to him.

I think he should have immediately resigned. I believe that would have been the honourable thing to do.

Instead he left for Jaipur and then London, as if it was business as usual. Worse, he told The Indian Express the court had “upheld (his) integrity and honour” which, as I’ve explained, it had not.

I fear Gen Singh, who’s an honourable man, will live to rue these mistakes. He’ll always be known as the chief who took the government to court and lost. Sadly, some will also remember he didn’t resign immediately. That he didn’t do the decent thing.

-via Hindustan Times.

Select the best for Army Chief

HK Dua.

Wise Generals don’t fight avoidable wars. The Chief of Army Staff, General V K Singh, fought a prolonged war on a personal issue, stretched his lines beyond a limit and lost it.

As a serving Chief of one of the largest armies of the world he ought not to have become a complainant before the highest court of the land – only to lose the war he had waged for several months over the date of his birth.

Was he born in 1950 or in 1951 was the question. Involved was a few months’ extension of his tenure in the top most job in the Indian Army.

The Indian Army has a high reputation to keep and it was the duty of General V K Singh to protect it. By approaching the Supreme Court he staked his own honour and that of the post he was holding. Both have come out somewhat bruised.

Why he made a simple question of his own date of birth a matter of honour cannot be easily explained. Had the system of army promotion done injustice to him, or was it some pent up grievance he was nursing all along that had pushed him on to a wrong track which was bound to lead him to a dead-end.

Going by the obiter dicta of the two judges it was clear that Gen. V K Singh was overdrawing on his honour theme that he felt would be compromised if he was to be considered born in 1950.

The judges rejected his demand that he be considered born in 1951, but gave avuncular advice to the chief that he is “a great soldier” and that a date of birth did not have a bearing on his honour.

Having reached the acme of his career with the Indian armed forces, the court seemed to be asking: “What more do you want, General?”

The judges did not want to go into the question that V K Singh was born in 1951. They chose to go by May 10, 1950 as the date of birth as shown in the application form filled in by the young aspirant himself when he sat for the NDA examination, and also by the records of the UPSC.

The Supreme Court also saw merit in the Ministry of Defence going by the undertaking given by the General himself in 2008 and 2009 that he would go by the 1950 date. This was when he was being promoted to higher ranks on the ladder that led to his being the Chief of Army Staff.

Justice H L Gokhale said in the court: “The government gave you an opportunity. It is not fair to criticize the Defence Ministry. The matter was treated as closed. The government made you Chief of the Army. They could have easily said ‘We don’t need such a person’.”

Justice R M Lodha said: “We want to ensure as Chief of Army you continue to serve the country as you did in 38 years. This verdict should not come in your way. Wise men are those who move with the wind.”

As good old uncles often do, this was an exercise in applying balm to a General who has lost his battle, and who might take defeat to heart and quit his job.

Men who have a heightened sense of honour often need such a piece of advice and it is good the Supreme Court gave it to the General. The Chief himself in his long career himself might have given this kind of advice to a junior with a hurt ego.

Whether General V K Singh chooses to accept the Supreme Court’s advice remains to be seen. On the surface, his continuance at the helm seems to have become untenable. This is because he took the battle too far, leaving himself with little space to beat retreat with a grace.

It is for him to decide. In service, he would become a kind of lame duck in uniform; always looking back over on his 38 years of the battles, won and lost, including the great DoB battle.

General V K Singh should feel happy he made it to the top. He must, however, ponder whether it was worth all the bother. He might also consider whether it is wise to divide his Army in two camps – for and against him on his personal issue.

Or did he get carried away with the breaking news headlines in the newspapers or on the TV channels? For weeks the General’s age had become their staple.

The government has clearly won the case in the Supreme Court. But it must review the system of selecting the Chief of Army Staff. Particularly it should consider whether the seniority principle which guides the selection process gets the best of chiefs for the Army.

Often the senior-most General may not be the option. Indian Army requires the ablest of the commanders to be its chief. The accident of getting born on a particular day should not be decisive.

The best way perhaps would be to select the best General out of top brass of eight top commanders.

-via Zee News

They’re old enough

Indrajit Hazra.

It is not my intention to cause a sudden dip in morale in the Indian armed forces, a dip so vertiginous that when the Chinese are amassed at the Mehrauli crossing, our soldiers will be able to do nothing. But the crisis that reached its climax last week involving the date of birth of India’s army chief strikes me as being incredibly banal. How many angels can dance on a pin head being replaced by how many candles should be there on our army chief’s birthday cake on May 10?

Don’t get me wrong. The fact that the spat between the ministry of defence and the army chief — which in institutional terms means the hand-to-hand combat between the Government of India and the Indian Army — was played out in public must have been disconcerting for patriots on both sides of the civilian-military border. On following the spat in the Indian media, the aforementioned Chinese must have plied themselves with endless mai tais and gleefully quoted from Du Fu’s ‘Ballad of the Ancient Cypress’, lines that only Vikram Seth would be able to faithfully translate as “If a great hall should teeter, wanting rafters and beams,/ Ten thousand oxen would turn their heads towards its mountain’s weight.” That a quarrel had broken out between the army and the civilian government was serious. But what surely can’t be is the reason for this dangerous eyeballing: whether the army chief was bluffing about his age.

Here’s the source of the fracas in a nutshell: General VK Singh insisted that his date of birth is May 10, 1951 — and not May 10, 1950, as according to the service records that Singh had himself provided when he had applied for the National Defence Academy (NDA) when he was 14 (which means that he must have been then 13). I’ve conducted similar age-propping strategies when I was 14 (but was actually 15) to cover up the fact that I had lost a year when getting into school for the first time. I hope to dear god that by constantly repeating my real age for the last decade or so to people, especially to ladies who profess a fondness for older men, I have made amends.

So at best, Singh was guilty of some minor age-shuffling so that he could get into the NDA a year early. Today, that has come to bite him in his rear formation. This, to me, could have been easily sorted out by some clerical whiz in the government, if the civvies in the defence ministry wanted. Instead, it became an infructuous contest which even the Supreme Court labelled as being “a vital matter for the entire nation”. A vital matter for the entire nation. Really?

I’m told it’s about ‘honour’. In August 31, 1959, army chief General KS Thimayya offered to resign after a spat with defence minister VK Krishna Menon over, among other things, the latter’s refusal to consider the chief of army staff’s plans for preparing for a looming India-China conflict — which Menon thought was only gathering force in the brain of a restless military man. Nehru did manage to convince Thimayya to stay on as army chief till the latter retired in 1961 — even as the PM backed the wrong horse Menon into the winter of ’62.

Nehru had told Parliament in September 1959, the House agitated over a army chief-defence minister quarrel, that the issues involved in Thimayya’s attempted resignation were “rather trivial and of no consequence”, and that they arose “from temperamental differences and did not include promotions”. I can bet my 21st battalion that the spat didn’t arise because of promotions etc but because of the matter of Menon shrugging his shoulders each time Thimayya uttered the word ‘China’.

Now that was a spat I can understand where honour must have crept in. What loss of honour was General Singh worried about? That he’s been branded a liar by AK Antony and his para-militaries? But according to his own logic, he must have lied at least once — either when he was 13 or 14, or now when he’s 60 or 61. He told the court that he would resign in 48 hours the moment the government accepted he was 60. The problem for the court was trusting a man’s sense of hours when he’s mixed up 365 days. But, most incredibly, the court said that it was “not concerned with determining his age” and went on to utter something four days before Valentine’s Day about understanding the “pain in your heart of having your date of birth not being corrected”.

I think I just heard a gaggle of tipsy but sure-about-their-ages Chinese generals roll with laughter on the red carpeted floor while quoting one of Sun Tzu’s five dangerous faults that may affect a general — which Vikram Seth would faithfully translate as “A delicacy of honour that is sensitive to shame.”

-via Hindustan Times.

We take pride in you, but you must honour your commitment: SC to Gen VK Singh

Gen VK Singh

While showering praise on army chief Gen VK Singh for his “meritorious” 38 years of service to the nation, the Supreme Court asked him to honour the commitment given to the Centre to abide by its decision on his date of birth controversy.

“Commitment must be honoured even if it is not your actual date of birth,” a bench comprising Justices R M Lodha and H L Gokhale said and made it clear that his plea on date of birth is “bonafide”.

“Having given assurance and commitment to the government, I think such meritorious officer of such position should abide by it. We take pride in having officers like you and you have every right to put your grievances,” it further said.

The bench agreed with Singh’s submission that the petition was not filed in order to get some benefit after his lawyer submitted that the General is ready to resign within 48 hours if government accepts his date of birth of 10 May 1951.

“It does not reflect on your conduct nor is your fault. You have just come to the court to point out government’s fault in not correcting your date of birth,” the bench said adding “it is not that you have come here out of the blue to get benefit”.

The court also said these matter should have been resolved peacefully.

“These matters should not have been dragged to public domain and should be handled peacefully,” the bench said.

-via Firstpost.

Where is the honour in this battle, General VK Singh?

Gen VK Singh

Nagarajan Chelliah.

As a person who grew up dreaming of joining the army, I was shocked to hear the news of you approaching the Supreme Court on the issue of your age.

The military has been a part of my life; my father served in the army and the schools I attended the most were surrounded by the aura of uniformed personnel. Even though I could not become an army officer, I looked upon it as THE way of life.

Like a young child that believes its English teacher is right more than its English-professor father, I pin my faith in you in your battle with the government. However, as even reality is only relative, I write you this letter.

I don’t understand why your official date of birth — you say it should be 1951, while the government says it is recorded as 1950 — is being discussed now in the twilight of your term as chief of the army. For, the issue was cleared when you were promoted as a commander in 2008.

Even the news reports that seem to support your case say that in 2008, when the discrepancy was raised and you were told to accept 1950 as your DoB, you — maybe under duress — said “whatever decision is taken in organisational interest is acceptable to me”. Other reports say you accepted 1950 as the DoB.

In either case, didn’t the issue end at that point? Unless you think that what was in the organisational interest then is not so anymore.

Since generals are the face of the 1.1 million-strong force and show the way for the soldiers, my doubt is why such a senior officer would — whatever the pressures be — give a vague reply about organisational interest when the issue at hand was a very personal one. Or why even under duress accept a wrong DoB.

Once you accepted a lie for a personal benefit, what example were you setting?

It’s easy to blame the civilian government, but why was the issue not resolved in 2006 when it was still an internal issue for the army? What happened to your honour then? Certainly no one would have hung a dagger over your head and forced you to accept the wrong DoB.

Dear Sir, your answer would have an effect on the minds of lakhs of youngsters who want to join the forces. To say that your colleagues and seniors wronged you is like telling the young to stay away from the army because it has no honour. Worse, it would send the message that anyone can go on to head the army by compromising on his ‘honour and integrity’ at an earlier stage in the career. Else, shouldn’t you have refused to budge under pressure at that stage and set an example for the entire military? Couldn’t you have refused to accept the promotion till the truth prevailed? Or gone to court then itself?

An outsider like me does not have to remind you of the armed forces tribunal. Wouldn’t approaching the tribunal have been better than fighting it out with the civilian government?

Most importantly, I don’t understand what the issue has to do with honour — your or the army’s. It’s just a case of a discrepancy in your personal data records, not even about your career achievements.

Sir, we have always been mesmerised by the words: “The safety, honour and welfare of your country come first always and every time. The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next. Your own ease, comfort and safety come last always and every time.” But as the controversy sullies the army and the government, I would like to know what you did to save the honour of the country and the military in this issue.

Why move the court now? You may cite the PIL filed by an ex-servicemen’s association. But you could have let the army and the defence ministry deal with it. I am sure neither you nor any of your supporters would have approved of a junior officer or jawan approaching the court suddenly to save his ‘honour’.

If this battle were about ‘honour and integrity’ and not extended tenure, couldn’t you have waited for some more and, after retiring this year, sued the government? The ministry will neither bury nor burn your records on your retirement, so you would have had a lot of free time — not wasting the army chief’s precious time on personal issues — to fight your battle. Then you would also have been seen as a victim of bureaucracy, and all our sympathies would have been with you.

Otherwise, you are only setting a bad example for not just your men — not to forget the navy and the IAF — but for millions of young minds who are inspired by the armed forces. They would no more be able to differentiate between other government servants and military personnel. What a shame that would be then, General.

Yours truly,

An admirer of the Indian Army.

-via DNA.

Army goes slow on govt’s order to reconcile Gen VK Singh’s birth date

The Army‘s adjutant general (AG) branch seems to be dragging its feet on reconciling its records, as directed by the defence ministry, to show General V K Singh’s date of birth (DoB) as ‘May 10, 1950′.

With just four days left for the age controversy to be heard by the Supreme Court, some quarters in South Block have begun to point at “a clear conflict of interest” since the two crucial Army wings involved in the DoB row, the AG and military secretary (MS) branches, function directly under the Army chief.

Gen Singh, the first serving military chief to petition the Supreme Court, wants May 10, 1951 to be recognized as his DoB to restore his “personal integrity and honour”. If his DoB is settled at 1951, Gen Singh would serve till March 2013, instead of retiring on May 31 this year as the government wants, changing the entire line of succession in the 1.13-million strong force.

But MoD’s latest directive on January 23 to the AG and MS branches as well as the Comptroller General of Defence Accounts has reiterated that Gen Singh’s “officially recognized” DoB will “continue to remain” as ‘May 10, 1950′ and all records should be reconciled to that effect, as reported by TOI on Monday.

Government sources said “such a direction” had even been issued in July 2011, when an attempt by the AG branch to amend Gen Singh’s year of birth to 1951 from 1950 was held to be “null, void and non est (non-existent)”.

In August, however, the AG branch raised “certain issues” to seek “further advice” on the matter, and Gen Singh himself filed a statutory complaint to get his age “corrected” to May 10, 1951.

“Since Gen Singh’s statutory complaint was pending before the government for consideration, the advice sought by AG branch was not communicated at that time. But after the statutory complaint was disposed of (without any relief) in December-end, the advice sought was conveyed on January 23,” said a source.

The MoD letter, incidentally, directed the AG branch to ensure “strict compliance without any further loss of time” in correcting its records to show May 10, 1950 as Gen Singh’s DoB. “A compliance report be sent to this ministry at the earliest,” it added.

The AG branch, however, is yet to respond to this letter. “An interim kind of response may be sent before the Supreme Court hearing on February 3,” said an Army source.

-via The Times of India.

Antony, General Singh blame Army for the age row

As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear the Army Chief age row, both Defence Minister AK Antony and Army Chief General Vijay Kumar Singh on Tuesday blamed the Army for the mess. Both Antony as well as General Singh said that the Army sat on the problem for 36 years and that the problem should not recur.

Antony said that the Supreme Court verdict on the controversy surrounding the date of birth of Army Chief will be final. Refusing to see the controversy as a civil-military conflict, Antony said that people responsible for maintaining the records will take the decision on General Singh’s date of birth.

“It’s gone beyond the government. Let’s wait for the Supreme Court decision. That will be final and nobody can question that,” said Antony in New Delhi on Tuesday.

“There are people responsible for that, (and) they will take the decision. At this stage it won’t come to me,” said the Defence Minister.

Antony pointed out that the controversy was not new and it had been festering for over 36 years.

“It’s been 36 years but the government was not in picture. It was only known to the Army. In 2006 the Army noticed two dates of birth, then it went to the level of Army Chief in 2006. The government of that day took a decision and recommended it to the Army. Where is the civil-military controversy? In 2008 it was another Army Chief and then the recommendation was sent to the government and the government accepted that,” he said.

Reacting to the Defence Minister’s statement, Genral VK Singh said, “Yes, this problem has been within the Army. It shouldn’t have happened, but has continued for 36 years, and this problem will not recur ever again.”

“The letter from the Defence Ministry to the Adjutant General’s branch is being studied and reply will be given in due course,” he said.

“There was some problem in coordination between the branch that keeps all the service records and other branches. Now a system has been put in place to resolve the coordination problem. As a result, such problem will never recur,” General Singh said.

The Indian Army has two sets of records related to General Singh’s dates of birth leading to the controversy and forcing the Army Chief to move the Supreme Court to resolve the issue. The government has also filed a caveat in the Supreme Court on the petition moved by General Singh on his age row. Through the caveat, the government has sought that the court does not pass an order before hearing it.

While Adjutant General Branch, the official record keeper in the Army, manitains General Singh’s date of birth as May 10, 1951; in the Military Secretary Branch General Singh’s date of birth is May 10, 1950.

General Singh, a para-commando and veteran of 1971 Indo-Pak war, has been contending that May 10, 1951 should be treated as his actual date of birth as it was mentioned in his matriculation certificate but the Defence Ministry has rejected it as May 10, 1950 is the date entered in his UPSC form for the NDA.

If General Singh’s date of birth is taken as May 10, 1951 then he will retire in March 2013 and if May 10, 1950 is accepted then his tenure will come to an end in May 2012. The difference of one year will have an affect on who will succeed him as the next Army Chief.

If he retires on May 31, 2012 then Eastern Army Commander Lieutenant General Bikram Singh will take over as the next Army Chief, but if he demits office in March 2013 then Northern Army commander Lieutenant General KT Parnaik could take over from him as Lt Gen Bikram Singh will retire later in 2012.

But if General Singh is removed or resigns before May 31, 2012, then Western Command Chief Lieutenant General Shankar Ghosh, who is the senior most serving officer in the Army, will take on as the 27th Chief of the Indian Army.

-via IBN Live

Performance, not age

Ajai Shukla.

The public battle over the army chief’s age bears a larger lesson for the government: the undesirability of letting a date of birth determine which generals are appointed to senior military command and, especially, to the crucial appointments of army, navy and air force chiefs. As India now knows, the army chief (like those of the navy and air force) is appointed based not on merit but on when he was born. When a serving chief retires, his senior-most army commander is elevated to the top job. Only once has the government deviated from this: in appointing Lt Gen A S Vaidya instead of Lt Gen S K Sinha in 1983. Rather than exercise judgement in selecting a suitable chief from its 85-odd lieutenant generals, the government acts as if all of them are equally good, or bad.

Rather less known is the fact that the army chief’s key subordinates — i.e., army commanders and, under them, corps commanders — are also appointed based on when they were born. Of the officers promoted to lieutenant general, only those with at least three years of residual service (i.e., those below 57 years) get to command corps, while the rest of them warm desks. This even though a corps commander’s tenure is just a year. After commanding a corps, a lieutenant general is elevated to army commander only if he has two years of residual service.

These are not mere guidelines that are waived for exceptional officers, but ironclad rules that waste exceptional military talent for insufficient reason. An example of this is currently playing out. Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain was brought in as Srinagar corps commander in autumn 2010 to staunch three years of bloodletting on the Kashmiri street. He successfully calmed tempers and dramatically boosted the army’s image, achieving in Kashmir what Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus could not in Afghanistan. Based purely on performance, Hasnain is an outstanding field commander. But, since he has less than two years of service left, he will not even make army commander, leave alone army chief. Instead, he will push papers in Delhi.

This ill-conceived “date of birth” approach to top-rank promotions sits atop a bitterly resented quota system in the ranks just below. The army’s “Mandalised” system of promotion quotas (described in this newspaper’s Weekend supplement on January 14) grants promotions at the key ranks of colonel and brigadier not to accomplished officers with the best career records; but distributes them between various arms on a pro-rata basis. That guarantees each arm — the infantry, the artillery, the armoured corps, etc., — proportionate representation in those crucial ranks, regardless of merit. Every promotion board rejects some outstanding officers because of “lack of vacancies” in that arm; while officers with notably inferior records get promoted because their arm’s vacancies must be filled.

No other country that I know of fetters its senior military command so. The United States government, like most others, selects its top soldier from a broad panel of generals, often picking up a relatively junior officer with an exceptional service record and the potential for bridging the sometimes opposing interests of the military and the political class.

Such systems of “deep selection” create incentives amongst the generals for bold decision-making and eye-catching performance. But Indian generals who are in the running to be chief (by virtue of their correctly aligned dates of birth!) need only to ensure that they don’t shoot themselves in the foot. This encourages conservative decision-making, the absolute avoidance of risk, and the “servicing” of personal relationships to ensure that nothing derails their candidacy.

The argument against “deep selection” sounds superficially convincing: that a compromised polity and an inherently anti-army bureaucracy can hardly be trusted to select the military chiefs. This argument suggests that dhotiwalas and babus (the military’s mocking reference to politicians and bureaucrats) would unleash patrimonialism and politicisation within an organisation that has remained relatively honest and functional only because of its complete segregation.

This argument is flawed, not least in regarding the selection of senior officers free of such influence — something that has been disproved in the debate over the army chief’s birth date. By promoting a chasm between the military and the political and bureaucratic elites, the military damages its own interests. With no political and bureaucratic investment in a military chief (we didn’t select him, he just happened to be born on a certain date and came up the chain) the civil-military relationship remains fundamentally adversarial. Any reform measure — the creation of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS); an integrated defence staff (IDS) headquarters, or the cross-posting of officers between the MoD and the IDS — founders on the rocks of inter-agency hostility.

A system of “deep selection” would galvanise the military’s leadership; lead to longer tenures for service chiefs, during which they could drive home key initiatives; promote a meritocracy from the top down; and, most importantly, create an incentive for elected representatives and government bureaucrats to pay closer attention to the military and the management of defence. For entrenched interests within the military, greater civilian involvement in promotions and appointments is threatening. But this must be the lesson that emerges from the current unsavoury face-off.

-via Business Standard