Can Retired Officers Contribute

The Indian Army is short of twenty percent of its officer strength, and is considering conscription as a solution. The air force and navy are also short, but only by 12-15 percent. But it's not just officers that are hard to get and keep. Technical specialists are in short supply, which is a growing problem as the Army adds more high- tech gear. The basic problem is that the army must compete with the civilian economy for highly trained or educated personnel. The Army maintains high standards for officers, thus trying to eliminate the shortages by more aggressively recruiting young JCOs/ NCOs for officer candidature from Army Cadet College, which has not really worked because many of them cannot pass the entrance exam.

The Sainik Schools are a system of schools in India conceived in 1961 by Krishna Menon to rectify the regional and class imbalance amongst the officer cadre of the Indian armed forces. The inspiration for Sainik Schools came from the Rashtriya Indian Military College (RIMC) which have given India many service chiefs and the public school system of England. Sainik schools can be regarded as the ordinary citizen's public school where deserving students can get high quality education irrespective of their income or class background. The Sainik schools contribution towards Officer cadre is discouraging if not dismal.

The result is best demonstrated by looking at who applies to what school. The elite Indian Institutes of Management gets 200,000 people applying each year, for 1,200 slots. The Indian Military Academy gets only 86 seats filled for 250 vacancies. (The statics may vary depending on cadets who actually report to/ withdraw from the Academy)

The Indian military has long been an all-volunteer force, and had no trouble filling the ranks. But over the last two decades, as the government dismantled controls on business, and privatized many government owned companies, the economy has boomed. There are not enough qualified technical and management people to fill all the skilled jobs. India has been looking at how other nations solve these problems. They have noted American success in outsourcing a lot of support jobs. This is almost a necessity with some high tech specialties, where even civilian firms face shortages. Another American technique, cash bonuses for jobs with shortages, is more difficult as it hampers Modernisation of the country's Armed Forces.

The Nation has a vast reservoir of Retired Officers, can their services be utilised to tide over the present shortages? Can some of the Support Jobs be outsourced to Retired Ex Servicemen?