Forty people have received the Bharat Ratna since it was first awarded in 1954. By my count at least 22 are politicians. A further 13 intellectuals or artists, two social workers and an industrialist. There are also two foreigners. But in 54 years not a single armed forces officer has qualified. Surely Manekshaw should have? Was he less deserving than M. G. Ramachandran, Rajiv Gandhi, Aruna Asaf Ali, Gulzarilal Nanda, VV Giri, Gopinath Bordoloi and Chidambaram Subramaniam? Actually, the discrimination against the armed forces is yet more inexplicable if you analyze how service officers are ranked alongside civilian bureaucrats. For instance, in the states a brigadier and a district collector are treated as equals although it takes 28 years for an officer to become a brigadier and just 8 for a bureaucrat to become a DC. Worse, the central government ranks the Army Chief below the Cabinet Secretary. Yet the IAS comprises 4671 members and the army over a million. Even members of the Planning Commission, Chairmen of the UPSC, the CAG, the Attorney General and every single foreign ambassador have precedence.
Read the Full article: Unbelievable or deliberate
Karan Thapar
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