Lt Cols- A Rank debased by Bureaucracy

Dear Friends,
Our friends in IAS think they are the last word in manipulation. When they did not like the hue and cry raised over downgradation of Lt Cols to PB3, they brought out the bogey of Lt Cols in operational and non operational role as also on deputation. This they did knowing full well that IAS and IPS indulge in this all the time. Did they not realise that they'll be exposed some day? Did they not know that those who live in glass houses...?

I have cut and pasted below the views of Maj Navpdeep from his blog. In reply to a young IPS man he comes out with certain views and facts. I think we should expand on this and get more similar facts out. They have been cheating the nation and pontificating to others in order to hide their misdeeds. Attack being the best form of defence? We should ask for all the info under RTI Act and confront them with these facts.

In a recent posting on his blog, Pragmatic says
"All India Services: Though it is our most persistent and glaring colonial hangover, it is accepted that the AIS is recruited to man only the highest levels of the civil services. The point not mentioned is that the highest level of the IPS (barring a few at the centre) was the lone head of police in the state (then equivalent to an Area Commander/ Maj Gen). Now every entrant to IPS reaches that pay grade in less than 20 years. For the armed forces it remains a miniscule fraction in over 30 years. The highest level of the IAS was a Secretary (incl Cabinet Secretary) equivalent to the Vice-Chiefs. A number of civil responsibilities since then have been taken over by elected/ political officials, but the Civil service personnel have moved higher in protocol. And it is not only the military that is upset; every professional service in the country has been downgraded to the benefit of the AIS. The tragedy is that only the military seems to be in a position to speak out. We even have career bureaucrats as Vice-Chancellors of universities. Instead of selecting the qualified person for any job, what we have through the AIS is an ‘institutionalized cronyism’."

The point to note is that these IAS walas have subjugated all except the military, and we must turn the tide here. They are very fond of raising the bogey of a colonial military. This is plain and simple fear mongering to fool the incompetent politician and to grind their axe.

It is time the Services and Veterans put up a united strong front and put them in their place. Could someone please forward this mail to the three Chiefs, I do not have their email ids.
Kind regards
Cdr K K Punchhi

Oh oh Abhinav, wrong number !!
A young IPS Officer, Abhinav Kumar, wrote this for the Hindustan Times recently. While I let it pass in the first glance, on second thoughts I said what the heck ?!!. To begin with, I would be candid enough to admit that what he writes usually makes sense and as a fact I like what he writes. But I cannot say the same about these two fickle annotations in his write up :

“First of all, how fair and accurate is the comparison with the All-India Services ? The 5,400-strong IAS preside over roughly 15 million civil servants who work for the central and state governments, whereas the 3,800-strong IPS manages over 2.3 million central and state police personnel. Entry to the civil services is at four different levels. In contrast, our 1.4 million-strong armed forces have just two levels of entry with a combined sanctioned strength of 67,540 officers — with about 55,000 actually serving.”

“The military obsession with protocol and the exclusion of all other concerns is mystifying. Why should a Lieutenant Colonel, a rank that the army no longer allows to command its basic unit, a battalion, be superior in protocol to a district magistrate or a superintendent of police, officers entrusted with looking after the basic unit of our governance, the district ?.”

So Abhinav, it is only officers entrusted with districts who should be granted a superior protocol and not others eh ? So what do we do with those IAS and IPS officers who are not in districts ?, thrust on them a lower status and lower pay ? What about that SP who after his district tenure is posted as SP Computerisation or SP Litigation or SP Law & Order or SP xyz abc whatever. What about that DC who after finishing his tenure is posted as a Deputy Secretary of some non-descript department ?. Pay him or her less would you say ?. What about those multiple DsGP and Chief Secretary grade officers floating around in State Secretariats handling practically non-existent assignments ? Do we pay them on the basis of the number of people they have under their command ?. Things are not that simple. Your comment on the number of employees being ‘presided over’ or ‘managed’ is childish. Tomorrow you would say that a Professor of a University should be paid less than a Havaldar since he or she presides over or manages none whereas a Havaldar still has a Section serving under his Command. It’s laughable to say the least. A military officer from the very beginning is a judge, commander, manager, administrator all rolled into one. Being in charge of human life is the biggest responsibility, much more than managing thousands of acres. But this of course is not to belittle the IAS or the IPS who just like the military have their respective designated roles to play. Pay and status should be directly linked with rank, grade and length of service and not with any appointment that someone lucky may be holding on one particular day. The pitfalls of accepting your argument are many. For instance in the military context, a Major from the Corps of Engineers who is posted as a Garrison Engineer and who handles projects worth crores and enjoys a clout unmatchable in any other service cannot possibly claim better pay and status than that equivalent Major of the Infantry commanding a company somewhere in a godforsaken place just on the basis of the self-assumed so called 'importance' of appointment.

And Abhinav, by the way, a Lt Col does enjoy higher protocol than most DCs and SPs. And yes, by the way, it is Lt Cols (who are acting Cols) who command Battalions.
Oh oh Abhinav, wrong number!!
Posted by Navdeep / Maj Navdeep