Military caught in the web of Bureaucracy- Defence meetings at South Block

Discussions items on the agenda
The meeting should have begun at 10 O’ Clock, and it did. At the stroke of the hour, the chairman came in, and even before we had settled down in our chairs, the Staff Officer had read out the first item on the agenda. The ‘old man’ expounded the nuances of that very contentious issue and he enlightened us on the pros and cons of the various alternatives available to us. He regaled the audience with some real life stories on how a bad decision had created such complex problems for the posterity. Having done that, he threw the subject open for discussion. I was not concerned with that particular subject and could therefore objectively watch the proceedings. I saw that some officers wanted to say something merely to be noticed. And when they were snubbed by the ‘chair’ I saw the glee on the faces of the detractors. The discussion went on for a long time, and after that the chairman said, “Well we have heard all the views. Now please send us your comments within two weeks and we will discuss this issue in the next meeting.”

The second item on the agenda was taken up at ten minutes to eleven. And by the time was served at half past eleven, we had finished three out of the 29 items on the agenda. I got a little worried. I had fixed a game of bridge in the afternoon, and the way things were going, it was unlikely that we would be able to finish discussion on all our ‘points’ even at dinner time. I asked a neighbor whether the conference was scheduled to spill over to the next day. He replied in the negative. He told me that the chairman was scheduled to go on a temporary duty that evening.
I need not have worried. After tea, the pace of the conference improved after tea, and during the next one hour we had completed fifteen items. And then, it seems the chairman decided to rush through. The last fourteen items were given a summary treatment, and before one O’clock, we wound up.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that a similar phenomenon occurs during ‘mating’. The first item, i.e. foreplay takes a longish time. But after that, things speed up and towards the end the mating partners are in a frantic hurry. This, I soon discovered, is not the only similarity between the two activities. In meetings, as also mating, nothing really happens after the activity. After meetings, the tables have to be cleared of crockery and after mating there is a bit of cleaning to do. In both cases, nothing really results as a result of all that effort. In rare cases, when something does fructify, it takes several months to manifest by way of a result, despite all the hurry in the end.

My dirty mind went further. I discovered that soon after marriage or the change of boss, mating and meetings are more frequent and more intense. Finally, in winter these activities flourish more than summer. It became increasingly evident to me that the similarity in the spelling of the two words, ‘mating’ and ‘meeting’ is not just a coincidence. It is the result of systematic research carried out by those who created the lexicon.

At his point, I was reminded of the unorthodox ‘meetings’ which are convened by military commanders. These have no formal agenda, and the boss is the only one who speaks. These seamless monologs are a method by which the ‘commander’ asserts his position as the master; the views of the subordinates are neither sought nor entertained. No prize for guessing the equivalent of this phenomenon in the mating game. The only difference is that the authoritative form of such mating is a deadly offence, but in the military meetings of this nature is a routine occurrence and are the birth right of all commanding officers.

From this emerges, what is now known as ‘the Surjit’s principle for military conferences’. It says, “If a meeting is inevitable, just switch off; sit back and ‘conceive’ a short story.”

A Footnote
Between 1973 and ’97 I spent thirteen long years in and around the South Block in New Delhi. The most onerous part of the service in the defense headquarters was the seemingly unending conferences and meetings. In the beginning, I used to listen to every single speaker and try to follow everything which he said. I also took copious notes of all the proceedings. Then, one day in 1987, I was seated just behind the Additional Secretary (Defense) and the meeting was in the office of Sh Arun Singh, Raksha Rajya Mantri. Our friend seemed to be taking notes, since his eyes were glued on to his note-pad. However, a peep on his work revealed some urdu couplets and pencil sketches of birds and flowers. If a question was directly addressed to him, he said, “I beg your pardon, Sir” and then gave an evasive answer like, “Let them send us a note. We will examine the issue on file.”

I had learnt a lesson. From there on I turned these meetings into occasions to reflect on life and do some serious thinking. A great deal of my writing is actually a result of what was ‘conceived’ during those interminable sessions!
Maj Gen Surjit Singh (Retd)
CHANDIGARH, 24 October 2009