A few black sheep don’t make the entire Indian Army corrupt

Express News Service, chandigarh
Posted: Friday , Nov 06, 2009 at 0333 hrs Chandigarh:
The image of the Army has taken a beating recently. Earlier, it was for professional incompetence but after media reports exposed corruption among senior officers, fake killings and recruitment scams have shattered the image of Army as an honest and professional organisation.

While there are certainly a few corrupt elements in the Army, it is unfortunate that certain sections of the media are portraying entire Armed Forces as a corrupt institution.

Till a decade ago, associating the word corruption with Forces was considered a taboo as media felt it could demoralise them. Today, media houses are competing with each other to twist corruption cases linked with Army and discrediting the institution in its entirety.

While none can justify the incidences of corruption in the Army, mistaking a few black sheep with the entire flock is neither appropriate nor acceptable. It is not possible to isolate the Army from the degeneration of moral fibre that has been accepted by the society as our fate for years. Very few take pride in being upright and talking straight. Courage, integrity and morality have been the major casualties in recent times giving way to hypocrisy and sycophancy and the Armed Forces have not remained untouched.
‘A few black sheep don’t make the entire Indian Army corrupt’
Colonel D S Cheema (Retd)
A few black sheep don’t make the entire Indian Army corrupt

Comment
Corrupt Officers in the Indian Armed Forces are promptly tried and punished swiftly. No doubt some black sheep remain undetected (mainly because of faulty Annual Confidential Reports- the system of reporting needs to be drastically refined). Compare this with Bureaucrats. Even known corrupt officers in the civil services are given plum appointments even when their corruption charges are being investigated by CBI. Bureaucrats in MOD are called White Shepherd as they herald all defence scams involving thousands of crores of Rupees and not one official has been convicted till date. On the other hand the MOD has gone to blacklist all the Defence Manufacturers in the World at Large!