During the budget presentation, Pranab Mukherjee's statements seemed to indicate that the Armed forces demand of One Rank, One Pension has been resolved. However Maj Gen (retired) Satbir Singh, the vice-chairman of the Indian Ex-Servicemen Association, said to the Calcutta Telegraph (here) “This is not an acceptance of our demand for one rank one pension,”. So while the politicians and bureaucrats have convinced themselves that the issue of low morale in the armed forces has been resolved, our sources in the Armed forces say that neither has it been resolved nor are the relevant issues being addressed.
Separately, the Defence Minister A.K. Antony claimed that the armed forces are short of 15,000 staff. But the reality is that we have the third largest army in the world and the only battle we have seen in the last 10 years is in Kargil where a few thousand men were deployed. Globally there is a trend towards reduction in the number of personnel while using technology to increase the effectiveness of each soldier. This is thus an issue of a flawed long term strategy and also deploying of the army for issues that local bodies (police, CRPF etc) should be deployed. 8ak sources say that the shortage of staff at the levels like Lt Col is due to excessive promotions which have bloated the upper echelons of the forces. Read here
India Today said that the armed forces were unhappy that the French National day was given more importance than the anniversary of Kargil where our bravest men laid down their lives against an unprovoked Pakistani attack. Read it here.
Are the defence bureaucrats misleading the Indian government and people?
Filling the submarine gap
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