Who does the Indian Army’s voluntary ‘Tour of Duty’ really benefit?

Reports appeared earlier this month to suggest that the Indian Army was ‘discussing’ a proposal to induct volunteers on short, three-year stints. The idea, explained Defence spokesperson Colonel Aman Anand, is to allow Indian youth to experience military service without making it a career. The project is tentatively named Tour of Duty.

The volunteers, officers and jawans, would undergo training for nine months or a year before getting deployed in operational posts. This will, it is being said, help create a group of highly motivated, disciplined, patriotic and confident youth, ready to serve with distinction in any other sector they choose to join.

Another benefit, revealed in an internal note, will be to reduce the army’s salary and pension burden as well as training costs. What has not been revealed is now in the realm of speculation.

The world’s third largest army with 1.4 million personnel (China is said to have reduced its army by half and Japan Defence Report 2019 put PLA numbers at less than a million) is not exactly short of manpower. Millions of unemployed youth are eager to join its ranks for a stable job, regular pay and pension. But it is said to be short of officers to lead the jawans. Army veterans say it had become increasingly difficult to find youth with ‘officer material’. But is the voluntary tour of duty the way forward to address the issue?

The reports led to a flurry of posts on social media by ex-servicemen. Here are some samples:

• Is Army planning to change its secular credentials? We all know how RSS managed coaching institurs have deeply penetrated Civil Services specially IAS and IPS?

• Why is RSS planning private military schools?

• I am worried entry of ‘Tour of Duty’ soldiers will open the gate for radicalised and communal elements to infiltrate the army

• Will caste profile of Indian army regiments be changed?

• Will applicants from RSS and RSS affiliated schools be eligible?

The disquiet is not confined to only ex-servicemen. Even serving officers seem sceptical. Says a serving General, “The shortage of officers in the army is not because of paucity of aspirants. It is because of paucity of the right kind of aspirants. The British had an acronym for it, namely OLQ (Officer Like Qualities)”. While the Army has so far resisted compromising on the qualitative requirements for officers, he added, the Tour of Duty could be the beginning of the end of the Indian Army as a professional force.

“A much better idea would be to make a three-year stint in the armed forces mandatory for those who crack the civil services examinations. At the end of three years, the suitable among them may exercise the option of staying back in the army or join the civil services,” says a retired commander.

A retired Major General, when asked to comment on the proposal, quipped, “wars have no prizes for the runners up; the army must be manned and led by people who can make the supreme sacrifice whenever necessary. But this proposal sounds like a picnic and may turn out to be more tour than duty”. What can this tour of less than two years, excluding training and leave, serve or achieve, he wondered aloud.

Army officers, who lead jawans, need to command their respect, trust and loyalty—a bonding that is almost impossible to achieve by volunteers on tour. Whoever has thought up this scheme is either starved of ideas or is up to some mischief.

The suspiciously scatterbrained idea may or may not have been inspired by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. We do not know for sure. But what is on record is a statement made by Bhagwat in 2018. He was reported to have said that while the Indian Army would take six months to prepare a trained army, the RSS could do it in three days, if necessary. That was how strong the RSS was, he seemed to suggest, though he hastened to add the caveat that RSS was a ‘Parivarik’ Sanstha.

Following public outrage, Manmohan Vaidya of the RSS claimed Bhagwat had been misquoted. What the RSS chief had said, Vaidya claimed, was that if the situation arose and the Constitution permitted, RSS volunteers could be trained by the army in three days while the rest of the society would take six months to be prepared by the army. The comparison was not between the Indian Army and the RSS, Vaidya laboured to clarify, but between the RSS and the society at large.

Commentators have been quick to point out how the RSS encouraged coaching institutes to train youth for civil services. There never was any shortage of UPSC coaching institutes but RSS floated its own coaching institutes, invited serving civil servants to engage classes and interact with aspirants chosen by the Sangh. Tips were shared to crack the UPSC examination and some of the aspirants did get selected every year and joined the civil service. The exercise helped the RSS make inroads into the civil service, connect with the bureaucracy and infiltrate it from within.

The same tactics appears to have been followed by the RSS in setting up its own Sainik Schools. A Google search yields the image of a Rajju Bhaiyya Sainik School in Uttar Pradesh, apparently named after a former RSS chief. It is worth recalling that there are already as many as 28 Sainik Schools in the country which run under the supervision of the Ministry of Defence. Over the past several years, these schools have been starved of funds while the RSS planned to start its own “Army School” from April, 2020.

In any case, for the past half a century and more we have had a National Cadet Corps (NCC) programme in colleges. There is a NCC Directorate and JCOs, NCOs and officers as trainers are provided by the army. Drills, camps, fitness, shooting at firing ranges, adventure sports etc. have been part of the training. NCC contingents continue to take part in Republic Day parades in Delhi and in the states; and there is a quota for NCC cadets who want to join the army and fulfil eligibility conditions.

While Israel does have a compulsory military service for every able-bodied men and women, the voluntary ‘tour of duty’ falls between two stools. Not only will the number be small, the selection is likely to be subjective, selective and arbitrary.

And if the idea is to promote self-confidence, teamwork, initiative, innovation, stress management and a sense of responsibility, as the Army spokesman Colonel Aman Anand confirmed to the media, is it an admission that project NCC has failed? Why not redesign the NCC then? But the Government’s internal note lets the cat out of the bag. The tour is meant for “those young people who do not want to make defence services their permanent vocation, but still want to experience the thrill and adventure of military professionalism..”

It goes on to add, “Unemployment in our country is a reality, however there is resurgence of nationalism and patriotism…” A few thousand patriots on tour, the Govt believes, will solve unemployment and make our youth more patriotic.