LOOKING AHEAD:Wing Commanders and Commodores are expected to get a higher pay grade (Bloomberg)

The ongoing tug-of-war between the government and the armed forces is possibly headed for a quick conclusion on the Prime Minister’s return from France. He is expected to take the final call — accept or reject the forces’ request for parity of pay scales of their officers with their civil equivalents, based on the recommendations of the three-member cabinet committee. This committee was hurriedly constituted by the Prime Minister following the unprecedented ‘unionisation’ of the chiefs of Indian Army, Air Force and the Navy. In this acrimonious battle, both sides have been scarred.

The public voicing of grievances by the military chiefs has angered the civilian administration. The government’s double-sided response of forming a panel to address their grievance and simultaneously admonishing the chiefs has the forces squirming. The forces’ demand, claiming unfair recommendations by the bureaucracy, has taken the relationship between the country’s military and its civil administration into unchartered territory. The bureaucracy finds the escalation of demands unjustified. “The Committee of Secretaries (that made recommendations on new pay scales based on the report of the Sixth Pay Commission) is an instrument of government,” points out Defence Secretary Vijay Singh. “The forces will accept whatever the PM decides, but an unfavourable decision will have a long-term impact on the moral of the forces,” says defence commentator, Major General (Retd) V.K. Singh.

At the core of the grievance is the Committee of Secretaries’ decision to peg the Lieutenant Colonels, Wing Commanders and Commodores, who form the bulk of the officers, in Pay Grade 3 while putting their civilian and paramilitary counterparts — directors and commandants — in Grade 4 even though the Pay Commission had kept them in the same grade. Another rank-pay grievance of the forces is that the director generals of police have been put in the newly created Higher Administration Grade (HAG) Plus, whereas the lieutenant generals are still within the old HAG.

Former generals blame the standoff on the lack of the forces’ representation. “It is shocking that there was no representation of the forces in the committee that reviewed the recommendations of the pay commission and that it was made purely of bureaucrats who did whatever they felt like,” says Lieutenant-General (Retd) V.K. Sood.

However, the Defence Secretary says that the point of view of the forces was heard throughout the deliberations by the Pay Commission and the Committee of Secretaries.

Also, the forces’ demand for ‘parity with honour’ is questioned by some who say that the forces want the best of both worlds — they want a subsidised lifestyle while also getting paid as much as their non-subsidised civilian counterparts. To that, Singh says the forces have for long requested the government to withdraw the canteen stores department (CSD) facility.

According to Major General (Retd) V K Singh, the forces have already fallen way below corporate jobs in the pecking order and this new issue will only aggravate shortage of officers — Indian Army is currently short of 15,000 officers because it cannot find suitable people. “Forty years ago, I qualified for IIT and NDA both, and I chose NDA. Nobody would do it today,” he says.

The public recrimination between the government and the forces has dented the sheen of both institutions. It has also divided the nation between those who see the forces as victims of injustice and those who see them as status-seeking egoists. Neither perception bodes well for the civil-military relationship in the country. “This shouldn’t have happened, and it should never happen again,” says Major General Singh.

feroz(dot)ahmed(at)abp(dot)in

(Businessworld Issue 07-13 Oct 2008)