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India's military manpower crisis

Officer's Mess wags delight in pointing to the supposed similarities between the Indian Army and the Mughal military, notably their large retinue of non-combatant personnel: the `tail' that follows the fighting `teeth.' At first glance, the news that the Army has decided to ease out 27,000 medically unfit personnel appears to bear out the criticism. The decision follows a finding by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India that the Army recruited 33,000 personnel over and above its sanctioned strength, because of miscalculation of the level of attrition that would be caused by combat losses, illness, and desertion. However, this number obscures the fact that the Army has been unable to meet the need for officers and officer-rank specialists. According to official data, the Army is 11,238 officers short of its sanctioned strength of 46,615; the Navy has 1,339 officers fewer than the 8,821 it needs; and the Air Force is 1,528 shy of the 12,118 officers it requires. Some field units are short of their sanctioned component of officers by a third, a situation that seriously compromises their combat readiness. While the 1.1 million-strong Indian Army may indeed have too many modern-day standard-bearers, elephant-trainers, and shamans on its payrolls, it is seriously short of the kinds of women and men a modern military needs.

What is the solution? Under General V.P. Malik, the Army announced plans to shed some 50,000 non-combatant personnel, in the hope of freeing resources for new technologies. However, the Kargil war, and escalated fighting in Jammu and Kashmir that followed, put paid to the plans. The disastrous failure of former United States Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld's high-technology, low-manpower doctrine in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated that India's ability to saturate conflict zones with troops was an asset in fighting sub-conventional wars, like the insurgencies in Jammu and Kashmir and the North-East. Still there is no disputing that the Army needs to shed non-combatant manpower. Innovative options, like outsourcing non-core maintenance and transport tasks to entities run by former soldiers, should be explored. Incentives must be put in place to attract the best possible recruits to an organisation from which most will retire mid-career. For example, ex-soldiers can be offered alternative opportunities in administration or policing. State governments, for whom recruitment is an important source of legitimacy-building, have not been receptive to these ideas — but the logjam must be broken. A review of military service conditions and salaries is also needed, given the growth of private sector competition. Successive governments have agreed with these suggestions but done nothing to implement them. India's security simply cannot be secured without energetic effort.

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