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A raw deal for men in uniform

Back in October 2005, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid out perhaps the most lucid exposition, ever made by a politician, of the importance of internal security. “Our economic programmes and development,” he explained, “are wholly contingent upon upholding the rule of law in the country. The police thus have a very vital role to play in the development of the nation.”

But less than three years on, all three organisations responsible for security —the police, paramilitary forces and the military — are seething. The Justice B.N. Srikrishna Sixth Central Pay Commission report has infuriated women and men in uniform.

One part of the problem is a new grade-pay system, which in effect increases the disparities between the Indian Administrative Service and a security-focussed cadre like the Indian Police Service. While stating that it wished to retain the edge the IAS has by tradition enjoyed — some two years over the IPS, for example — the CPC has ended up significantly enhancing it.

Yet, critics of the CPC argue, the pay and seniority issues are but a symptom of a larger attitudinal malaise. The CPC virtually takes no note of internal security challenges — the terms “national security” and “internal security” figure just six times each in the 658-page document, all in passing — nor does it devote space to discussion of the serious issues confronting their management today. In this lies the genesis of the problem.

How did the CPC determine that IAS officers ought to have a significant edge over their counterparts? And why does it matter?

The CPC argued that IAS officers “hold important field level posts at the district level and at the cutting edge at the start of their careers with critical decision making and crisis management responsibilities.” It pointed out that “the initial postings of IAS officers are generally to small places, they face frequent transfers and the pulls and pressures they have to stand up to early in their career [are intense].”

Just why this is a case for one service having an edge over others is unclear. Police officers, after all, serve in exactly the same districts as administrative service officers; the Superintendent of Police, at least in theory, working in close coordination with the District Collector. Like administrators, police officers face political pressures and frequent transfers — and have to make decisions which have a direct impact on people’s lives.

Data gathered by The Hindu from State government websites and phone books — the sole means available in the absence of any official compilation — do not appear to bear out the CPC’s contention that the IAS works in conditions of exceptional hardship.

In Jammu and Kashmir — where there is a very real threat — not one directly-recruited IAS officer serves as administrative head of even one of the 11 districts of the Kashmir Province. Six IPS officers, by contrast, serve as SPs. Elsewhere, the situation is even worse, especially in States where, by the Government of India’s own account, deprivation plays a causal role in naxalite violence. While 19 IPS officers hold posts at district levels and below in Chhattisgarh, including all districts of the worst-hit Bastar region, just 10 IAS officers are in place. Not one direct-recruit IAS, it bears mention, is serving in Bastar. Bihar has 25 IPS officers serving at the district level and below; just nine IAS officers do so. Jharkhand has 56 IPS officers at this cutting-edge level to just 9 IAS officers; in Orissa, the figures are 16 and 5.

Oddly, the Indian Foreign Service has been accorded career-parity with the IAS, even though it is no one’s case that foreign service officers work in remote villages or have to make difficult decisions under intense political pressure. The CPC simply notes, in a discussion made up of a grand total of 73 words, that the traditional parity “needs to be retained.”

It isn’t that the IAS isn’t doing its job — any better or worse than other services, that is. The point is that its case for special treatment seems to have been made on the basis of flawed premises and empirical evidence.

Police officers aren’t the only ones infuriated by the CPC report. On April 2, the chiefs of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force met Defence Minister A.K. Antony to explain just why a report, which promised to compensate “specific problems faced by defence forces personnel on account of the rigours of military life” has been seen as insulting by the women and men who defend India. Hundreds of officers are reported to have asked for permission to leave service.

In reality, the CPC has given the forces little. The recommendations mean that entry-level lieutenants will be paid, before tax, Rs.25,760 a month; lieutenant-generals and their equivalents a maximum of Rs.65,090. The vice-chiefs of the three services will take home the same salaries as apex civilian officers — Rs.80,000. At entry level, sipahis and their equivalents will start at Rs.7,860, rising to a maximum of Rs.40,600 for subedar-majors and their equivalents. All three service headquarters contend that this de facto raise of an estimated 20 per cent is far below an acceptable level, given the risks military service involves and the desperate shortage in the armed forces of the kind of highly educated officers India’s rapidly modernising armed forces need.

A military service pay, or MSP, of Rs.6,000 a month for officers and Rs.1,000 for personnel below the officer rank, has been tacked on to the salaries — but this still leaves them with less than what their civilian counterparts get.

Some of the recommendations, soldiers say, are outright insulting. For example, an allowance intended to allow personnel below the officer rank to purchase rum has been raised from Rs.0.50 a day to Re.1 a day — a sum one writer described as a “cruel joke.” Just Rs.20 a month has been provided to soldiers towards “composite personal maintenance”— a jargon for haircut, soap, shampoo, repairs to clothing and the like.

To mitigate hardships that short service durations impose on military personnel, the CPC has suggested that they be inducted into the paramilitary forces after retirement. If implemented, the suggestion could create more problems than it solves. India’s paramilitary forces are in the process of being reinvented as a cutting-edge counter, which will be capable of relieving the Army of its internal security burden. Fighting insurgencies needs skill-sets very different from those of conventional militaries. While the induction of some numbers of military personnel is useful, it cannot be a substitute for the existing system.

Police personnel, whether in State forces or organisations such as the Central Reserve Police Force, the Border Security Force and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force, have other reasons, too, to be irate.

While an army soldier serving along the India-China frontier in Ladakh will receive hardship allowances, an ITBP constable working in exactly the same location and conditions will get nothing. A Rashtriya Rifles soldier fighting terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir will receive financial compensation; the Jammu and Kashmir police officer who accompanies his patrol will not. No measures have been put in place to compensate the CRPF or State police personnel who sacrifice their lives in naxalite-hit areas.

At its outset, the CPC laid out a simple, common sense maxim: “more onerous duties should result in a relatively high pay.” “Performance of duties beyond the normal call should, in the revised scheme of things, result in a higher performance related incentive”, it added. Sadly, the CPC has not lived up to its own principle.

In the value it assigns to policing, the CPC reflects an entrenched culture. Rank-and-file constables in our major cities, who work 18 and 20-hour days without overtime in polluted and sometimes dangerous environments, after all, are paid no more than their civil service counterparts whose time is, in the main, spent in air-conditioned offices.

“In my six years of service,” says a police officer serving in Jammu and Kashmir, “I’ve been next to an exploding bomb on one occasion, along with my father, mother, wife and son; I’ve had hand grenades thrown at me three times; and been almost shot dead twice. During the same time, I’ve watched those who studied along with me at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi go on to make 10 times as much money as I do. I didn’t join government to get rich, but I do think the job I do merits respect.” His sentiments are shared by tens of thousands of women and men in uniform. It is also one the Union government must act on.

Chief Ministers in several States say this is good reason for the CPC recommendations to be rewritten. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has written to Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil, saying counter-terrorism operations in his State will be hit by the crisis of morale brought about by the CPC. Uttar Pradesh’s Mayawati, too, has registered her unhappiness with the CPC recommendations. So, too, has Assam’s Tarun Gogoi.

Most observers of the Central government’s working say it will have to give in to the growing calls for the CPC recommendations to be reviewed. Across the board, the recommendations have generated unhappiness: the Railway staff have threatened to go on strike, major trade unions have said they could follow suit, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has demanded that the CPC be rejected outright. With elections looming, the United Progressive Alliance is likely to listen. Perhaps the voices of those who risk their lives each day will also be heard.

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