INDIA'S ARMED FORCES ARE IN GOOD SHAPE, BUT NOT PERFECT, SO WHAT? -- Gp Capt AG Bewoor
EDITOR'S NOTE :
Ref. above link of MVI Debate published on 24 Apr 2024.
This realistic overview of this debate by Gp Capt AG Bewoor strongly counters several discouraging / negative claims by veterans with valid arguments and supportive examples as proof / evidence of the actual competence of our military leadership displayed in the past during many challenges that have confronted our Armed forces upto 'Operation Sindoor' .
This piece could well be considered as the Reality of the Training and PME of our Competent Military Leadership.
Do read ,review ,respond and comment if you wish .
Col Vinay B Dalvi,
Editor, MVI
1. These indictments tell only one side of the story do they not? There is not one salutary word that escapes the fingertips of these men. If their tirades & denunciations are true it is a wonder that the enemy has not yet overwhelmed us, on the ground, in the air and on the oceans. Mercifully not one Navy officer has as yet offered his views. But as we can see, the enemy has not overpowered us. If the education of our offrs, not trg, which is considered bunkum, is so inadequate and a failed enterprise, how in God's name do the Forces remain a cohesive amalgam to do what they are doing? I cannot respond to each charge by every author, this is not a One - Vrs - One debate.
2. One assessment says that 40% of all training is trash. The writer does not identify which 60% is worthy of retention and what constitutes that trashy 40%, additionally, what must replace that 40% trash? If earlier training was only 20% tactics, what was in the rest of 80%. What forced the change to make training courses syllabus up to Senior Command, 80% tactics. That is unstated, but to me as an airman, the role that infantry has to perform is tactics against the constant enemy we have in the West or East.
3. Serious adverse comments are made about the Senior Command course curriculum. It has been branded as a 'mess'. Then most of the output from SC Course should fail miserably in whatever they do for the next 10 yrs. Be it command or Staff, their time at SC Course at Mhow has been wasted and the whole set up is investment down the drain. But are we finding these officers inadequately trained while they are COs or filling G-1 staff appts? What are the Brigs / Maj Gens / Lt Gens who are placed above these badly trained Colonels, saying? I do not see any comments on this matter from that senior group of officers. Do they mostly say that the SC Course output is useless and could not meet the demands placed on them by higher formations? Besides, all our systems should have collapsed by now, if the Colonels who pass out from the SC Course who take up appts as COs / G-1 staff, are incompetent and unprepared for holding those appointments. Similarly, if the interconnectivity between ARTRAC - Cat A Establishments - Field Formations is messy, why has this interconnectivity and the Linking Thread not broken as yet? Why are the capabilities given to Nark & Chandal unrealistic? Are they too much or too little? It has to be one of them. Who is misleading the Field Formations with this false data to play their War Games and Sand Models?
Is this only in the Army or does Air HQ and Naval HQs also mislead their fighting formations in the same fashion? That means we have a huge number of 'enemies within' our higher controlling units. This needs deep introspection and an intelligence investigation, not just articles in journals. But that is not the case as we all know. To imagine that such naughty officers have critical appointments in these higher formations, and they are feeding false data about our adversary, is frightening? Is this true, surely not? How come this aspect escapes the attention of these commentators?
4. The classic difference between training and education is not elaborated. What defines and separates Education from Training? What constitutes Education and cannot be a part of Training? As I see it, training is given for specific skills and tasks, whereas education places a whole canvas before the trainee for analysis and thinking. But are we not educating our officers at CAW/ AWC / SC Course / HCC / JCC / CDM / DSSC / NDC? Are we not educating them when they hold Command positions, when they hold staff appointments, when they interact with the other two services and civil services? The learning of skills and getting educated is a concurrent activity. That is so even in school & NDA, it is a balanced curriculum, imperfect possibly, but failed and rubbish, certainly not. The writers are very generous with their aspersions and defamations. Was our reaction to Pahalgam in the form of Sindoor an uneducated, unskilled and untrained response? Can anyone deduce that the selection of targets that we hit were decided and rehearsed for attack only after 22 April 25 and executed in early May 25.
Every act in the air, on the ground and at sea was a result of properly educated and well trained tactics of war. Yet, we must have erred during Sindoor. Educated analysis of errors must have been done, using skills acquired during intense training. We know that these targets have been on our radar for years, to imagine that they came into our focus only after Pahalgam is to belittle what the armed forces leadership and fighting men & women have been doing and eventually did. Commentators must accept these truths and not discard what was successfully attacked in Sindoor as ‘lucky strikes’.
5. Have we not given thought and thorough responses in all our battles and wars, wrong they may be at times, but certainly debated and discussed. Don't we keep harping on the unwritten as well written law and rule that says, 'Once the commander has given his decision, everyone must obey'. Before that let there be a debate, dissent, discussion, strong words, platitudes, accusations, assertions, reluctance, unhappiness and so on. Critics keep harping on the absence of dissent so that the ACR remains nice and highly graded. This item has been thrashed ever since confidential reporting started. Then someone started Open Reporting by the IO. That too is unacceptable saying that the IO gives 9s and 8s so that his unit remains a happy and harmonious group, but the IO & RO in cahoots decide what will finally go to the SRO. What then is the best way of making and writing annual reports? Are the Armed Forces full of Yes Men & Women? And have been for the last 40 odd years? These commentators were a part & parcel of that group, they thrived and rose in that ambience, and reached their present status to write what they do.
6. All if not most officers have been branded as mediocre by many writers. Then I would imagine our commentators are an integral part of this august group. Or are they the brightest and shining 'chirags' of our cadre? Never once in their tirades full of denunciations, have they even hinted that they are a part of this mediocrity. Really guys? One person has used a terminology which I quote, " we need a graphical analytical representation of Senior military leadership". What exactly does this imply? What is the datum to start work, from where does this vast data emerge, who will procure it and then collate it for analysis and convert it into a pictorial graphical representation that will hopefully give us answers on what ails Indian Armed Forces' senior leadership. We have no indication from the author about who in India, or abroad, can do this for us to get our act together. Like the SIR exercise for voters, will we be able to expunge the poor leadership as revealed by this graphical representation? From which school of thought has this suggestion emerged, reads very much like typical words from a western academic's pen, who is also critical of his civilian and military leadership.
7. One accuser has declared that 90% officers have no knowledge about man management. Kya baat hai sir? In these last 2 1/2 decades since the new century arrived and the last two decades of the last century, nearly 50 years, the senior leadership of the Air Force, Navy & Army has mismanaged our Services? And look at what our consistently mismanaged officers have achieved from 1980 till October 2026? In 1980 Indira was re-elected as PM, she was murdered, we negotiated Rajiv, his murder and a series of incompetent PMs; then Narsimha Rao, Vajpayee, Manmohan and Modi since 2014. These very officers kept our Fauj in fine mettle to handle all these political upheavals as well as the insurgencies of Kashmir and Punjab including Blue Star. These mismanaged officers engaged with and defeated insurgencies in the East and Kashmir for the last 40 + years, day after day, month after month, year after year. They fought in Kargil and won. They remain in Siachen even though they are badly managed? Our officers, though supposedly poorly managed, and badly guided by superiors with zero management skills, have played stellar roles in overseas operations both military or humanitarian. All these badly managed COs across India are as alleged, consistently 'pulverised', as stated by one writer, but lo and behold, these COs, and the troops, along with all those poorly managed young officers, perform well and the units do not collapse as they would, without good man management. A good guess would be that we have about 1000 COs at any one time in the Army. Add another 700 from IAF & Navy, and we have close to 2000 officers holding the appointment of Commanding Officers. Commentators say that each of them is terrified to be a CO, because not one of them has any knowledge of man management. Yet our Armed Forces have not melted or broken into fragments which would happen, if these 2000 odd COs had no idea about how to manage men and women, in war and peace. I also must ask those who brand our officers as being bereft of any man management knowledge, what man management skills did you acquire, where did you get it and who all did you teach it to, while you were in service? Since you are able to identify that 90% officers have zero knowhow about managing human resources, why has the Fauj not collapsed at every level in the pyramid? Besides how did you manage to function as COs? With so many officers without any worthwhile knowledge and training in managing humans, the Fauji pyramids must decay from its base all the way to the apex. But it does not, then what keeps it going and not get hurt even when the likes of you, cast such vituperative allegations?
8. A comment says that the DSSC entrance exam is all wrong. I assume he means that the method of conducting it, its supervision, the syllabus designed for studying for the exam, the preliminary and later processes that bring the officer to Wellington, are all wrong. Plus, I suppose the 44 week course is also a wasteful exercise, if indeed all that happened before the officer reached DSSC, is wrong. What is not stated is how to replace this exam for selecting our mismanaged officers for the course? For some years now there have been disparaging comments on how the selection for DSSC, CDM, War Colleges, NDC is done. There never is any remedy that follows those belittling espousals. One wonders why? Many critics enjoy the ability to pass judgments based on generally known data and widely held beliefs. Their personal knowledge and its depth are scanty and is based on a lot of assumptions as well as presumptions. A lot of it gleaned from derogatory remarks and deductions from foreign authors about their own military hierarchies and training institutes. If it happens there, it must also happen here in India, that is the message they are giving. But as we have seen, these deductions have been proved wrong, not just on paper but on the ground from all over India. Oh yes sir, our Fauj is far from perfect. It has many flaws, many defects, many failings, many frailties, many dents, many scratches, many indents, many weaknesses, many blemishes; but to accuse our Military Leadership to be Rudderless and Unguided, is pure bunk. There are volumes written on how to improve the quality of Training & Education for our cadets as well as officers, why then are those books not acceptable to generations of military leaders and bureaucratic babus in the connected ministries? And while all that is written is ignored or partially implemented, is the output from our academies putrid and unacceptable leadership material?
9. How much 'gobar' & 'peshab' can one throw at our own Armed Forces? Do your hands not smell and hurt? Do your olfactory nerves not feel assaulted? Don't your feelings about your comrades in arms who are receiving your 'gifts' not bother you? Does not the magnificent edifice of our Armed Forces, standing strong with its blemishes, defects, faults, minuses, failings, gouges, nicks; yet resolute and pillars of strength for all Indians to see and rely upon, not suggest that you have been unkind in your maligning campaign? Each one of you was nurtured in the embracing arms of this organisation. Many failings were seen, felt, absorbed, digested, and remained with you for another day to seek remedy. I say fellows, it has happened to each one of us, your experience is not unique or singular, we have been through it together and separately, with our families. There are more than a million plus like you who know there is much to be done, but will never resort to the derogatory, vituperative, scathing, abusive criticism that has emerged from your prose. I am no defender of the bad and damaging activities and customs in our Fauj. But I cannot defend anyone's right to tell it, twisted and distorted, when it is in fact not so.
10. These quotes are pertinent and relevant to this subject:
We Declare other's Washing as Dirty, because we See it Through our Unclean Windows.
When you Believe that you are a Hammer, then Every Problem has to be a Nail.
The Greatest of Obstacles to Progress is Not Ignorance; it is the Illusion of Knowledge.
The Power to Abuse is more Dangerous than the Abuse of Power.
All Marriages are Happy; It is the Living Together that is Difficult.
Character is what Counts; Sadly, Most are concerned about Reputation, What Others Think of Them.
The Duty of a Shepherd is to Shear his sheep, not to Skin Them.
NOTE - The contents of the article are the author's personal views based on his study , research and experience.The pictures are for symbolic representation .
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