The piece by Col Alok Asthana on the NDA and other training institutes is a valuable add to the immense amounts of investigation that Mission Victory India has taken up on the NDA. The write-up is an insider view of someone who has spent three years as a cadet, expresses himself with courage, and comes out with insights that provoke thinking.

Let’s look at various issues raised and check out how they lead to debate that can serve to generate actionable insights.
On the issue of the purpose of the NDA, he claims that it is primarily about leadership. And then he goes on to conclude that this primary task is not formally addressed in the academy in its training.
The problem is that the jury is still out on whether leadership is a trainable quality or whether it is inborn. There are strong arguments on either side and the verdict is still pending. So, the question arises as to how NDA can take a stand on this and then design a curriculum on that basis.
There are certain aspects of leadership that are certainly trainable, and opportunities for developing those, which are possible in the given context of a training institute, are indeed offered. For example, the trainable aspect, among other things include the mannerisms of military Command and control. Even as a squadron prepares for drill competition and performs the drill to the command of one of the cadets themselves, a lot can be learnt.
And one can remember Mahatma Gandhi here “one who does not know to obey, does not know to command”.

The games offer cadets a lot of opportunities to lead their teams, to strategize, to motivate, to handle consequences, to try out their own pet leadership theories etc. And yes, camps also offer opportunities for cadets to learn leadership in the context of dealing with peers. Leadership, they will realize (if they are sensitized to it) plays a major role in excellence in a camp. Therefore, Col Asthana is right that the de-briefing process must contain inputs of minds trained in the art, science and practice of leadership. The DS should be appropriately trained for this. Then of course aspects of leadership, military command and control can be learnt through cadets being tasked to discipline and take care of junior cadets whether they are endowed with tabs or not. The important part is for the DS to ensure that the role of leadership is properly highlighted in the process. Though a sensitive cadet will be able to see how excellence in team leadership helps win trophies, a good facilitator would make it a point to bring the attention of the cadet to this all-important issue.
In any case, this affording of opportunities to lead also provides the opportunity for what is the bane of the academy: Informal training or unstructured training. Unfortunately, cadets also learn their lessons on leadership through night sessions, bathroom sessions, 7th heaven, and such other things that are often conducted away from the eyes of the DS and many a times through deliberate nelsons’ eyes from them. And that is usually coupled with a taboo against cadets ‘rating’ it out. And in this seems to be coming out of a reverse inspiration coming from Sainik schools. Rather than the excellence in the NDA inspiring the Sainik Schools down under, the Sainik schools’ traditions and culture seems to be majorly influencing tradition and culture in the squadrons of the academy.

But looking at the positive side, the cadet also gets to see what bad leadership is. And one can only hope, against the pitfalls of human nature, that the Cadet learns that it is better to avoid what is unnecessary and harmful in trying to control juniors or allowing what is wicked in the actions of peers.
But it is rightly questioned by the author that the DS are not actually trained in leadership so that they can handle this effectively. But again, this is only partially correct. It is true that the DS do not do a ‘Trainers’ course before they come as DS to the academies. The equivalent would be doing Senior command course before an officer takes up senior command. Or an officer doing a technical course related to the actual arm he is expected to be a part of. It is an old saying that the forces that the army trains a person adequately before he is put on a specific task on the army’s behalf. And the question raised is whether some course on leadership and training is mandated prior to DS taking on their role in the academy.

If it is the expertise of a soldier to fight, then it is the expertise of an educator to educate. And the question therefore is also legit that should adequate weightage not be given to educators in the NDA? So, one of the suggestions for reform in the academy is the need for the command of the academy passing in rotation not only amongst the three services but also a fourth one, academics. A senior educationist, of Vice Chancellor level, taking on command for two years in rotation with the other three commands is a point worth considering.
But be that as it may, it is also a problem in civil society that whereas a B.Ed. is indeed made mandatory to teach school children, no such requirement is mandated for professors in colleges. Everything is learnt by professors on the go through the traditions in the education system. And it is a fact that a professor takes no formal training in either education methodology or in training methodology before he gets to groom/educate students in a college. And Heads of Departments, Principals, Vice Chancellors and their equivalents take no formal training in leadership and management before they become eligible to head academic organizations. So just as the DS at the NDA have learnt leadership through the traditions in the units of the armed forces, the educationists also learn about leadership, management, training and facilitation through the environments in the colleges and universities.

But there is a pointer to how this works otherwise for the faculty in the University. If one studies how lecture hours are distributed amongst the faculty in a university, it will be seen that seniors get lesser workload. Prof Bala V Balachandran would joke that as Professor Emeritus he would work 24X7, that is 24 hours a month and 7 months a year. The catch is that the professors are seen in the universities as people dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. They are to be deeply involved in research and in taking on responsibilities in guiding researchers. As such, their role in society is seen as them being professionals who are spending their time pushing the frontiers of knowledge in the world. By equivalence, the senior faculty in the NDA do get less lecture hours in comparison to juniors and therefore their excellence should be measured by the amount of knowledge creation they are involved in. But that has not been the policy at the academy till of late when the UGC norms have been introduced. But even so, the reality is that there is limited scope for the academicians to pursue their academic interests when he joins the academy. And one that steps into the portals of the NDA usually falls out of the race in the academic environments of a university. What would have been proper is that once they step into the NDA, if the academic fraternity made a deliberate attempt to begin writing scholarly papers on leadership and military matters, then that component of knowledge about leadership would be available in the ambiance of the NDA. The availability of such expertise in the ambience of the academy would give scope for added academic inputs on leadership to the cadets. But the academia is not actively motivated to do this task. And the DS, though they complete some courses related to leadership as part of their earlier grooming in the services, they do not carry it to the extent that they start writing scholarly papers on it.

And that would lead us to the question as to what would a Vice Chancellor possibly contribute to the processes at the NDA by heading it? And the answer is that a mind that has, for most of its service life, occupied itself with how to educate would indeed be able to contribute to the learning/training at the NDA as would a mind that has mostly occupied itself with ‘how to fight a war’. Each adds strengths from their respective domains. So, when we have a defense academy that is mid-way between an educational institution and a military training institute (70-30 actually in favor of education, not 50-50) it surely poses a question as to whether specialists in both education and war-fighting must be given adequate scope to influence the processes at the NDA.
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