Settle pay disparities, else friction will grow

The Seventh Pay Commission, set up on February 28, 2014, had given its verdict in an 899-page report submitted to the government on November 19, 2015. Perusal of the report shows that the “terms of reference” of the commission had been very deliberately crafted, clearly directing the commission in very specific terms to examine not merely how much each category of government servants would be paid, but, more importantly, of determining how much an economy like India could afford to pay its armed forces. This is an entirely new economic perspective the armed forces will have to learn to live with. In that sense the Seventh Pay Commission is not really a “pay commission report” in the generally understood sense of the term. It is an unsentimental and coldly clinical macro-economic study of affordable defence for India.

It attempts to scientifically analyse the many emotive factors which have historically shrouded the profession of soldiering in this country, and determine what India can realistically afford to pay its soldiers, no how brave, dedicated, or self-sacrificing they may be, in short, the econometrics of good soldiering. There is no room for sentiment here — battle honours, regimental colours, “paltan ki izzat” are all very well, but do they deliver military value for money? The Seventh Pay Commission document carries broad hints on its suggested solution, thickly covered by a fine mesh and a jungle camouflage of tables, charts, calculations and figures. It unequivocally recommends that the ultimate way forward for a government whose prime objective is rapid economic development is to downsize manpower — intensive armed forces, and try to compensate numbers by induction of technology, again in incremental doses of as much as is affordable.

It is a concept that has been attempted earlier as well, but the problem is that while manpower was always available, and could be rationalised by controlling quantum of recruitment, the compensating technology was either unavailable or unaffordable. Also, the conclusions of the Seventh Pay Commission seem to reiterate yet again that the cherished self-perception of the armed forces about their special place in national priorities as the ultimate defenders and guarantors of the country’s territorial integrity and political freedom may have to be reworked.

In the established working principles of any democracy, the military is, of course, always subordinate to civilian authority and control. While India is no exception, perhaps that it is only in India that this principle been extended and expanded to create an overriding control of the military by the civil bureaucracy of the ministry of defence, which wields all the authority to make decisions, but accepts zero responsibility for their outcomes. The working culture of civil bureaucracy is that of firewalkers, walking through the flames but always emerging unscathed, adept at claiming credit but always quick to deflect blame when decisions backfire.

Another baffling omission is that the defence forces themselves and their problems do not appear to have been at all included within the purview of the consideration of the Seventh Pay Commission, which seems to have focused only on the defence (civilian) component of the defence ministry. The logic is undoubtedly inexplicable and it would therefore be fair to conclude that the commission is perhaps not about the armed forces at all. It has made no apparent attempt to analyse or quantify in any meaningful manner the “index of unhappiness” prevailing within the armed forces with its roots in their aspirational frustrations on issues like interse status of the military vis a vis other Central government services in terms of pay and career prospects, assured career progression up to 60 years of age as with other Central government Group A services, and requirement of 33 years service to qualify for minimum pension, which are fulfilled if at all only in a microscopic minority of cases.

These have not been attainable by the majority of personnel in the defence forces, primarily due to the “up or out” promotional policy in the armed forces, where retention of an individual is dependent on his length of service and rank achieved. Lack of promotional avenues makes military service immensely competitive, yet frustrating. In this “index of unhappiness” is the important ingredient of the “Non-Functional Upgradation”, or NFU, which is cleverly devised by enterprising civil servants to ensure continuing quantitative and qualitative dominance of the commanding heights of all aspects of the country’s civil administrative and decision-making machinery.

Through executive fiat it ensures that the disparities of promotion levels between the IAS and their professional cousins in the Indian Police Service, Indian Forest Service, and the other so called “Organised Group A Services” were resolved through NFU — a time-bound enhancement of uniform pay, but not of promotion. This facility has never been extended to the armed forces and the Seventh Pay Commission too has not been any exception. But what exercises of the Seventh Pay Commission have impacted is the coordinated functioning of military, paramilitary and police forces which is so essential at the “sharp end”, whether in Jammu and Kashmir, or the Sino-Indian border, or internal conflicts in the Northeast.

Meanwhile, sporadic violence is flaring up again, with the macro-target of the Amarnath Yatra already underway in Kashmir, which is under sporadic attack by Kashmiri separatists. Command and control issues in joint operational structures are sometimes personality driven, and military advice based on service experience is often brushed aside or ignored by a recipient on issues of personal prestige and notional seniority based on pay differences — a common enough phenomenon in many Indian settings. The disparities generated by the Seventh Pay Commission may seep into command and control issues and cause intra-organisational friction that may require personal intervention, sometimes even at the highest level.