It would now appear that the Indian establishment has taken a U-turn. What it has been preaching till now seems counterproductive to its own interest. Resorting to social media to spread messages across has been a favourite pastime for all in the government.
That’s the feeling one gets from the statement – a virtual warning – from the new army chief General Bipin Rawat that soldiers who take to social media to air their grievances will face disciplinary action.
The threat from the General comes in the context of some complaints from soldiers of the army as well as the BSF about the poor conditions in which they are living and performing difficult jobs.
Rather than giving an ear to the problems raised by the hapless soldiers, the establishment is taking them head on. This will be with grave peril to the morale of the soldiers who guard the nation’s frontiers through thick and thin and through the vagaries of weather.
The General’s statement has shocked the nation as much as the sum and substance of the complaints raised by daring soldiers as also their families in recent days.
Soldiering is no easy job. Most of those who opt for the military do so as a job and a source of livelihood. Their life is tough, pay is bad and living conditions are worse as portrayed by those soldiers.
These are poor men who accept this difficult life to make ends meet. To bracket them as patriots or ‘warriors’ willing to die for the country is an unfair deal for them. The adverse conditions in which they work, like spending their days and nights in inhospitable situations in the border areas, make them deserving of the best treatment. Sadly, Indian soldiers have always been ill treated by the affluent and well educated higher officers.
In locations like Rajasthan, they do their jobs in extreme heat while in Siachen they work in freezing temperatures. In most cases, they require specialised garments. There are complaints from soldiers that the uniforms they get do not serve the purpose.
Worse, it is also known that the arms and ammunition supplied to our forces are of low quality and reliability. These are serious issues, and it should be up to the Army Chief to attend to such matters without loss of time.
The complaints raised by jawans from the border, like the videos put on social media by Tej Bahadur Yadav about the bad quality of food served, or by an army soldier from Batalik, Jammu and Kashmir, about jawans being made to walk the dogs of their superiors and of forcing them to polish their shoes are appalling. These do not seem to bother those who tell us day and night how we can be questioning the government when soldiers are dying at the front.
There have been complaints in the recent past too about indignities being heaped on jawans of the lower rungs by their superiors, leading even to what was allegedly a mutiny in Jammu and Kashmir a couple of years ago.
The normal tendency of the establishment is to hush up the matters and put “errant” soldiers to more trouble by way of teaching them a harsh lesson. While no one questions the need for maintaining discipline, it also must be stressed that the top brass of the military as also the defence ministry would need to learn to behave logically.
It is improper to crush the voices of truth and label them as dissenters. The more such suppression takes place, the quicker will be the fall of the morale of the foot soldier. General Bipin Rawat’s diktat seems defensive and irresponsible.
He should make all out efforts to set an example for senior officers to change their mindset and he should make every effort to give the foot soldier a sense of pride and belonging in an army that has rarely faced major prolonged war.
