Important Lessons Learnt in Service

In India we have the best troops, who work well & demand little.

• Corruption, manipulation and wrong doings always start top-down.
• For success in command character is far more important than competence.

Prolonged engagement in counter-insurgency operations has adversely affected the Army, because right from intelligence collection to conduct of operations to dealing with multiple civil agencies requires working for a considerable part in shades of grey, rather than black & white. Of course this has had benefits too.

As I grew in the organization I found two major shifts in the culture which are not good.

Erosion of Unit Routine. In my first two-three years of service I found that unit life followed a routine as a matter of culture which included regular training by the troops present on weapons & equipment, etc. This routine was not disrupted for the sake of external tasks & engagements assigned to a unit. This ethos changed. The reason for this change in my view was that when some smart CO was assigned a task like organizing a visit or function he decided to stop all routine work and focused the total energy of the unit towards it because his ACR was dependent on the impression he could create on seniors through this event & not the long term impact which a well organized unit would automatically create. This short term focus would have given him good results in ACR. Thus the ethos spread to the entire Army. The culture of observing a set routine got eroded and does not exist any more practically in all units of the Army.

Mess Functions & Guest Rooms. In my initial service days the standards of Officers’ Messes and guest rooms was much lower than what we have today. Of course our salaries and living standards have risen since 1982. However, the quantum improvement in the standard of Mess functions and guest rooms has been great. No other aspect of service life has improved so drastically. Once again the reason has to be that efforts put in these fields by a CO gave him such high rewards that the idea permeated to the entire organization. I had met a very successful senior officer who had trained 100 soldiers to work as Mess waiters as CO. No wonder he found my efforts to improve fitness standards, shooting standards and efforts to train troops on health, hygiene and medical aspects in high altitude area senseless!

Good Part

Officers as well as soldiers are much better educated and aware than in the past and hence it is possible to attain greater standards of professionalism. Army society is less insular today and hence for veterans like me, adjusting in civil society has become easier.

Overall

Change is the essence of life. We have had some good & some bad changes. Since I belong to the ‘old school of thought’ my views may display a characteristic bias. Please take them for what they are worth!