How Bad Are Our Military Leaders? By Group Capt A. G. Bewoor VM(G) Part-1

1.     The Indictment. Many articles, TV debates, news portals carry stories on poor leadership in Armed Forces. Authors and commentators, many Fauji veterans, armchair analysts, self acclaimed strategists and even bureaucrats find generals lacking in courage and uprightness. The middle level officers are accused of keeping seniors happy by means fair and foul, thus ensuring a promotion to general officer rank. Authors have mentioned names of officers who did India proud in days gone by, and lament that such people are unavailable today.

It is alleged that; manipulation, favouritism, nepotism, subversion, corruptness, iniquity, unfairness are no longer proscribed, implying it is encouraged. These are very malicious charges against the complete officers cadre of India’s Armed Forces.  Many allude to a steady deterioration in quality of military leadership at apex appointments.

This is a severe indictment of most veterans, because it is these veterans themselves, who have permitted this to happen. After all it is the veteran who promoted these incompetent officers to fill their chairs, did they not?  It is alleged that Armed Forces have spawned officers who will not speak up for the benefit of the Service, and such officers are the ones who become Three Star leaders. Close to apex level, officers sabotage reputations of colleagues who are an impediment to their advancement. Such accusations are common, the question is how come the veterans of today who make these accusations, bred such officers?  These ‘bad fellows’ were trained and nurtured by the very veterans who are accusers today. There is something very weird in all this. Lets us try to find out.

2.     The Incumbents are Worse than the Worst.  All authors are veterans with illustrious careers, and we shall refer to them as Veteran-Authors VA. Many VA promote the necessity for veterans especially from apex positions; to write about maladies, degeneracy, rottenness, depravity, corruption, cowardice that prevails in the Services. These very experienced veterans, in their writings should surely show us realisable solutions but they do not do that. On the other hand the VAs assert; the present incumbents are not able to articulate, implement and follow through solutions they propose because the current military leadership is not capable of reliable visionary foresight.

The VAs add that serving generals/admirals/air marshals are absorbed in self preservation, and have an insatiable appetite for promotions with wilful disregard for their Service, brother officers and the men they put into battle. Dear readers, have any of you ever read such grievous indictment of the current top leadership of Indian Armed Forces? Has such a situation come to pass without any indication that the system is coming apart? For surely, if this is what our apex military leaders are doing, the schemes, organisation and arrangement of our Services must crumble before us. All projects, operations, recruitments, camaraderie, fellowship, cohesiveness has to implode in front of our eyes. Then why is it not happening? Or is it happening but we decline to see it? Could it be that so many of us refuse to see this disaster in motion? Or is this all false?

The next vexing question that must be answered is this, how come the top leadership of the Army/Navy/Air Force has suddenly taken a nose dive, and it happens just after these illustrious VAs retired? Does it not indicate that during the VAs tenure at the apex, everything was hunky-dory, and quite abruptly in the immediate months after they retired, things degenerated into chaos? If this be true, then does it not speak of the incompetence, disinterest, callousness, laziness, ignorance of these VAs while at apex appointments? How did they give licence to and tolerate such mediocre officers to rise to so high a level, and cause untold permanent damage to the Service they love so much? Unexplained and unusual is it not? Then what is indeed taking place?

3.     The Assassination of Our Leadership.  Without being predisposed, a reading of the foregoing should dismay and horrify all of us, and the Indian nation should be panic stricken that; their safety, izzat and security is in the wrong hands, and the Indian State is in life threatening jeopardy. The coast line is like a sieve, the airspace is easily punctured and the enemy can walk into India anywhere, anytime without resistance. It would be wise for Indians to leave India and find a secure destination where anyone except the Indian Armed Forces are deployed. The character of Indian military leadership has been assassinated quite openly, and without proof.

For the proof does not reside in the accusation. Unfortunately for the assassins, this wonderful military structure stands firm, resolute, unfailing, shining and certainly indestructible. And there are very solid reasons why this writer says so with conviction. It is not easy and simple to destroy the complex composition of India’s Armed Forces; either from within or from the outside, many have tried and failed. Arbitrariness does raise its ugly head, but gets chopped off because sound wisdom prevails.

Subterfuge to buck the system for personal gain happens and the perpetrator gets exposed and finds himself in the dock. Indeed some get away because of the silence of the many, protected by the cowardly superior, and such aberrations will happen in any enormous organisation like the Indian Armed Forces. This weakness occurs with regularity in all Govt of India services, be they civilian, quasi military, para-military, and indeed in all Militaries the world over. And there is much more to be said.

4.     Who Is The True Culprit?  All veterans, and where permitted serving officers, must expose any rot in the system with the intent to create remedy. But I have a quarrel with those who vilify the current leadership, which was recently vacated by the veterans. If today’s Three Star commander is disinclined to work, ineffectual, lazy, work-shy, indolent, cowardly, and preoccupied in self protection, how in heavens name did he get there right under the noses of all you VAs who are saying so? Many critics have correctly stated; that such undesirable characteristics, are clearly manifest at the level of Commanding Officer, and possibly earlier.

The VA who accuses the system for letting such a man rise, is in fact the ‘system’ that tolerated, encouraged, and countenanced the rise of this unsuitable man to Three Star status. The number of veterans at Three Star level who bemoan and deplore the existing system that permits the unfit ‘Colonel’ to rise to an unfit ‘Lt Gen’ is fascinating.  It is also enigmatic because these very Three Star officers who are now shedding tears, have been intimately involved in the rise of that unfit Colonel to an unfit Lt Gen. It is inconceivable that so many Colonels are able to slip through the net cast by our general officers to catch and eliminate the corrupt, incompetent, cowardly Colonels; and that too for the last three decades?

The Three Star VA is in truth the problem, not the solution. To now take shelter behind the canvas of retirement, and wash his hands off the rise of this non-visionary unsound Colonel to become a C-in-C, is a blunder made willingly without due diligence by none other than the VAs. Their uniforms are stained with absence of conscientious application and courage to expose the undesirable officer and ensure he does not rise. And yet there are generals / admirals / air marshals who have prevented it, and are still preventing it. To thus cast into dustbins, our incumbent military leadership is criminal and tantamount to disturbing the existing equilibrium from which the VA has just exited. It is this VA who needs to search deep in his heart, as to who is unfit, or was unfit, to hold that Three Star position? The present incumbents or the predecessors? There is no VA who will not assert that he is a self made man, the truth is that each of these VAs have immense love for their creators. This is why they are unable to digest other self made officers.

5.     Political Patronage on the Rise.  Many veterans blatantly accuse their seniors, juniors and contemporaries of seeking political patronage and protection to rise in life. This is not a rare development of recent times. Bureaucracy, civilian or military, have invariably sought patronage of political masters. It happened in Rome, Athens, Babylon, Patliputra, London, Berlin, Kabul, Cairo, Beijing, Moscow, Paris and Delhi in years gone by and happens today. The incompetent, unprofessional, weak-minded, disenchanted, falsifier, yet fiercely ambitious officer; possibly inspired by an equally ambitious wife, will resort to such avenues. But to brand a majority of today’s C-in-Cs and PSOs and second rung Three Star officers, as doggedly pursuing this shameful path of political patronage is unjust, invalid, unsubstantiated.

For one, the political leadership is not very familiar of our systems and there are checks and balances to keep political interference to the minimum in promotions and appointments. Yet it will happen, that is the beauty of the civil-military equation, it is not watertight, cannot be so, and possibly should not be impermeable. Political heavyweights with their civilian advisers revel and get vicarious pleasure in being able to intervene and interpose into matters military, especially promotions. It is sad commentary that veterans, and especially the very recent ones, ignore these facets of military-politico-bureaucratic equivalences. It is manifest so openly and without hesitation by all three protagonists; that to show surprise that it actually happens; makes one look askance at the strategic comprehension of such commentary.  In part 2 of this article let us see the issue of resignation and the inviolability of seniority for promotion and apex appointments and what do we really want?