Bharatiya Pragna - Dr. Th Chowdary

T he long-declared dissatisfaction in
the armed forces with the recommendations of
the Sixth Pay Commission was ignored when the
pay slips were being prepared for September. This
apathy towards defence, if not also callousness,
on the part of the Government is legendary.
An ancient proverb goes: Any king who
cannot defend his country has no right to be on
the throne. Little wonder that it is difficult to remember
an Indian regime having defeated a foreign
power since Chandragupta Maurya drove
out Nicator Seleucus, the Greek, in 303 BC. Defeating
Pakistan would be like winning a civil war.
Uncannily, even Muslim
conquerors could not win
after they had settled down
in India. For example,
Ibrahim Lodi with one lakh
soldiers could not in 1526 defeat
Babar with his 13,000
men army. Nor could the
Mughal emperor defend
Delhi against Nadir Shah in
1739. Emperor Alamgir II
could not stave off Ahmed
Shah Abdali, the Afghan, 28
years later.
There must be
some flaw in our ethos
37
Give forces their due
Prafull Goradia
Neglect of armed forces demoralises them, and the Government has to pay a
heavy price for it, warns the writer.
whereby we keep getting defeated at foreign
hands for 23 centuries. Perhaps there is a clue in
the manner in which the Sixth Pay Commission
recommendations have made the soldiers, sailors
and airmen unhappy whereas the civilians feel
well-paid and happy. Evidently, the priorities of
the Government are lopsided. It is well-known
that a primary reason for India’s slow progress
when compared with Japan and China is our enormous,
inefficient, if not also counter productive,
bureaucracy. Yet the civilians are pampered.
We also know that the Indian Army has
40 per cent fewer officers than what is actually
November & December 2008 Bharatiya Pragna