At a time when India is being confronted with a possibility of two-pronged war on Eastern and Western front, the country’s soldiers are fighting a war within.
Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha recently said 819 armed forces personnel died by suicide over the last five years, with the Indian army accounting for 642 such cases alone.
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The Defence Ministry’s data for cases of suicide during the period between January 1, 2014, and March 31, 2017 came out with the shocking revelation that one person on duty from either the Army, Navy or Air Force committed suicide every three days. As per its data, 348 regulars committed suicide while on duty. Of them, 276 were from the Army, 12 from the Navy and 60 from the Air Force.
There has been a significant increase in stress levels amongst Indian army personnel during approximately the last two decades due to operational and non-operational stressors. Prolonged exposure of Indian Army personnel to Counter Insurgency and Counter Terrorism environment has been one of the contributory factors for increased stress levels.
Long hours of duty, poor policy decisions, lack of manpower and extreme working conditions along with frequent and prolonged withdrawal of troops for non-core functions has affected the morale of the soldiers.
Defence Institute of Psychological Research (DIPR) has found in its studies that not getting timely leave was one of the stress factors triggering suicidal behaviour. Through these studies, DIPR has given certain recommendation to deal with stress and suicidal behaviour. These recommendations include: rationalising grant of leave, counselling at the time of leave, decrease workload, reduction in tenure of deployment, increase in pay and allowances, improvement in living conditions, building better interpersonal relations between the officers and men, training programmes in stress management and psychological counselling, enhancing basic and recreation activities and redress of grievances.
But the fact that the suicides are on unabated shows that these recommendations are still on paper. The political establishment has to get its act right by bringing the instances of extremism under control through good governance.
The Indian army has been engaged in Country Insurgencies operations in Kashmir for the last three decades and in the North East, especially in Nagaland since the last six decades. Militancy in Jammu and Kashmir claimed more than 40,000 lives in the past 30 years which means an average of more than four deaths per day in the State. The casualties include over 14,000 civilians, more than 5,000 security personnel and 22,000 militants since 1990.
There has been heated debates on the need for the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, commonly known as AFSPA. It was enacted in the state in 1958 by the Government of India which authorises soldiers to shoot any suspected individual without formal orders from any superior civilian authority.
Yet our soldiers show utmost restraint unlike the militants. The soldiers have to kill to protect the citizens and themselves.
Internal security is not the mandate of the army. The soldier’s primary role is to prevent external aggression. But the failure of the police force and lack of political will has meant never ending engagement of the soldiers in low intensity warfare, causing serious consequences.
If you don’t want the army with weapons in civilian areas, the government has to improve its governance and ensure equitable development.
There are still issues regarding disparity in recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission between armed forces officers and their counterparts from civil services.
The implementation of One Rank One Pension still remains incomplete. Now the Agniveer scheme is being thrusted upon the country’s youth who will be putting their lives at stake for the country without any financial security.
The ball is in the government’s court. It has to rethink its strategy in terms of handling the armed forces to keep the morale of soldiers high and win the psychological war.
