Saving Army Officer Cadre and its Professionalism

On 03 May 16, the Defence Minister informed the Rajya Sabha that the Army is authorised 49833 officers and has 41162 on its rolls as on date. Thus it is short of 8962 officers, that is, 17 percent. It has also been widely reported that these shortages are at the level of Lieutenant, Captain and Major and there is no shortage at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and above.  The Defence Minister in same reply has identified force accretions, stringent selection criteria and perceived risk to life as main causes of the shortage. But periodic surveys by various media agencies have shown that the army consistently comes as one of the last choice of careers for the youth. The main reasons cited against joining the Army were poor pay, tough service conditions and stunted career prospects. Apparently there is clear mismatch between the perception of Defence Minister and reality shown by the media.

Over last 32 years there have been  two reviews of its Army officer cadre. First review took place in 1984, when the rank of Commanding Officer was raised from Lieutenant Colonel to Colonel on misplaced hope that it will achieve substantial improvement in promotional chances of officers but nothing of the sort happened. The second cadre review was undertaken by AV Singh Committee. The Government of India claims to have accepted the recommendations of this committee. Stated aims of this Committee were removal of officer shortage endemic to army units, reducing age profile of commanding officer and improve promotion chances of long-termers. These goals were sought to be achieved by restructuring the officer cadre in a Regular Officer to Support Officer ratio of 1: 1.1 at the ranks of Lieutenant, Captain and Major level. However actual ratio achieved today is 4.6: 1.

Effectiveness of AV Singh Committee was predicted on success of Short Service Commission (SSC), however the Ministry of Defence has been unwillingness or unable to make SSC attractive. In fact present Terms of Service governing SSCOs are exploitative and negative in extreme. As per extant terms of service SSCO have a lock-in period of 10 years and are compulsorily put to pasture, without any financial security, any advantage for military service or alternative job after serving for 14 years. Apparently only those who have no other option would opt to take SSC. The senior army leadership tried to compensate shortage of SSC officers by increasing intake into regular cadre stream. Thus today more than 1400 officers[i] are getting Regular commission against 700 vacancies while only 700 SSC officers are commissioned against 2000 vacancies. What is even worse that IMA entries (DE, NDA & TES) are supplanting SCOs and SL officers.

Linear extrapolation career graph of an average regular officer over 31 years shows that he will be screened for promotion to the rank of Colonel after 15 years of service (because Army wants young Commanding Officers) and out of 1400 barely 25 per cent, that is around 355 will be promoted and 1150 would be superseded. In such a situation any worthwhile Human Resource Department would have allowed the superseded officers to leave the army gracefully on attaining pensionable service of 20 years. But sadly, the Government of India in its infinite wisdom has decided to deny benefits of One Rank – One Pension (OROP) to anyone seeking premature retirement thereby effectively locking up superseded officers into a cul-de-sac. Reminds one of sentenced to Kala-Paani! Consequently, over next 25 years, a massive bulge will be formed by more than 16000 superseded Lieutenant Colonel at middle level who will make up 33 per cent of authorised officer strength.

Comparatively advanced age, longer service than incumbent Commanding Officer and need for a change of environment preclude further employment of `superseded’ officers in the units of Army. Army’s ability to adjust these officers on staff in various headquarters or static establishments is also limited and we also need to remember that any fattening of staff will happen at the cost of efficiency. Thus fresh avenues of gainful employment have to be found for these officers.

Luckily NCC provides a viable employment option for these officers. In fact it is to the credit of such `superseded’ Army officers that they have turned NCC into most successful government run youth programme in India. Hence as an immediate term measure I recommend that over next two years NCC be expanded to have one Unit in each of 5191 towns of India. So as to ensure that at least 25 percent of students from 11^th and 12^th classes and degree colleges get an opportunity to join it for three year.

However as a long-term solution there is a need to create a well – balanced officer cadre for the Army which caters for both the organisational and individual needs. Such a cadre ought to be structured after a detailed study of history of the Indian Army and prevalent practices in various successful armies of the world. Implementation of the proposed officer cadre management model should result in:

·         Strength of officers in a combat unit to reach 18.

·         Fair severance package to make SSC, for seven years, a sought-after option.

·         Uniform terms of service to ensure rise of the meritorious.

·         Three year Long command tenures starting with command of Rifle Company equivalent.

I have worked for long on this issue and am quite willing to provide inputs without any expectation of reward or rHowever I would like to end with a caution. The MoD, as organised and staffed presently, has effectively stalled proper implementation of AV Singh Committee by stalling proposal of making SSC attractive and has not covered itself with glory in playing hokey with the Armed Forces in 7^th CPC would do its utmost to stall every proposal which improves or sustains professionalism in the Army.

Saving ECHS from Fiscal Pedantry

In this blogpost I want to draw reader's attention to sever damage being caused to ECHS by fiscal pedantry in clearance of bills by functionaries of MoD. It is a well known fact that direct interface between the government official and citizen has been major cause of corruption in the country. As an antidote the CVC in its paper on National Anti Corruption Strategy stresses on need to employ Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to put maximum services on line. The Government of India, especially since May 2014, has taken multiple steps to revolutionise the delivery of subsidies and MNREGA through DBT by levaraging ICT.

Use of ICT removes corruption by, depersonalising decision-making, standradising procedures, ensures service on first come - first served basis and makes whole transaction transparent. 

In the field of health care, CGHS pioneered online payment of hospital bills by establishing Bill Clearance Authority (BCA). The government of India formed an entity called UTI-ITSL to act as BCA. This entity consists of requisite medical and financial experts who scrutinise bills submitted by Empanelled Hospitals and release payment. So good has been the performance of UTI-ITSL as BCA that today Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between CGHS and Empanelled Hospital includes a guarantee of 70 Percent of bill being paid within five days. No wonder that today best of the hospitals across the country have joined the CGHS.

The ECHS came into being in the year 2002. It has been benchmarking its services to the older  CGHS. Thus it came as no surprise that in the year 2012 the ECHS followed the lead of CGHS, and appointed UTI-ITSL as Bill payment Authority ( BPA) albeit with one crucial difference that it imposed a layer of Competent Financial Authorities (CFA) between BPA and Empanelled Hospital.  This modification effectively converted the Bill Payment Authority into a Bill Payment Adviser to the CFAs (Director Regional Centre, Deputy MD, MD ECHS and MoD). In keeping with provisions of FR, the CFAs were given the right to 'cross-check' the bills cleared for payment by BPA and release payment to the empanelled hospital only when they, meaning  CFA, were satisfied. In other words direct human interface between the government official, that is, CFA and the service provider, that is, hospital got reestablished which resulted in emergence of all the old ailments like, subjectivity in decision-making due to difference in personalities of CFAs, disrupted  procedure leading to violation of principle of first come - first served and dilution of responsibility with regard to any wrong payments, for example in this system both BPA and CFA are refusing to accept responsibility for audit objections raised by C&AG. The CFA relied on the medical staff officer in his office to 'cross-checking the bills. This led to delayed payments resulting in loss of discount which government could have gained if bills were passed within stipulated 10 days. In the Para 2.6.2.3 of Performance Audit of ECHS No. 51 of 2015 the C&AG has calculated loss of discount at Rs. 34.10 for FY 13-14. Most alarmingly some corrupt CFAs and their medical staff officers, instead of raising queries with BPA, started misusing their power to 'cross-check the bills. They hold the gun of 'arbitrary cuts to bills cleared by BPA' to the head of Empanelled Hospitals. Net result of this illegal and counterproductive step is that reputed hospitals are slowly withdrawing from ECHS.

May I request to make online bill payment system of ECHS absolutely similar to CGHS. As introduction of CFAs has not resulted in any substantial gains. Rather layering of staff and reestablishment of human interface between CFA and Empaneled Hospitals is leading to 'fiscal pedantry' which has potential to destroy the scheme.

I also take this opportunity to exhort the government to fulfill the promise your election promise of establishing 'Veterans Commission' manned by veterans and the serving who are quite competent to take care of themselves far better than those presently sitting in DESW.