Column

Next time you dine at the residence of a senior army officer, spare a thought for the man in uniform who hands you your drink. He’s probably a trained soldier with a graduate degree who’s been pulled out of field duty to serve as batman to your host. He’s probably also spent the day polishing his master’s shoes, shopping for the household, putting away clothes, waiting at the breakfast table and generally making himself useful doing a whole range of domestic chores.

The batman or orderly is one of those enduring colonial traditions the Indian army has chosen to retain 60 years after the British have left. And it’s the only one of the three services to do so. The air force and navy have designated non-combat cadres to which civilians are recruited for housekeeping jobs. Naturally, the eligibility criteria are much lower than those set for sailors and airmen.

The army, on the other hand, doesn’t have a separate batman cadre. Everyone is recruited as a jawan, subject to stringent physical requirements of height, weight, chest measurements and health standards and sent for rigorous armed combat training which includes stints at the border. The irony is that an estimated 50,000 of them end up doing orderly duty instead of the field job for which they were drafted and trained. Under the British Raj, it was colonial exploitation. In a modern army, it’s an anachronism surely. Even more so when you look at the professional qualifications of the jawans being recruited today. In an era of increasing literacy without commensurate employment opportunities, more and more soldiers come with graduate and post-graduate degrees. So fierce is the competition that only one of out every 120 applicants gets selected.

It’s unfortunate that the batman practice seems to have strengthened over the years, instead of declining. The sprawling bungalows of senior officers hide the tragic reality of pitched tents in which soldiers on batman duty live huddled in harsh conditions. Some officers have as many as 50 orderlies assigned to them, all living gypsy lives in the back yard. Regular domestic workers fare better. They get living quarters and the domestic bliss of family life. Is it surprising that stress levels are soaring in the army?

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No army chief or defence minister has had the courage to bell the cat in all the years since Independence. But a stray remark by the new defence minister, A K Antony has army circles in a flutter. On a recent trip to Nagaland, he talked of rising educational levels among soldiers and the need to evolve a modern system of management in the Indian army. One presumes he’s suitably appalled at the colonial practices that continue to flourish here. Antony has made a beginning in trying to restore dignity to the jawan by asking the Indian Railways to increase seat quotas for soldiers travelling to disturbed areas on official duty. Someone needs to address the pathetic sight of soldiers sleeping on platforms as they wait for a berth on the next train to troubled Kashmir or the Northeast. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Antony needs to do more if he intends to follow up on his speech to the jawans in Nagaland and add substance to his call for modern management of the army’s vast resources.

Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net