Passionate About India

The recent suicide of Capt. Megha Razdan again brings to the forth the pertinent and tragic issues of fragging, chronic depression and mass desertions, which have been marring the Indian Armed Forces since long. Even though the death of Capt. Megha Razdan is yet to be confirmed as a suicide, that there is a grave problem with the armed forces of our country cannot be ignored. In the last year itself, it has been reported that almost 100 soldiers have taken away their lives. In addition to this, another 32 have been killed by their colleagues. In fact, the spate of suicides, particularly within the Army, had been on the rise. Reports state that since 2004, of the 408 soldiers that died, around 333 killed themselves. International media too has put forth the concern that Indian Army is loosing more soldiers by the way of suicides than fighting on the borders. So what has gone so wrong that soldiers who were supposed to guard the nation against contingencies, have started pulling the trig...

I don’t remember conducting a single workshop on leadership, where I’ve not referred to the Indian armed forces. For me, Indian defence forces have always been a benchmark of leadership, followership and discipline – the most ideal combination of a successful organisation (defined by the principles of management). The exact opposite of this are most of our other government run institutions, where we only have ‘leaders’ and no ‘followers’. It is ironical that in India, the government employees might not exhibit their leadership skills when it comes to sincerity, perseverance and dedication to their work, but when it comes to fighting for the cause of their pay hikes, they can match the best in protests, armtwisting tactics, mass casual leaves and strikes. Worse is the fact that when they do so, they don’t have any dearth of political support, for there might not be any correlation between the quality of work delivered and pay hikes demanded. Many self proclaimed champions of the so- cal...