Some news items, which caught my eyes today, would like to share with you with my observations.
1 Indian Army has an authorised strength of 50,028 officers but it is 7300 short of that figure, plus another big number seeking premature retirement every year. So to combat this shortage in the ‘fighting ranks’ of Lieutenants, Captains, Majors and Lt Colonels, the army will now give special training to bright soldiers or jawans in leadership qualities, personality development and communication skills to ensure that they can take on the mantle of junior leaders in 1.25 million strong armed force.
The Army has decided to set up a ‘Young Leaders Training Wing’, at the Officers Training Academy (OTA) at Chennai to train 400 selected soldiers in OLQs ( Officers like qualities), in two batches of five months each , from Sept 2019 onwards.
Soldiers do have three existing routes to become commissioned officers through the Army Cadet College (ACC) wing, Special Commission Officers (SCO) and Permanent Commission- Special List (SP-SL). But through these routes the success rate is merely 8.5% in the Service Selection Board (SSB) interviews and tests.
This new course which will be known as Young Leaders’ Course (YLC). The focus of this YLC will be on developing leadership traits and character building, improving communication skills in English and public speaking, learning conflict management and resolution, decision making and problem solving, and soft skills in basic mannerism and military etiquette.
The YLC course will ensure far greater number pass than the SSB, which means more soldiers will become officers in future. Even if some do not, they will constitute a much empowered second rung junior leadership in the army.
The YLC is another endeavour to plug the shortage. The present campaign about the good and gallant life in the armed forces have largely flopped to attract young people.
Secondly armed forces are now also finalising the long pending package to make short service commission more attractive for youngster, with measures ranging from grant of paid study leave to golden hand shake at the end of their 10/14 years tenures.
In my opinion this is a welcome move by army/armed forces, which will give in house training to exceptional soldiers to become army officers.
2 Second news items is also about Indian Army. Amidst the protracted battle between BJP and Congress over the surgical strikes, Northern Army Command chief Lt. General Ranbir Singh said on 20th may 2019, that Director General of Military Operations, in a recent reply to an Right to information (RTI) query had already clarified that the first surgical strike was conducted in Sept 2016. He further said that ‘ I do not want to go into what political parties say, they will be given an answer by the govt. What I told you is a statement of facts.’
Recently Congress had claimed that as many as 6 surgical strikes were carried out during UPA regime, to challenge NDA govt’s claim that this govt was first to clear such a cross border military action after the Uri terror attack- in which 19 soldiers were killed in 2016.
In my opinion this should silence the congressmen, but knowing them, I will not be surprised that tomorrow some congressman will rise and say, army general is speaking Modi’s language, and we do not believe him.
3 Friends do you know that even RSS has an wing which is called Muslin Rashtriya Manch (MRM). MRM is on the verge of opening their 6th madarsaa at Uttarakhand. They have already opened one each in districts of Western UP-Moradabad, Bulandshahar, and Hapur and 2 in Muzaffarnagar. RSS’s madarssas will ensure that students do not just become Qazis (judge in Shariya courts), Karis ( teacher of religion in madarssas, imams (leader of community namaz), Maulanas (learned men) and Mufti ( one who issues fatwa), but students will also force themselves in learning engineering, medical doctors, scientist & other professional.
Just to say that one always thought RSS to be pure Hindu organisation.
What you say my friends—
Waiting for your views/feed backs/comments on ths blog.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
21st May 2019
R. N. Mungale.
1.YLC is a good idea.
2. Reply by Army person should close all controversy.
3.i didn’t know that tds has such an outfit.
Bobby
Bad idea; officers from the ranks ( lower down ) have never been good Officer material. Next we will have people clamouring for reservations as in govt. jobs and that will be the end of our mighty military. Instead, make the pay and facilities better for bright, clever youngsters to enter the army.