I don't see a reason as to why is there a shortage of officers in the Army. Thousands of students who give exam for IMA and NDA are not selected. Can't 25% more students be admitted to fill the gap. Are those 25% too unusable for the Army.
Measures are being taken: The number of officers reported to be commissioned from the IMA in June this year itself been 685, the highest ever since its inception. This increased intake seems to be one of the measures undertaken by the government to make up the deficiencies; and minimum service for short service has been extended and women officers from 5 to 10 years, and further extendable to 14 years have been introduced.
There is a politics at play in the highlighting of the shortfall of Army officers in Parliament- done repeatedly and conertedly. It is being done - purportedly - to emphasize the tough conditions and limitations the Army men and women are operating under and to showcase the career preferences of today's youth: the relatively better paying private sector. But the goal (perhaps justifiably) of this repeated emphasis is to demand better pay and perks for the Army to somewhat redress this anomaly.
It is also poignant to remember that the term 'officers' in the Indian Army refers only to fully Comissioned Officers, not Non-Comissioned Officers or Junior Comissioned Officers- the latter being a vestige of the British-Indian Army and unique only to the subcontinent. In the past, these JCO's operated on the basis of social, communal and filial obligations- from whence they derived their authority- as opposed to any state-invested authority in them. Now, despite the fact that we have retained these JCO's in the post-independence era, their norms and provenance of authority have not been redefined given the dramatic changes that have undergone in the nation's strategic imperatives, organizational requirements and indeed civil society itself.
Even more poignant to note is that India, with such a severe officer disability, is one of the largest UN peacekeeping forces in the world, and that the posting of officers to UN assignments is nearly double that of the standard authorization. This is undoubtedly due to patrimonialism and the fact that the relative comforts and perks associated with UN peackeeping missions are all too enticing.
Realistically speaking, given that this shortfall in officers will not be redressed in the short run, one viable strategy is to adapt the role and functions of Non-Comissioned Officers in armies like that of the US and France to the JCO's, somewhat alleviating the burden from Fully Comissioned Officers and establishing a conduit between these and regular troops. It would also mitigate the need to authorize recruitment of new officers (which would severely impact the revenue : capital expenditure ratio and bloat pension expenditures in the very long run).
There have been some encouraging reports however of senior officers being willing to inculcate modern sophisticated management techniques: a batch of 15 IA officers of triple-star ranking completed an advanced management course involving applied macro-management techniques in warfare and departmental management at the Management Development Institute in Gurgaon in 2007.
What we need to rejuvenate the sapping strength of Army officer numbers is gradual organizational reform and restructuring. Moreso, a marginal cropping of the Armed Forces' size 'sanctioned strength' to include a more capable and intelligent troop core coupled with a significantly larger incorporation of technology. Even more importantly, all of these activities must be time bound, and the ensuing period of transition or flux must be managed quickly and effectively. If the Indian Army is to be a truly capable force, capable of managing the expanding interests and strategic prerogatives of the country, we need to get of our bureaucratic buttocks and overcome our political apathy. As members of civil society, we can also help in propagating the attractiveness of an Army career- indeed, consider it as a viable and self-sacrificing alternative for ourselves :drink:
