Soldiers: Suicide and fragging

It is important to distinguish 'difficult' from 'un-natural' while characterizing the circumstances in which these so called suicide and fragging incidents occurs. Most of these cases occur in places like permanently frozen Siachen, terrorist infested Kashmir, highly remote north east or in circumstances of gross ignorance towards basic humanitarian issues.  Many times, a combination of above reasons accumulate and result in such events. The armed forces have always said that they are short of over 20,000 officers and 75,000 lower ranking personnel. 

 It now appears that joining the armed forces is the last option to our young people when nothing else is available. Therefore, it is important that we carefully address these aberrations as human issues rather than service conditions and bring about radical improvements in the circumstances that abet such heinous incidents. 

The pent up pressures of work and circumstantial stress of unnatural postings are such that even Alexander the Great in his exalted position of emperor-ship, committed human violence on his own colleagues at times. Fragging  is the natural recourse of every  oppression.

Providing the pleasure of families, even in their remote postings, is easily possible today and we ought to believe that it will only increase the confidence and the sense of purpose in them rather than distracting their focus and attention. There is a need to rationalize the service conditions and humanize the armed forces. 

It is high time that India thought of these things in a purposeful manner by involving civilian wisdom to mitigate the problems that have haunted our Armed forces.  After all, accepting to die in the war field is only a way of expressing that the soldier wants to live, be employed and provide happiness to himself and his family.   He is there in the battle field not for the glory of sacrifice but with the responsibility of taking care of his dearest ones who are left behind.  It is not a personal mission, but a profession that allows him to earn bread for those at home.  Complete segregation, imposition of torturous life and hammering down a philosophy of sacrifice are all the devices adopted by outfits that breed and bring up terrorists.   We should recognize this factor while dealing with the soldiers.

V.K.Saxena
President
National Council For Civil Liberties
Ahmedabad.