Sunil Sethi: What happened to 'fauji' culture?

The culture of greed and conspicuous consumption is now so pervasive and visible that the principle of if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them has taken over

Shame”, “humiliation” and “betrayal” are words that recur with painful regularity in reference to the fallen image of the defence forces in their blind and greedy partaking of flats in the Tower of Deceit, that 31-storey monument of corruption in Colaba, Mumbai. Not only politicians and bureaucrats (well, what do you expect of them?) but also the country’s top-ranking generals and admirals were caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

In cantonments and defence service clubs across the country, there is shock, horror and disbelief, as jawans disperse after morning drill and evening games of bridge and canasta fall silent in a miasma of remorse and regret. The question, spoken and unspoken, being asked is: What happened to the code of culture, the values of honour, probity and dignity exemplified by generations of men and women who were the guardians of not just the nation’s frontiers but also defended, in some inescapable way, its standards of public morality?

With two uncles in the army and a cousin of that generation in the navy (mercifully deceased, for I am relieved they did not live to see this sad day), I grew up well-acquainted with that remarkable ethos, proudly resistant to the depredations of civilian life. One line, in particular, sticks out in memory from a revue that young lieutenants and captains staged in Meerut cantonment’s Wheeler Club in the late 1960s that the audience found side-splittingly funny. It shows a general’s wife on her knees in prayer. “Please, God,” she beseeches the Almighty, “see that my son gets into the army but keep him out of the Mess!”

I doubt there are many mothers making that request these days. How did the highest-ranking defence personnel get into this mess? There are about 31,000 serving defence officers in the country (against a sanctioned strength of 42,000) and a simple wage comparison with other services (the IAS, IPS and so on) shows that they earn — and have more cash in hand — because of exemplary benefits. A 21-year-old lieutenant starts at a monthly income bracket of Rs 20,000-Rs 30,000 and generals take home more than a lakh of rupees. Their well-appointed homes, staff and rations are free; liquor and a variety of other needs are subsidised; and special allowances during hardship postings, at frontier service and during counter-insurgency operations, are generous.

Why, then, are they so easily infected by the culture of avarice and seem willing — in fact, eager — to fall into bed with the most corrupt, immoral of politicians and bureaucrats? Why is it that in recent encounters with upstanding officers (and there are still plenty around) one hears of defence colleagues passing their days in playing the stock market or making money for clearing defence equipment in trials?

There could be two answers, the first being fairly obvious. The general culture of greed and conspicuous consumption is now so pervasive and visible (“of fine malt whiskies replacing Old Monk rum and estate officers in subsidiary defence ministry departments being more powerful than generals,” as one officer put it) that the principle of if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them has taken over. But the defence services’ prestige and self-worth have also diminished since the best brains are sidelined in the new structures of the national security environment. “They have been painted into insignificance in framing security policy,” says a defence analyst. “Government sinecures are not for fine, upstanding officers but for subservient officers who toe the line.”

The net result is that some of the nation’s top-ranking officers are accomplices in selling the family silver — for that is the degree of underhand duplicity required in flogging defence land in the name of war widows. This is property held in trust for future generations of army and naval servicemen. That carefully nurtured symbolic wall between upstanding cantonment culture and civilian squalor has been breached. How will the fauji wear his badge with pride and honour again?