Why should Army personnel lower down the order be made to work as virtual domestic servants of their seniors, polishing shoes and making purchasesIJ
Seeing an Air Force officer in regulation azure half-sleeved shirt and deep blue trousers squeezing into his busy schedule the task of collecting his children from the school bus on days when his wife is unable to do so, made this writer wonder whatever happened to the move in Parliament to end the practice, still prevalent in the Army, of officers getting orderlies and batmen to perform unsoldierly tasks.
If officers of the Air Force and the Navy can do without this privilege, reminiscent of feudal times, and are none the worse for it, there's little reason why officers in the Army can't be made to fall in line. Mr AK Antony, the veshti-clad Raksha Mantri whose wife would walk to the bus stop to take a bus to work till, as the story goes, security advised against such a risk, and who himself thinks it the proper thing to do to stand in a queue for his cup of coffee and idli, has expressed his concern over the anachronistic practice of enlisted men being made to perform unprofessional jobs.
As Army chief, General VK Singh had reportedly commissioned a study to see how to phase out the practice which perpetuates the divide between the elite and the lower order. Since then a new chief has taken over. The aam soldiery and indeed the aam aadmi at large will remember successor Gen Bikram Singh if he takes the matter forward to its logical conclusion. The formation of the commissions and committees are, as we know, a way to shelve inconvenient matters. So entrenched has the custom of assigning orderlies, inherited from the colonial days, become, that the new officer class and the wives view it as a perk of office not to be surrendered.
An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers are taken off their duties as trained fighting men to do chores like cooking, washing, walking the sahib's dogs, watering gardens and taking children to school, polishing boots, belts and brass and pressing uniforms, saris and children's clothes, all because the sahib and his spouse are supposedly too busy to be bothered by such unbecoming matters. For all his respectable designation of sahayak, the man remains a domestic help. And let's not be taken in by sweetly misleading talk that Army officers urge their children to call him bhaiyya.
In these changing times when the jawan is not so educationally backward as he once was, to expect him to serve as orderly/batman offends his self-respect. How many of the sahayaks will be proud to tell their families and friends back home of the kind of work they are made to do by their officersIJ
There is another reason why this orderly system should be frowned upon. Many of the thousands assigned as orderlies become malingerers after years of performing domestic chores at their officers' residences. That is one way for them to avoid tough soldierly route marches and assault courses and other such exercises to be battle ready, which is what they are recruited and paid for in the first place.
To soften the blow to the Army officer class of a ban on the job of sahayak, it has been suggested that civilian domestics be hired, their salaries to be paid by the exchequer. Why should the Government place this additional burden on the taxpayerIJ An officer seen routinely polishing his own boots and putting his personal laundry on the line to dry, will be an inspiring example to the troops he commands. little infra dig about taking the children to the school bus yourself. Everyone else does it.
The IAF officer and his wife mentioned at the start of this piece made this journalist feel good. If his example is followed by the Army's officer corps, it can reduce the increasing tensions and even physical confrontation between the officers and troops, the kind which resulted in the violence in ladakh last year, where a wounded CO was admitted to hospital for treatment. And, that was not the only instance.
By the way, the British Army from whom we inherited the orderly/batman/batwoman culture, abolished the system after World War II.