As someone who spent four decades in uniform, I sometimes wonder why, while leadership as a subject is taught at Indian military academies, the idea of having a military vision of self is not stressed well enough, One might well say that having a vision is part of leadership training and is the same as having an aim. However, that’s not so.
In these times of the omnipresent social media, religiosity is being linked with one’s nationalism and the apolitical fabric of the armed forces is being severely tested—with senior leadership being photographed with politicians and spiritual heads in religious places outside cantonments.
The recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the dismissal of a young Army lieutenant for not attending the ‘mandir parade’ of his battalion has brought the armed forces officer cadre on the front-burner of national consciousness. In such a challenging environment, a personal vision can act as a moral compass to steer one’s career in uniform with aplomb, and more importantly, in the spirit of what the Constitution expects from an officer.
Having a vision is having ‘an acute sense of the possible’. A vision is aspirational—a dream that subsumes multiple aims that are stepping stones to realising one’s own vision. There is an inherent element of an aching for attaining something, best expressed by the blind entrepreneur Srikanth Bolla, who said on TV, “You do not need eyesight to have a vision.”
The exposure to TV and social media has made the present-day armed forces recruits different from those of yesteryears. Today’s youth have an attention span of 10 minutes between commercials. However, real life is very different and is specially so in uniformed services where the daily routine is rigidly structured—reveille, go to work, follow a schedule, sleep and repeat the next day.
This is replicated over years, resulting in the atrophy of thought and enquiry, and a reduction in the excitement and novelty quotient. The antidote to this withering of individual and professional development is having a personal vision to work towards.
This achieves three objectives. First, it helps an officer to strive for excellence. Consequently, there would be an elevation in their professional status. And third, seeing them as a focused individual raises his standing in the eyes of the organisation. It must be remembered that an officer is the most transparent person in a military formation, as their actions are evaluated by subordinates round the clock. “Does my sahab walk his talk?” is the unwritten evaluation metric.
But how does one assess whether one is on the right track? While external mentors help, there is a very harsh critic within oneself who can give true feedback. Melodramatic as it may sound, but that person is the one in the mirror staring back every morning since they represent all of their subordinates looking up to them for leadership. A truthful answer to his questioning gaze on whether one lived up to the standards expected of a military personnel, would act as a personal guardrail in the endeavour to achieve one’s vision.
Since vision has an osmotic effect on compatriots and juniors alike, role models help in framing one’s own. Ask any service officer who was a cadet in the National Defence Academy in the early 1970s when Commodore (later Admiral) Ronald ‘Ronnie’ Pereira was the deputy commandant. He was a disciplinarian to the core who would dish out punishments very liberally. He was the most admired, too, because of his insistence on professionalism—one accompanied with a heart of gold when it came to looking after the wellbeing of cadets. Ronnie has been a role model for many, including this writer, and helped mould numerous young minds as they were launched into the roller-coaster of military life.
In the 1970s and earlier, the NDA prayer was recited by cadets at the morning squadron muster. A line in that prayer has special significance in the present times of restructuring of social mores and the intrusive role that politics has started playing in daily functioning. Besides asking the almighty to “help keep ourselves physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight”, the prayer also asks to “awaken our admiration for honest dealing and clean thinking, and guide us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong”. The gaze of that person, staring back every morning from the mirror, has been asking—and will continue to ask—whether that harder right path has been traversed or the easier wrong track taken for illegitimate gain.
Indian military academies have their work cut out—to drill in this sentiment of right and wrong in the formulation of a personal ‘vision’ of every cadet under training, especially in these turbulent social media times. It would help greatly if the leadership, both military and civilian, leads by example. The bearers of stars on military epaulettes and office-holders in the political arena must remember that they are role models for the boys and girls starting their careers in the military in a resurgent India; they deserve only the best.
Air Vice Marshal Manmohan Bahadur (retd) | Former Additional Director General, Centre for Air Power Studies
(Views are personal)