NEW DELHI: It’s one of those dreams that never really took off. In 2007, the Indian Army launched Dreamer’s Club—an internal platform where any army personnel could directly share their thoughts and ideas to the Army chief. In a bid to make the administration function better, it was considered a promising venture.
But even eight years later, the platform has failed to attract the army officers. At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi directly seeks suggestions from public on variety of issues through the popular radio programme Mann Ki Baat, the ‘Dreamer’s Club’ has failed to live up to the expectations.
Introduced by the then Army chief General J J Singh, the online platform on the internal network of Indian Army was supposed to be a way of communicating with higher authorities. It gave the staff a chance to convey their ideas, thoughts and suggestions directly, bypassing the so-called Army protocol.
But over the years, it has merely become a complaint box. According to some Army officers, the platform has gradually lost its value and only one communication has reached the Dreamer’s Club in the last one month.
Some of the senior officials told The Sunday Standard that inability to bring about a change in the work culture is the reason behind the Dreamer’s Club’s ineffectiveness. They also admitted that not many officers are willing to do away with the set rules and regulations of the Army. “Every time a suggestion came, the respective Directorate or branch of the Army headquarters would quote the rules and hardly showed any interest in mending the rules. It demoralised people,” said an officer, who had written eight times to the Dreamer’s Club, seeking change in the Army’s existing medical policy. But every time, he received the excerpts from the rulebook.
It is mainly because of these reasons that a platform has turned into a mere complainant window. “Most of the communications only deal with harassment by senior officers, or transfer issues. People have made it a redressal forum. It should not be used as a complainant mechanism. It should be kept for exchanging ideas,” another officer said, adding that in its early days, inputs received on the Dreamer’s Club helped the Army bust a liquor-trading racket.
And that’s why the Army officers believe that there is a need to revitalise the forum. “The Army headquarters needs to revive this platform. It certainly is a good platform, where a Jawan can directly write to the Army Chief,” the officer said.
Founder General Singh believed that it was an idea, which was ahead of its time. “Dreamer’s Club was a concept ahead of its time and did not add on to the workload of the military bureaucracy. It wasn’t followed up as enthusiastically as I expected it to be,” General Singh wrote in his autobiography A Soldier’s General.
“As the chief, I started the club, wherein anyone could email his/her idea to my office, which would be passed on to the appropriate branch or directorate of the army headquarters. This initiative was hugely welcomed and lot of ideas came in. Those which merited actions were progressed. For example, we implemented such idea of providing air-conditioned buses for conveyance from residential area to Army HQ. This may not be of such significance in advanced countries, where air-conditioned buses would be the norm. But in the Indian armed forces, air-conditioned buses were unheard of till 2005! So this step was greatly appreciated by the army,” General Singh wrote in his book.