Women in our Armed Forces: A Story of Tokenism and Half-Baked Decisions

Women must be a part and parcel of our armed forces, both as officers and soldiers.

The SC recently directed the government to allow the entry of women candidates to the NDA.

(Photo: The Quint)

The recent Supreme Court order forcing our government’s hand in opening the doors of the National Defence Academy (NDA) to women candidates has left me with mixed feelings. I am in support of giving full opportunity to women to participate in and shoulder the responsibility for the defence of their country on an ‘equal footing’ with men, and to that extent, I welcome this action by the Supreme Court. What has left me puzzled, however, is that, if it was the ‘Principle of Equality of Opportunity’ that the Courts were rightfully seeking to enforce, then why limit the entry only to the Officer cadre – the doors should have been forced open to their entry as soldiers as well.

Even at the time we first allowed women to join as Short Commissioned Officers, I was on record to state publicly (and have said so in my book ‘India’s Armed Forces – Tempering The Steel’, as well), that this decision to limit the induction of women to only the Officer Cadre was a knee-jerk reaction and done more as a façade to show that we had inducted women in the Armed Forces.

What Led the SC to Step In?

Had our Armed Forces leadership ‘thought through’ this path-breaking decision at that time and begun the process of inducting women across the entire rank and file based on an equal footing with men, we would not have to see this day when we are being forced to react to directions from courts. To my mind, this issue of induction of women in the armed forces has actually become a classic case of a right decision taken for the wrong reasons (half a decision actually restricted as it was only to the officer cadre). I say this because any such path-breaking decision, particularly for a country’s armed forces (which have very unique and exacting requirements) has to be driven by very solid reasons.

The first could be to implement the ‘Principle of Equality of Opportunity’ for all competing men and women based on their capabilities and qualifications. The second reason could be a ‘dire need’, such as when a country is facing a shortage of manpower, as actually happened in the World Wars. In my opinion, this decision to restrict women only to the officer cadre (whether short service or now as permanent commissioned officers) fails on both counts.

Undoubtedly, the vital need for the armed forces to be peopled by the very best that a country can produce implies that men and women who volunteer must get an equal opportunity to compete to be part of their country’s armed forces, and this, therefore, has to apply to both the Officer and the Personnel Below Officer Rank (PBOR) cadres.

It has to be remembered that there are no runners-up in war and we have to put our very best ‘people power’ and ‘defeat’ the best that our adversary would similarly also seek to bring to bear against us.

The Principle of Equality of Opportunity

Therefore, the case is that if women are to be inducted into the armed forces based on the ‘Principle of Equality of Opportunity’, they must be drawn into both the Officer as well as PBOR cadre without diluting the standards that have to be maintained keeping the enemy and other ground realities in mind.

Perforce, given the very unique and demanding physical requirements of the armed forces (particularly the Army), the entry of women may get restricted to some branches or fields where they would still have to compete with men (albeit with certain acceptable modifications/relaxations in the physical standards if necessary) in case they are to be selected. Restricting women to just the Officer cadre is, therefore, simply not correct and against the grain of the ‘Equality of Opportunity’ principle, which should apply equally across the entire social cross-section of our women population.

As regards the second reason of ‘need or necessity’ being the driver of such a decision, I do not think that there was any real need or necessity. It was done more as a ‘window dressing’ to showcase that we had women officers in the armed forces. I remember the great flurry of publicity given to the time when we had the first woman officer leading a Republic Day marching contingent. To my horror, this penchant for projecting facades spiralled upwards to the level where an all-women officers marching contingent was fielded on the 2015 Republic Day.

Lip Service to the Idea of Equality?

What long-term effect this could have had on the very ethos of being an armed forces officer by having these officers march publicly as part of the rank and file in a squad is something I shudder to even think of; an officer’s position is as a commander at the head of a squad and not as a part of it. Further, if women officer cadets had been pulled out from the training academies for completing this spectacle, then it is even worse. Short service trainee officers simply cannot afford to waste their already inadequate training time in doing ceremonial drills beyond what is in their syllabus.

Notwithstanding the above, if ‘need or necessity’ had indeed been the reason for inducting women in the armed forces, in that we were unable to find adequate high-quality officer material of the required physical and mental standards, then we would have gone about inducting women in the required numbers as a matter of necessity to make up for this shortfall.

It has to be remembered that the shortage of officers is only in the lower ranks of the officers and the induction of women officers, as we are experiencing it, has also not really helped matters.

Further, addressing this shortage of officers in the junior ranks is a completely different complex issue that merits another paper by itself to establish a sort of a Universal Short Service Support Cadre Concept at the national level, wherein the Short Service Officer, after his/her seven-eight years of service in the armed forces, takes up a second vocation in the several existing Para Military and other Central Police Forces, such as the BSF and the ITBP.

Following the US Example

But coming back to the issue of the induction of women in our armed forces, one way forward could be that being the largest democracy in the world, we could follow the path set out by the United States, the oldest democracy, and use their model – and experience – in inducting women across the entire spectrum of the armed forces on the ‘Principle of Equality of Opportunity’. It is the worst to be caught halfway. It is, therefore, high time that we took bold steps to correct this half a decision by revisiting the issue in its entirety and then doing whatever it takes to commence the induction of women in the armed forces, both in the PBOR and Officer (Short Service and Permanent) Cadres where they could compete ‘equally’ with the men to join the Recruiting Centers and the NDA or otther Single Service Training Academies, respectively.

I am confident that the future is bright for our women to fight for their country alongside men on an equal footing. Even at the selection entry level itself, I do believe that many of our women will quite easily outperform some of our men candidates. Finally, I look forward to the day when we have a woman officer commanding a post in the glacier or on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and living in an ice cave/artic tent isolated for up to 90 days or more, along with her troops consisting of a mixed lot of men and women. That will be the day India could really be proud of.

(The writer is a veteran Lieutenant General who commanded the strategic High Altitude 14 Corps at Leh. He retired as the Deputy Chief, HQ IDS. He has also authored a book titled 'India's Armed Forces: Tempering the Steel'.)