Preoccupied with immediate organisational and operational challenges, the services have ignored military education for too long.
The recent news about CBI raids on the principal of the National Defence Academy and a few other civilian faculty members is not surprising because the whole education system in our military academies has been suspect, and such aberrations were waiting to happen.
Addressing this as an isolated occurrence will not provide a holistic solution to the problem – how do we produce well-educated and not just well-trained officers in India’s armed forces?
Having thoroughly studied the Indian system of how we go about educating military officers for almost 30 years, served as a faculty member at various Indian institutions for nine years in a 35-year career, and visited the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) and several war colleges in the US recently as a guest speaker, I am convinced that we are still confused about the difference between education and training.
Consequently, whenever confronted with problems regarding professional military education at various levels, our military leadership prefers to showcase our highly efficient and effective training systems as an adequate alternative for a poor education ecosystem.
Lack of upgrade
Much attention is paid to keep the education-training cycle for the civil services at institutions like the IAS Academy at Mussoorie contemporary. But the MoD is least interested in facilitating the same at institutions like the National Defence Academy or individual service academies such as the Indian Military Academy (IMA), the Indian Naval Academy, or the Air Force Academy (AFA).
Why should they really be interested when service leadership itself has invariably been preoccupied with immediate organisational and operational challenges and never really demanded a stake in education?
The archaic and inefficient UPSC system has been entrusted with the task of selecting teachers for Sainik/military schools, NDA and all academies. Selection of faculty members, monitoring their performance and academic calibre and, most importantly, frequent upgrading of academic syllabi have been weak areas that need attention.
Killing interest in education
During the 1970s and 1980s, we had dedicated teachers and lecturers at military schools and the NDA, who could sow the spark of creativity or plant latent seeds of intellectual curiosity in the minds of cadets.
The writing skills imparted by G.M. Khan, an English teacher of mine at the Rashtriya Indian Military College, have stood me in good stead over the years. Similarly, Professor Rajan, the HoD of the IR, geopolitics and military history department at NDA Khadakwasla, was an inspiring and committed teacher whose lectures many of us never missed.
Now, when I speak to cadets at the NDA and other institutions, they have no civilian or military educators to look up to; they have many trainers though (military instructors on the drill and PT field, or weapons and flying or sailing instructors). This is the point where mediocre or ad hoc educators kill any interest in education.
Commandants at institutions like the NDA are powerful leaders with vast resources and immense scope to make an impact on both education and training. However, barring a few exceptions, very rarely have they been positioned there because they are considered expert educators or trainers.
It is a routine, stand-in-line post where either the three-star officer is positioned as a stop-gap arrangement till an operational post falls vacant, or because it is the turn of a particular service to tenet the joint establishment vacancy, or the officer has insufficient residual service to assume a C-in-Cs post. Consequently, their interest in education and academics is at best superficial, and at worst indifferent.
Solving the problem
This problem can be overcome if all these institutions have a dean of academics and faculty, who is either an accomplished academic or a practitioner scholar, to oversee a combination of civilian and military faculty and report to the commandant.
For example, I met the dean of faculty at the USAFA, Brigadier General Andrew Armacost, a PhD from MIT, who was selected from several applicants. The selection was not based on his rank or operational profile, but on his understanding and commitment to both training and education. The first question he bounced on me was: How are our academies addressing the challenges of offering a holistic education for officer cadets that offers opportunities for combining a technological focus with adequate awareness of the humanities and /or pure sciences?
Clearing the rot is not a difficult proposition. But it needs a willingness on the part of the military to acknowledge the need for better education as a critical tool for producing officers and men, who will fit into the rapidly changing milieu of contemporary security landscapes and the constantly changing character of warfare in the 21st century.
It also needs support from the bureaucracy and the political leadership, which should not see hidden demons in a well-educated and intellectually empowered military. Not many know that the Goldwater Nichols Act that reformed the US military included sweeping reforms in professional military education.
Arjun Subramaniam is a retired Air Vice Marshal of the IAF, and currently, a visiting fellow at Oxford.
The proven success of the training at the Academy, revolving around the co-operative partnership of the Four Services, has now suffered a setback. The training officers from the three combat services being on migratory tenure appointment, the permanent civilian academic officers with their co-operative participatory contributions are to provide the stability for progressive training – not only in academics but in other spheres as well. On university affiliation for the award of degree and introduction of the UGC pay, stipulation of graded qualifications for each tier of appointment and the adoption of new recruitment rules as prescribed by the UGC have combined to create a new cadre of teachers always keen to progress only on their ACADEMIC GLORIFICATION GUIDED BY AMBITION & GREED TO FAST TRACK their career – Personal ambition placed above the mission of their role. The old breed of teachers not confined exclusively to classrooms to be always present with the cadets guiding and supervising them in the play fields, hobby rooms and squadron anterooms as a stable partner and mentor of comprehensive training contributing to shape the cadets as effective and diligent leaders seem to have vanished. Their innovative inter disciplinary approach to ignite in the cadets an expansive vision and desire for details through wisdom oriented excursions in learning to reach an acceptable standard for takeoff on sustained learning process, seems to have taken a backseat in the approach of the new breed of teachers. The impact of their withdrawal from all allied activities, perhaps, has gone unnoticed to initiate steps to anchor them back to total participation.
The Haloed Academy has now become a college / de-facto university with all the “virtues” that are associated with academicians in many of them. WE HAVE DEVIATED FROM THE ESTABLISHED CONCEPT OF INTEGRATED TRAINING THROUGH COOPERATIVE PARTICIPATION OF FOUR SERVICES .
Bang on, Arjun! Unless the military leadershipm realises that warfare is more cerebral, how can you stem the rot! I hv been advocating intellect deficiency plagues the Service and there is little initiative to change this mind set, though fortunately every commander has begun to appreciate this issue. Basic fallacy stems in understanding how Indian democracy functions. It is the services responsibility to be current on all issues & keep pace with the environment, perception that sending a case to the MoD is good enough is wishful. Indian Govt works differently. User departments analyses, prepares a plan & gets it approved by the ministry & then implements it. Services are not prepared to do all this as thevperception is it is MoD’s responsibility. Under such environment we are doomed to suffer. Every star general in the US Armed Forces has spent couple of years at prestigious US universities acquiring analytical skills & higher learning. But Indian def leaders remain class 10 pass, now JNU under graduates. Studying in own schools of instructions, makes them skillfull on matters military but doesn’t enhance their all round capability. Need drastic reforms earlier the better!
Arjun you are absolutely right.
It is high time we realised that we need thinking soldiers.
The 21st century battlefield is no place for fighting men/women who do not understand technology.
Sainik school and military school both are different and the selection of the teachers are done differently ..sainik school principal(col) select the teachers. Where as in military school upsc…
One more reason behind sub standard education is sub standard treatment towards teacher by administration and lack of proper amount of remuneration.
Teachers now a days act like a event manager except subject or the field of expertise…he is looking towards all round of events and paper work in the school…
System do select a good teachers but over the period of time unnecessary task assign to them , make them unnecessary people…