General’s letter on women officers was flawed, not ‘patriarchal’. There was truth to it

Current problems stem from a hastily executed policy and the inadequate grooming of women officers for higher ranks. They will, in future, be groomed and trained at par with male counterparts.

Representational image of women army officers outside the Supreme Court in New Delhi | Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint

In late November, a leaked demi official letter about the performance of eight women commanding officers created a storm across social and mainstream media. Written by Lt Gen Rajeev Puri, General Officer Commanding, 17 Corps, to Lt Gen Ram Chander Tiwari, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Eastern Command, the letter assessed these women commanding officers as having serious shortcomings in man-management, leadership style, moral courage, and understanding of service privileges.

Emotions ran high, with opinions, critiques, and advice flooding the media. Supporters of women in the armed forces far outnumbered critics. The General was accused of patriarchalism and of deliberately leaking the letter to sabotage the empowerment of women. The casualty was objectivity.

Equal opportunities for women in the armed forces, as enshrined in Articles 14, 15, and 16 of the Constitution, is the law of the land, reinforced by Supreme Court judgments and government policy. However, equal opportunities imply gender-neutral merit and measuring up to exacting standards. The shortcomings outlined in the letter are primarily due to the transition from short-term contracts to permanent commissions—a change imposed by the judiciary and resultant government policy on a reluctant Army.

In my view, General Puri has been unfairly criticised for an allegedly patriarchal attitude toward women commanding officers. While he can be faulted for generalisations, his focus has been on identifying shortcomings in the professional standards expected from commanding officers and remedial measures required. The public leakage of the letter, however, has serious implications.

 

An established procedure

In February 2023, for the first time, women officers were given command of units within combat support arms and services. When a radical organisational change is being executed, progressive feedback is invariably given up the chain of command for policy refinement at army headquarters. In fact, it was the duty and responsibility of the GOC to provide this feedback, which would have been based on inputs from subordinate senior commanders, his own observations, and the annual appraisal system.

It is logical to assume that feedback on the performance of women commanding officers would have been gathered—at the Army headquarters level— from all army formations, along with the views of higher commanders. This process is in no way designed to set the clock back. To the contrary, it is aimed at making the transition smoother and more efficient.

The performance of women commanding officers would also have been assessed through the established three-tier appraisal system by the brigade, division, and corps commanders; an optional fourth tier is an evaluation by the army commander. This is a deliberate yearly process. Officers are assessed on personal qualities, demonstrated performance variables, and their potential for higher command and staff appointments on a nine-point scale.

Counselling for improvement or correction is an essential feature of both command and the appraisal system. This is normally done by the immediate superior officer and when required by higher commanders.

Counselling can be done verbally or formally in writing and a record is maintained.

 

Criticisms in the letter

I have perused a copy of the letter. The details are outlined in the following paragraphs.

According to General Puri, women commanding officers tend to adopt an autocratic style of leadership, with little or no consultation with subordinate commanders. He notes that discussion or dissent is discouraged, and subordinate commanders’ domains are often encroached upon, limiting their leeway in decision-making. This approach, the General asserts, kills initiative and reduces willingness to participate in mission accomplishment.

It is pertinent to mention that the Army’s command doctrine advocates a directive style of leadership, which is a judicious mix of democratic and autocratic styles. Dogmatic adherence to an autocratic style is certainly a negative trait.

The letter also notes significant flaws with respect to human resource management, including a lack of mutual respect, trust, tact, empathy, and attention to welfare of troops. Compassionate requests are not diligently considered, according to him, and dissent is viewed as insubordination. The emphasis, he writes, is more on “conflict termination” through authority of command rather than “conflict resolution” through mutual respect and trust.

Another observation in the letter was that women commanding officers were not assuming full responsibility and accountability for their command. They exhibited an “exaggerated tendency to complain” about subordinates to superior commanders rather than exercise their own authority and powers first.

The letter also refers to a “misplaced sense of entitlement”, leading to abuse of authority and privileges. While Gen Puri notes that this issue is not exclusive to women commanding officers, he describes it as a noticeable trend within their ranks.

A low tolerance for ambiguity was another issue highlighted in the letter. Orders and directions from higher commanders, it claims, are imposed directly on their command without evaluation or adaptation to unit or sub-unit missions. This degrades their authority and reflects an avoidance of responsibility and accountability.

Gen Puri highlights conflicting tendencies regarding ambition. Some women officers, he writes, display over-ambition and go out of their way to prove themselves. And in so doing, they made unreasonable demands on officers and troops. This desire to please higher commanders and stay visible, he adds, impinged upon unit training, administration, and troop welfare. At the other extreme were commanding officers who resorted to risk-averse functioning, maintaining only status quo with minimum standards without any desire to improve performance.

Reasons and recommendations listed

The letter attributes many shortcomings to systemic issues. Gen Puri explains that women officers were inducted as a support cadre on a maximum 14-year contract until the Supreme Court’s 2020 judgment. Most were not given exposure to command or staff appointments. They were not assessed through the criteria reports mandatory for company commanders to qualify for commanding officer roles. Consequently, commanding officer responsibilities, with substantial human resource management, were entirely new to them, necessitating on-the-job learning by trial and error.

Women officers, notes Gen Puri, were treated as an unavoidable appendage and given softer preferential tasks that did not give them adequate exposure to the rigours and dangers of service alongside troops. This aloofness purportedly manifested in lack of compassion.

The letter further identifies a perception of male gender bias among women officers, which he describes as a root cause of interpersonal conflicts. He claims their effort to prove themselves as strong and not “soft” leads to handling human resource issues with less compassion and empathy than their male counterparts.

In the past, the Army symbolically made much of the relatively minor achievements of women. According to the General, this has led to a tendency to constantly seek appreciation and manifested in disproportionate ambition.

The General recommends a comprehensive policy on gender neutrality with respect to postings, selection for higher ranks, and mission assignments. Symbolic showcasing of women officers in empowered roles must be avoided, he cautions. Instead, more emphasis needs to be placed on human resource management training. He also advises that policy for spouse-coordinated postings must follow same yardsticks as compassionate postings for all personnel.

 

My take

The first issue I have with the General is that his in-house review covers only eight commanding officers. He has used that to comment on the performance of women commanding officers in general, apart from painting all eight with the same brush, which defies logic.

Secondly, he is silent on the results of the counselling administered by his subordinate commanders and by himself. It has been my experience that ethically conducted counselling never fails to initiate corrective action. Given the background and the posthaste manner in which the grant of permanent commission and selection for higher ranks was implemented, counselling was all the more necessary.

Thirdly, as the reviewing or senior reviewing officer for the annual confidential reports of the eight commanding officers, the General should have restricted himself to generic comments. By being specific, he has lost objectivity while assessing them for career progression. And the unfortunate leak will ensure that their representations—even against his genuine objective assessment—will be upheld on grounds of perceived bias.

Lastly, he should have also highlighted similar shortcomings assessed among the approximately 40 male commanding officers under his command. Empirical wisdom indicates that this issue is relative and not a trend limited to women commanding officers.

Let there be no doubt that despite the decade available to prepare for the transition to permanent commission and equal opportunities for career progression—as directed by a 2010 Delhi High Court judgment, which was never stayed by the Supreme Court—the armed forces did not do so. The current problems stem from a hastily executed policy and the resultant inadequate grooming of women officers for higher ranks. With the backlog cleared, women officers will, in future, be groomed and trained for higher ranks at par with their male counterparts.

The public debate and legal battles so far have centred on gender parity and the constitutional right to equality. The ethically assessed performance of women in the military was never made an issue. It is only a matter of time before women constitute 10-15 per cent or 140,000–210,000 personnel of all ranks in our 1.4 million-strong armed forces. With gender equality ensured, it is time to transition to gender neutrality in all aspects of military service.

Lt Gen H S Panag PVSM, AVSM (R) served in the Indian Army for 40 years. He was GOC in C Northern Command and Central Command. Post retirement, he was Member of the Armed Forces Tribunal. Views are personal. 

(Edited by Asavari Singh)