Sunday, August 20, 2017

Air India gives boarding priority to soldiers: Empty gesture plays to nationalist gallery and dodges society's responsibility to servicemen

Our national carrier has decided to honour our soldiers through a gesture: Armed forces will now be allowed to board Air India's planes before other passengers.

According to Air India, this will make them feel special and honour their service, which is more meaningful than that of other Indians, whatever their achievement (and whatever the achievement of the individual soldier may have been).

Let's pause here briefly and question that assumption.

Why is the service of the Indian teacher, postman and the man delivering gas cylinders any less important? We assume that this is the case, but why? We could argue that soldiers do a dangerous job. But so do electricity linemen.

Data shows that more Indians die cleaning our sewers and septic tanks than soldiers in combat. Those workers don't get medals and don’t receive any honour or reward. In fact, they don't even receive their dues.

However, I don’t want to dwell on that subject today. Let us assume that soldiers do the most important work of the republic and so they are deserving of honour like nobody else.
Is the government airline boarding protocol the correct way of honouring the soldier? I would say no and add that this gesture deliberately continues the honouring narrative, which is fake and loaded against the soldier. Let me explain.

There are several ways in which we can ensure that our military is given its rightful dues:

First, in terms of a proper salary and living conditions. Recent harsh action against jawans who have complained about food and living conditions shows that we are not serious about this. Air India would have honoured our soldiers better if it agreed to use its catering strength to help improve the food served to our soldiers.

Second, we must ensure that our soldiers are physically and psychologically healthy. Frequent episodes of stressed out jawans killing their officers and fellow soldiers indicate that this may not be the case. Unions and associations of former soldiers will testify to the fact that many of our warriors are unwell psychologically and get zero support or treatment.

Third, offering a pension, job opportunities and education opportunities to soldiers when they are serving and retired. America does this really well, particularly the education bit, offering college scholarships to former soldiers. We do not. So far as the pensions and job opportunities go, I have done some research on this subject and I can tell you that though we are a poor nation with few resources, soldiers get more from the State than any other category of government servant.

Fourth, soldiers who perform well must be honoured through rewards such as medals. A recent report shows that they are not. A solider might be told that he has been awarded a medal, but he does not receive it. He purchases a replica of this in the army canteen and wears it. This is shameful.

The fifth and final way in which we can meaningfully honour our warriors is the most important one: We should reduce the areas of conflict in which we have deployed our brave soldiers. Why are they occupying Siachen, a barren landscape in which they die by the dozen every year? Not from enemy firing, but from the weather.
20/08/17 Aakar Patel/First Post
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