The BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav said that ‘they are getting bad quality food without butter and Jam at such winters‘ The CRPF jawan Jeet Singh said ‘they serve in jungles, there is no welfare and also demanded parity in pay between army and para military.‘ One more army jawan Lance Naik Yagya Pratap Singh, posted in 42 Infantry Brigade in Dehradun, said that ‘he has written letter to PMO last year about mistreatment of buddies’. And the people who never adorned a uniform nor know army started a debate. It is astonishing. They threaten the sovereignty of nation and dividing to the armed forces. They are simply anti nationals. How? I tell you

Do you find all these cases similar? Well you would if you are not acquainted with the armed forces in real and rely mostly on bollywood movies and TV serials like POW for idea about armed forces. And yes social media too! It’s a sad condition blaming entire organisation over one video that went viral on social media and promoted by media opportunists. So first of all let’s start with the basic and know that all these cases are not similar as no arm and it’s situation is similar to the other. It’s like comparing a mistreatment of a clerk from an incident of rape together.

CRPF

Basically serve in the jungles against Naxals and other such elements in the rural areas of Orissa,Jharkhand,Bengal etc. Where of course families are not allowed and they do visit their families during their leaves. They sometimes have to be in Tents and cook food for months over wooden logs into some jungle.They basically maintain the internal situation of the nation and do more jobs than written against their names.

BSF

Border security forces as it stands for serve as the first line of defense at the borders and move back into the line once army takes over at the situation of war. They fight mostly Nagas and insurgents in northeast and maintain almost entire desert area.

These chaps are doing more jobs than the Army itself but frankly they are not glamorised as Army and they surely have poor infrastructure and less pay package than Army. Now the question rises who is responsible for it if some complain rises in Social media regarding their situations?

Lack of Ethos or Camaraderie and may be just because they have nothing very historical to keep their pride up for what they do back to the country.The Gurkha Rifles shout out loud ‘Bravest of Brave‘, a simple army services arm EME which is involved with repair and maintenance of equipments owe an identity of being ‘Eagle‘ to them!’ Jaalim Khanjar’, Saidav Pratham’ god knows how many logos and tag lines are associated with various arms based on real operations which keep them motivated. But Do we have something like that in CRPF or BSF?

Now the officers in Army are taught to keep the benefits of their chap they would command above all since their initial days in IMA. In fact there is whole quote engraved into the walls of IMA

“The safety, honour and welfare of your country come first, always and every time. The honour, welfare and comfort of the men you command come next. Your own ease, comfort and safety come last, always and every time.”

A cadet who has to be an officer someday learns this as a first lesson. Then all the army officers get a mandatory postings to high altitude areas like Siachen or North eastern jungles like Nagaland etc where they learn to sit,eat and spend time with their own men whom they command and be better than their chaps always. This build a relationship which help them understand men better. This is not the case with BSF and CRPF.

So the problems from these forces which mostly arise are lack of infrastructure,less pay package, no welfare and extreme survival. Now the question is who is responsible for all this? Not only officers but then the government and entire organisation is questioned if such allegation surfaces in social media. May be the entire system,their training, their working morales and mottos all should change with changing times.

Now these cases can not be compared with the allegation from a Jawan in Army whose prime concern is the mistreatment and misutilisation of a jawan. No Jawan ever complained about poor infrastructure and less pay package. Mind It! I repeat Mind it!

And do you know why? Because army officers and the wives who are severely dragged into all the allegations of mishandling buddies and asking chaps to manage their kids and dogs are involved into maintaining this wonderful life that Army has to offer to a Jawan who could be just 10th or 12th passed. Yes, it’s not government,not PMO,not PM who are directly involved into the betterment of jawans but it’s the personal interests and motto of the organisation that create a beautiful life for jawans here in army where they can live peacefully with their families. How? You may ask …so read it carefully!

• It’s just not the jawan who work personally for the officer and the family but vice versa here in Army.
• The officer’s wives might leave their dogs and children to jawans because they themselves are busy looking after the benefit of the Jawans families through various AWWA programs that include teaching them english to provide them a parlour or NTT degree. 
• The wives regularly visit the tiny beautiful houses of Jawans to make sure they are leading a good life. Even the breakage of the glass window and too much grass near their accommodation is a serious issue which has to be solved immediately.
• The officer wives teach into Army Public Schools which mostly provide world class education to the Jawans kids who might not have afforded it into some other convent school. So okay the wives are paid meagerly here but then these are the same wives who could have worked easily outside but opted to teach.
• The officer and wives are seriously scrutinised and taken action against if their seniors like a CO or Commander finds cases of marital discord or domestic violence into the houses of jawans.
• Not to forget the endless benefits due to internal management like free medicines,world class doctors who treat jawans and officers both,safe cantts,parks,water,sewer etc which are all functional because some brigade commander is taking personal interest into all this to provide them a better life.
• There are organised regular open forum meets where the commander would come along with all the officers to ask about the jawans problems and believe me even the problems like the quality of milk by a civilian milk man is solved and milk machines are installed at the gates to provide jawans best quality milk. Everything is a concern to the officers who use to be present there along with their wives who might have left their own toddler and babies back at home to be present at that forum.

And the list of such works is endless. It’s the Baap of all the NGOs where some handful of officers and wives (8-10) mostly looks after hundreds of Jawans and their families single handedly. Because if you will fail to look after them well you might be punished. And this is the reason that highly qualified Army wives doctors,engineers or scientist are not able to work outside with a handsome salary because they have to give back to the organisation.

Army Wives could have afforded maids and other helps easily. Taking a dog outside or hiring nannies could have been easier with a corporate salary in hand and especially with all that time of their own that they could have utilised for their own benefits than the benefit of some 10th 12th pass men and their women and children.

So you see this entire organisation work like this. The officers also have families,houses and kids but they along with their wives have to constantly work for the betterment of these jawans only. And this is how a beautiful organisation where everybody does everything for each other they can do. And so you see a shining army. You can’t question now why some work or why some bad examples? It’s too difficult to explain it will crash entire system here.

It’s just not the guns and bullet for which army works for but also betterment of jawans.

So yes, The buddies are there who willingly serve the families for various works and assist them not necessarily the way these viral videos blame. I have seen buddies who served under one single officer over years because Saheb proved a better pillar of support than his own dad and Mem saheb held his family and taught his wife better than his own mom. Sometimes buddies are comfortably serving in some peace place where the officer might be directly at the LOC facing death every day.

So okay army is an organisation of lakhs and not all cases are similar but the shouts from media and people who doesn’t know army threatens an entire way of living over one two such cases. Even the big media houses like Aaj Tak is running an entire debate over a topic they know nothing nor understand the essence of the organisation but they compile it and run to their news channels because it’s such a TRP booster ‘A serving personnel blaming the higher authorities from an organisation which is much loved in the country and still is very mysterious of its work ethos. People don’t know much about it.’ What could be a great news than these. So they don’t even follow basic steps of running a news like

• Background check
• The mental health of the blamer especially when he claims that he’s serving into a lone jungle over months. Do you think such men would not be frustrated or angry? And who is responsible for it then?
• Do they realise how it hampers the morales of rest of the men who are serving along side into a jungle or chilly mountain at some sub zero temperature and there are issues. It has to be, it is humane only. 
• So basically media houses and such viral video makers show that every jawan is mistreated and genius of military matters. All officers are bad and misbehave. Then who is standing there at the borders doing surgical strikes? 
• Now it can’t be that there would be no problem at such extreme areas and every man serving there would be physically and mentally fit so what to do? Remove the forces from there? Like we did in Kargil  till 1999 where we removed troops during winters as whether is too harsh?
• Aren’t these news channels  play against the benefit of the country and damage the morales of troops by showing such irrelevant news which is basically the internal issues of the armed forces? Especially when such news are shown by Pakistani channels with equal interest.

And as Army Chief General Bipin Rawat said today that ‘ social media can be used both ways’ and gave a very commendable speech regarding it. We should all imbibe what he said.

Please be a soldier,behave a soldier and trust me Civilians can never understand your problems. It can only be another soldier. Have faith in the organisation!

And yes, this post won’t go viral and compete against those viral posts about mistreatment of jawans and won’t be shared thousands of times only because it speaks the reality which is not controversy creator into the age of negative media and in fact it tries to ease the controversy so there won’t come the entire lot of news lobbyist who would promote it. The truth behind viral news can be disappointing sometimes. And off course Pakistani media would not like what I wrote so off course NDTV and AAJ Tak won’t like it either… So no chance reality would reach common people and we could keep on witnessing unnecessary issues which is very dividing to the entire armed forces and create a bad name about armed forces. May be this is what some people want!

Here are the links like these issues

How not to let army life overpower your normal life

Nagrota Attacks:Are we a generation of ***holes?

Is celebrating Vijay Diwas alone is enough for our veterans?