Even though the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence headed by Major General B.C. Khanduri (Retd) recommended five years of compulsory military service for those aspiring for gazetted jobs in the state and central governments, the BJP-led NDA government, in its first Parliament session after coming into power at the Centre, had made it clear that it was never in favour of making military service compulsory.
Arun Jaitley, during his stint as the defence minister in July 2014, had made it clear that the Government of India, "is not in favour of making military training compulsory to all the youth of the country.” In his response to a question by Janata Dal (Secular) MP from Karnakata, C.S. Puttaraju, in Lok Sabha, Jaitley had stated that "India is a democratic republic and the Constitution does not provide for compulsory military training. In our democratic set up, people are free to choose their professions. Compulsion with respect to military training, it is felt, would go against the democratic ethos."
"Military training to all the youth of the country may also lead to militarisation of an entire nation. With our socio-political and economic conditions, it is highly undesirable, lest some of the unemployed youth trained in military skills join the ranks of the undesirable elements," Jaitley further stated.
On Tuesday, the Standing Committee on defence in its report tabled in the Parliament has brought back the issue for debate. By recommending five years of compulsory military service to those aspirants who want to join central and state government gazetted services directly, the Standing Committee have taken into account the fact that there exists a perennial and alarming shortage of officers and men in the Armed Forces, which need to be corrected. The Parliamentary panel also asked the ministry of defence to push with the DoPT with more vigour and earnestness.
Arguing for it, the Parliamentary panel said that the Indian Army alone is short of over 7,000 officers and over 20,000 other ranks including jawans. Similarly, the Indian Air Force is short of nearly 150 officers and over 15,000 men and the Navy is short of 150 officers and nearly 15,000 men.
While the central government alone has about 30 lakh employees with the Indian Railways, the state governments employ about another two crore people.
Though the Army itself is not keen on making military training mandatory. Lt. General Mohinder Puri (retd), former deputy Chief of Army told THE WEEK that shortage of officers is due to stringent selection process, as army do not want to lower down the standards of its selection process. "Certainly, mandatory military training for all those seeking government will make them more disciplined and committed. But, the five year period is a bit long. I personally feel, two years of initial training will work. We have good bureaucrats, but majority of them lack commitment. Initial training will instill good value in them."
However, on the other side, bureaucrats do not support the idea of compulsory training as a pre-condition to the service. "Having compulsory military training is surely not a pre-condition to a service. But military orientation is good to discipline your life. Ideally, such training should be given to students during their school time," said Keshav Verma, a retired IAS officer of Gujarat cadre.
More than 20 countries around the world, including North Korea, Russia and Israel, presently have system of compulsory military service for all its citizens, believing compulsory military service would instill a sense of patriotism and make citizens more disciplined and committed.
Arun Jaitley in his statement in 2014 had also said that training all the youth in the country would require establishment of a very large number of training centres all over the country and would involve huge expenditure in their maintenance and upkeep.
“The likely benefits of imparting military training to all the youth will not commensurate with the expenditure involved in such an effort. This would translate into an unmanageable figure and will also be a big drain on limited resources of a developing country,” Arun Jaitley added in his response the Parliament.