TIME FOR A MILITARY VISION OF SELF

AS someone who spent four decades in uniform, I sometimes wonder why, while leadership as a subject is taught at Indian military academies, the idea of having a military vision of self is not stressed well enough, One might well say that having a vision is part of leadership training and is the same as having an aim.

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However, that's not so.In these times of the omnipresent social media, religiosity is being linked with one's nationalism and the apolitical fabric of the armed forces is being severely tested-with senior leadership being photographed with politicians and spiritual heads in religious places outside cantonments.

The recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the dismissal of a young Army lieutenant for not attending the 'mandir parade' of his battalion has brought the armed forces officer cadre on the front-burner of national consciousness. In such a challenging environment, a personal vision can act as a moral compass to steer one's career in uniform with aplomb, and more importantly, in the spirit of what the Constitution expects from an officer.

Having a vision is having 'an acute sense of the possible'. A vision is aspirational-a dream that subsumes multiple aims that are stepping stones to realising one's own vision. There is an inherent element of an aching for attaining something, best expressed by the blind entrepreneur Srikanth Bolla, who said on TV, "You do not need eyesight to have a vision."

The exposure to TV and social media has made the present-day armed forces recruits different from those of yesteryears. Today's youth have an attention span of 10 minutes between commercials. However, real life is very different and is specially so in uniformed services where the daily routine is rigidly structured-reveille, go to work, follow a schedule, sleep and repeat the next day.