Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 7

Every year, the Army loses its personnel to suicides, fratricides and untoward incidents. In the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in their stress levels.

Major causes

• Reports blame “prolonged exposure” to counter-terrorist environment as one of the contributory factors for increased stress levels.
• Non-combat related reasons add to the operational stress and have adverse effects on health of soldiers.
• Major causes include inadequacies in the quality of leadership, overburdened commitments, inadequate resources and frequent dislocations.

“At present, more than half of the Army seems to be under severe stress…. this is due to operational and non-operational reasons,” say the findings of the country’s leading think tank, United Services Institution (USI), which is compiling a book from the outcome of a seminar “Prevailing Stress Levels in Indian Army due to Prolonged

Exposure to Counter Insurgency/Counter Terrorism Environment”, which it had organised in October 2020.

Excerpts of the same have been put up on the USI website under ‘strategic perspectives’ for the period October-December 2020. Among the JCOs and jawans, the study identifies reasons, including delay and denial of leave, excessive engagements, domestic problems, humiliation by seniors, lack of dignity, unreasonable restrictions on the use of mobiles, lack of recreational facilities, conflict with seniors as well as subordinates, health problems, inadequacy of train reservation, inefficient administrative support, financial problems, lack of transparency in promotions, delay in crediting of financial claims and poor quality of rations. “There is a need to remove all shortcomings at the earliest.” says the study.