THE news of youngsters joining Indian Armed Forces as officers after passing out from different institutions such as the Indian Military Academy or the Indian Naval Academy, is received by the larger society with much interest and enthusiasm -- not only in smaller cities and towns and villages, but also in metro cities. This enthusiasm demonstrates the respect the people have for the Armed Forces -- a happy feeling by any standard. Despite this, the Indian Armed Forces are forever running short of adequate numbers of officers -- which should be a matter of serious concern for all of us. This makes it necessary for the larger society to think of conducting a special drive on an ongoing basis to motivate young men and women to choose careers in Armed Forces so that the shortage of officer-level personnel is brought to end.

 

Two of the most important social sources to promote larger participation of youngsters in the quest to become Armed Forces officers are schools and colleges -- of course in addition to families. If concerted drives are undertaken in schools and colleges to motivate youngsters to think of careers in Armed Forces, something concrete is sure to emerge out of it. Beyond any shade of doubt, the number of youngsters choosing that option would rise phenomenally. Such a campaign will have to be built on the strength of depicting how attractive the Armed Forces careers can be -- by way of emoluments, perks, and other facilities. And more important than all of those will be the opportunity to serve the nation at an intense level -- an unparalleled attraction for young minds. One of the fears that the people harbour quite innocently is about death in action. This is born out of sheer ignorance -- that everybody who adorns the Armed Forces uniform is slated to die. This is a terrible misconception.

 

For, data proves historically that only a small percentage of people in the Armed Forces are faced with actual conflict, and a still smaller percentage of people are either killed or injured. There is a popular military saying that ‘on every bullet is written the name of its victim’. This is proved by one simple fact that only a few people get injured or killed when actually countless lakhs of bullets are fired and bombs exploded in any action. If this fact is brought to people’s attention in an appropriate manner, their mortal fear would naturally go away, and they would be encouraged to think of Armed Forces careers for their youngsters. Of course, many individual campaigners talk of these angles all right. But a more concerted effort needs to be undertaken so that more and more young people would feel motivated to join the Armed Forces. There is no doubt that the Armed Forces do project themselves before the society, yet, that promotion and projection will have to be done more systematically. And in order to make those efforts more effective, schools and colleges can act as good human pools from where good numbers of youngsters could be tapped successfully.