Col Narinder Singh Dahiya (retd)

In the army they have a saying that ‘busy troops are happy troops’. So, commanders at all levels try all the tricks taught to them during their never-ending training to keep their troops happy. They, in fact, they work very hard to think of new, out-of-the-box and innovative ways of keeping the troops busy and thus happy.

Senior officers of the defence forces wonder why their men should be denied this dose of no cost /low cost ‘happiness’. Some of them feel duty bound to keep even the veterans ‘happy’. Their eagerness to spread ‘happiness’ knows no bound as the project requires no formal government approval or additional budget allocation. Hence, they aggrandise unto themselves the responsibility of spreading happiness to all people under their command. That this leads to officers and men spending long hours on duty in their offices or posts does not seem to concern them.

Some of these happiness projects appear indeed very funny to a sane person but almost none of the members of the defence forces can be blamed for this kind of elitism. The most favoured and popular happiness project of the armed forces commanders is writing of policy and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). These documents are generally written by a chosen few who are selected through a very difficult and soul killing examination called the staff college entrance examination. It takes at least one year of hard work and sacrifice to ace the examination. Many officers either forget their newly married wives, delay their marriage or suffer separation for at least one year to make the grade or as they say