Quality Over Quantity|| March 2021

S.K. Sood

I was associated with training from early days in my career and have spent almost one-third of my career as an instructor with various training establishments of the Border Security Force (BSF). I have always had the feeling that all is not well with our training systems. I will try to make my point clear through following account which is based on my experience and perception of how training is carried out in the BSF.

The feeling was reaffirmed each time I attended the annual training conference as head of two different training institutions or as a frontier commander. The presentations by Training Directorate contained only mundane matters like ‘how many vacancies not utilised’ or ‘how much training budget not utilised’ etc. There was rarely, if ever, any fruitful discussion on what our training philosophy should be or what steps should be taken to mould our training methodology to meet the future operational requirements. The ‘Annual Training Directive’, perhaps a copy of some similar document of some other organisation, also contained only clichés and platitudes without alluding to what ailed our training systems and how to rectify those.

I was appointed IG (Training) for a brief while towards the end of my career in 2015 and during this short period I had the task of organising the annual training conference of the force. The draft presentation for the conference prepared by my staff officers contained the same routine points. To the chagrin of the staff officers, I decided to change all that. This is how we came to prepare a presentation titled ‘What Ails training in BSF’. As the title suggests, the presentation analysed what was wrong with our training philosophy, methodology and suggested a way forward. The DG wasn’t amused at the title and before presentation could begin, asked whether training really was ailing? I was tempted to unhide the very first slide of the presentation which consisted of photo of the appointment board of IG (training) which contained names of a large number of incumbents in a very short period of time. Most of the officers who held the appointment of IG (Training) manned the post for very small durations.

It was apparent that this important post was mostly being used as a slot to temporarily accommodate requests from officers who were either due for superannuation or who wanted an accommodation in Delhi before onward posting to the field. There hardly was any continuity. Nor were the incumbents particularly familiar with the nuances of training requirements of the force. Not much appears to have changed five years after my re