Defence Awards

Letter to Editor

Defence Awards

President of India conferred various military awards like PVSM, AVSM, Shaurya chakra etc at the defence investiture ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Saturday. PVSM is awarded in recognition of peace time services of the most exceptional order. AVSM is given to recognize distinguished service of an exceptional order to all the rank of the armed forces. All the award winners of PVSM and AVSM are high ranking defence officials. It appears that primary consideration for conferring these awards is rank and exceptional service criteria are only secondary. Accordingly all the higher awards are cornered by senior officials. During the British rule, rules and procedures were made in such a way to give undue benefit to the rulers and high officials. It is unfortunate that even after about seven decades of independence we are blindly (or deliberately?) following the same old practices and precedents. Otherwise how is it that not a single lower rank official or jawans is there in the list of awardees? Does the Defence Ministry want the public to believe that nobody below the rank of Major General or equivalent has done any exceptional service? The tragedy in India is that while we eulogies small achievements of big people out of proportion, spectacular achievements of ordinary mortals on many timers go unnoticed, unheard and unsung. It is high time that we should change our mindset and start honouring exemplary services irrespective of the rank. Conferring an award to lower ranked defence personnel for their commendable service will be a great motivating factor to the defence forces as a whole. Earlier the Bharat Ratna award was predominantly given to politicians. Government made a welcome departure from this practice by conferring it on people who have excelled in other fields also. We should make a departure in this case also by conferring these awards to exceptional services of ordinary jawans also. 

E M Adithyan

  23^rd March2015

Elangalloor Mana

Edapal-679576

Kerala