The Adventures of Chester: Interview: Army officer who studied in India

[Sometime ago I encounted an Army Major who was an Olmstead Scholar studying at the University of Mumbai (Bombay). Wow, I thought: that would make an interesting interview. Here it is. A short one, but he may be able to answer reader questions in the comments. We'll call him MC for now.]

TAOC: How long were you in India and where? Did you have a choice of educational institution, or is there a set program?

MC: We were in India for 25 months, from late May 2003 to late June 2005. We lived in Bombay, which is what most people still call it despite the attempts to get people to call it Mumbai. I did try to travel around the country as much as possible (but not as much as I would have liked). I attended the University of Mumbai and studied for and earned a Master of Arts in Political Science. The Olmsted foundation, which is a private foundation that sponsors the scholarship in conjunction with the Departmentof Defense, (www.olmstedfoundation.org) puts no requirement on course of study except that it cannot be in a science/technical field, i.e. it should be language, literature, history, political science, economics, etc. Generally, the Scholars have the choice of school so long as there are not other Scholars studying at the same school; however, there is only one university in Mumbai. But in a place like Beijing, you'll have two-three Scholars in the city at a time at different universities. I had a fairly rare experience in that I was the first Scholar to a country, city and university and all three were my first choice. Sometimes the Olmsted Foundation is more directive in their requirements for a variety of reasons and in it not unknown for someone to get their third or fourth choice of country.

TAOC: What kinds of contact with the Indian military did you have?

MC: The Scholarship is most definitely not a mil-to-mil exchange or a Foreign area officer training program, but you can develop contacts depending on the country and our Defense Attaché in country. You have to seek them out, though and leverage opportunities, such as visits from our War Colleges(National War College and Air War Colege have been frequent visitors) and CAPSTONE. Here I want to emphasize the importance of having some "purple" in you. You will be the regular face of America's military outside of New Delhi and Wellington (the location of the Indian Defence Services Staff College). Having a pretty good depth of knowledge on our sister services beyond the US Army was enormously helpful and opened many doors. Our Attaché in India was reasonably supportive and with India being a friendly country (the situation is markedly different for my colleagues studying in
China and Russia for instance), I was able to do a fair amount of interaction with the Indian military, often through their retired officer community and usually with the Indian Navy as Bombay is a big Navy town. I interacted with a large number of retired Brigadiers/Commodores/Air Commodores and General and Flag officers, all of whom still maintain some level of influence, as do our retired "gray-beards." I gave presentations at numerous conferences on Goldwater-Nichols, US nuclear strategy, the Unified Commands, and officer promotion and selections in the US Army to audiences that included many three and even four-star retired officers (very rare in India as each service only has one four-star billet).

TAOC: What are your impressions of Indian power? The influences of the British on the subcontinent? The Indian military?

MC: India will continue to be a regional player and will likely expand its regional influence in the years to come, but is its own worst enemy in so many ways and I am less confident now than before I went over that they will emerge as a true world player within the next 10-years. India has a good military, one that could certainly defeat Pakistan conventionally and probably reverse the embarrassment of their 1962 War with China, but the costs would be significant. Personally, I don't think they are as good as they seem to think they are. They are still struggling with two very diverse insurgencies in their own country both in Jammu-Kashmir and northeastern states. Their concept of logistics is pretty shallow at all levels. They are having a serious recruiting problem for their combat arms officer ranks and this is causing various troubling second and third order effects such as earlier and earlier promotions as an incentive to keep officers in the ranks thereby creating lieutenant colonels with 8-9 years of experience. Their depth of population is such that they have an unlimited supply of people from which to draw upon for their jawans (troops) but cultural and educational inconsistencies make the pool from which they can draw officers is very limited. India has a need for the "gentleman officer" up from the educated middle class as they do not have an NCO corps comparable to US, UK or Australian forces. Unfortunately, the people that would make the best officers are eschewing military service (and the civil service) for the lure of Dalal Street (Bombay's equivalent of Wall Street). India has emerged as a capitalist society and part of Hindu philosophy revolves around material wealth, ergo while the Indian military is highly respected and admired, more and more of the middle class see service with the defense forces as someone else's responsibility. This is a generational change.

Posted by Chester on January 12, 2006 10:57 PM to The Adventures of Chester