Use women in combat role: Renuka

The Women and Child Development minister wants women officers to be inducted into combat duty to end gender disparity in the armed forces, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 30, 2007, 02:38:29 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury wants women officers to be inducted into combat duty to end gender disparity in the armed forces.

Chowdhury, who is a daughter of an army officer, said women officers should not be confined to non-technical and supportive roles like nursing and administrative duties alone.

“It is high time all the three forces adopt a gradual approach to induct women into combat and combat-related operations, such as flying fighters in the Air Force, leading infantry troops in Army or being submarine crew in the Navy,” she said, in a recent letter to Defence Minister A.K. Antony. “The evolution in military strategy has taken a turn from eye-ball to eye-ball combat into one that is carried out at long range from precision-guided munitions. Therefore, there is a strong case for induction of women officers into combat duties,” she added.

Chowdhury said unlike men officers, women officers are recruited only for short service commission that can be extended maximum to 14 years. Hence, it deprives them of the benefit of pension. “Women officers should be given permanent commission and should be entitled for full pension after completion of 15 years of service,” she said.

The minister also expressed anguish at the dismal strength of women officers in the armed forces being just 2.65 per cent of the total strength of 1.2 million, while suggesting special recruitment drives for appointment of women officers.

Chowdhury had, however, succeeded in the past with a similar demand for women personnel in paramilitary forces. The home ministry agreed to bring the number of women to 10 per cent of the total strength. The recent suicide of a women army officer also finds mention in her letter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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