Learning to channel a force multiplier

Posted at: Dec 7 2015 Raghu Raman

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/learning-to-channel-a-force-multiplier/167458.html

The impasse in the ongoing one rank one pay protest can be broken by innovative thinking. Stakeholders must explore out-of-the-box options. The data made available by the armed forces can help the State to cut the Gordian knot.

THE one rank one pension (OROP) stir has reached a stage most soldiers, bureaucrats and politicians are familiar with. In military parlance, this situation is called an impasse where neither side seems to be making much headway. Now it's a question of who has more stamina to last out the war of attrition. Despite posturing by veterans, eventually the state (with its infinite capacity to linger endlessly) is more likely to win. But leaving a demoralised armed forces in its wake, this will be a pyrrhic victory indeed. It need not be. 

The Indian Armed Forces have always more than earned their keep. Here are some thoughts on how they can continue to do so if only stakeholders were willing to look at imaginative options instead of taking trite intractable positions. 

The Indian Army is the world's largest demographic experiment whose invaluable results can be monetised in countless ways. This 1.3-million strong standing force is mostly organised by regiments based on demographics. Gurkhas, Rajputs, Madras, Jat, Maratha and so on for over 32 Infantry Regiments, 62 Armoured regiments and several hundred battalions. In other words, we possess the data base of millions of soldiers with their annual medical records over several decades. 

This includes their exact place of birth and nurturing. Add retired soldiers and this database multiples manifold. These millions of records are an incredible control group. Though the soldiers come from different districts and villages of India, their state of physical fitness, the calorific value of their diet and their physical exertions are exactly the same. 

In the hands of data scientists this is veritable gold. Analytics can yield genetic strengths and weaknesses of specific locations. Medicinal effects and side- effects on different populace. Bone density, calcium, mineral, iodine deficiencies, water-related problems and hundreds of other data points that can assist in medical and pharmacological research are just waiting to be tapped. The entire pharmaceutical industry will be an eager customer for these insights and that's just one of the uses. These insights can be used to steer health programmes, create custom drugs for specific regions, and study the effects of pollution or contamination of food and water sources. The possibilities and potential are limited only by imagination. And for a government that advocates technology in every breath, technical imagination should not be a problem.

Or consider that one of the biggest challenges for the financial lending industry is credit-rating accuracy. Companies go to elaborate lengths and costs to rate their potential borrowers as accurately as possible to ensure minimal default rate. Again, the Indian Armed Forces are a treasuretrove of accurately mapped potential candidates for microfinance. Which other profession diligently maintains records of its employees every single year, tracks their exact promotional growth, vets their addresses physically, records details of their next of kin and accurately maps their entire family. No other profession maintains a “record of service,” which objectively attests every soldier's character and several other parameters. In addition, the former soldiers are trained, disciplined and have a peer network that can very easily vouch or even stand guarantors for each other. 

Which brings out another opportunity that corporates could leverage. 

The need for security and safety is on the increase and large enterprises whose boundaries are expanding realise the gap between state-provisioned security and its own requirements. Forward-looking organisations have already been leveraging ex-servicemen in areas such as security, logistics, operations and maintenance, especially in remote and difficult- to-access areas. Recent announcements by certain cab and ecommerce companies of their intention to leverage this latent talent is only the tip of the iceberg. Entire ecosystems of Medium and Small by businesses (MSME's) can be spawned using ex-servicemen as a foundation. Large corporates can simply agree to intake a certain percentage of their workforce from this ex-services pool to ease the burden on the exchequer and create a win-win situation for all stakeholders. 

The government’s intention to create hundreds of “smart cities” and megacities is another opportunity where productive residual years of a retired soldier can be channelised. We often forget that even highly automated businesses like telecommunications and logistics require thousands of personnel to protect the towers, lay out the cables, refuel the generators, patrol the assets, drive the vehicles, man the warehouses, manage the inventory etc. All these are functions that servicemen have done for decades. 

They just need to be tweaked to civilian usage and there is a force multiplier waiting to be exploited. All that stands between the ideation and implementation of these and several such opportunities is the intent as well as organisational and execution skills. The latter two are the forte of the Armed Forces. It's in the intent where civil society and political establishment have to step up to the plate. Ironically, thinking afresh is not an option anymore. Even without the OROP, salaries and pensions are ballooning to an alarming proportion of the defence budget, leaving little for modernisation investments. If we do not think innovatively, we will constantly be robbing Peter to pay Paul and reinforcing the belief that not just generals, but bureaucrats and politicians too are guilty of fighting the last wars.

The author, a former Army Officer, is President Risk & New Ventures in Reliance Industries Ltd. The views expressed are personal.