By Sonia Trikha Shukla
Published in Defence and Security of India, April 2012
At
the height of winter in December 2011, two officers of the Indian Air Force
created history by becoming the first women pilots to land their aircraft on
two of the world’s most difficult runways. Squadron Leader Teji Uppal landed
her transport plane, an AN-32 at the strategic airstrip Daulat Beg Oldie that
is located at an altitude of 16,200 feet from sea level on the India China
border. Veena Saharan landed her IL-76 military transport plane at the 10,600
feet high Leh airfield. Despite these feats, the IAF will not allow women in
combat roles or to flytheir fighter aircraft.
On 4th January 1993, nineteen
years ago, on a sunny January morning Neelu Khatri marched out of the Air Force
Academy in Hyderabad. She was an officer and not a gentleman. She was among the
first batch of women officers to be inducted, not as doctors and nurses, but as
regular members of the armed forces. None of them were aviators, that would
come a year and a half later, but they were proud to be wearing the uniform.
Wing Commander Neelu Khatri was inducted on
a short service commission of five years that was extended to 15 years. The
women in the Indian Air Force (IAF) were not allowed to fly back then, but they
could work as non-technical ground staff in the Education, Administration and
Logistics streams. Khatri chose Logistics. In the next course, six months
later, the Indian Air Force admitted women as engineers. Another two courses
and one year down the line, women were allowed to enter as pilots in the IAF.
But they could only fly transport planes and helicopters. Almost 18 years and
many reviews and committees later, essentially that is where things stand for
women in the IAF.
In a post feminist age, it seems almost
unfashionable to talk about equal rights for women. But here it is. Women in
the Indian Air Force, unlike their male counterparts, are not qualified to fly
fighter planes. Women in the armed forces are not qualified to enter in combat
roles. It is a strange irony, in a country where the commander in chief of the
armed forces is a woman, women are not soldiers and women officers are not
permitted to go to battle.
That is the central issue and while it may
appear to be a straightforward matter of giving women parity in the armed
forces, the debate surrounding it is far from simple. There are less than 3 per
cent women officers in the army, just 3 per cent women officers in the navy and
nearly 7 per cent women officers in the IAF, and for them the road to parity is
long and uphill. For them, even if they were able to claim a place in combat
roles their struggle would not be over because their real fight is in their
day-to-day jobs and routine postings. Women in the armed forces now have
permanent commissions but they still don’t feel equal to their male
counterparts, unlike women in other private sector jobs.
Reshma Singh retired in 2004 after serving
for 10 years in the Indian Air Force in the Logistics stream and has worked
with Air Deccan and Deccan Cargo before joining Lufthansa Technik. She
maintains, "I don't ask for or get any special favours as a woman" in
the corporate world.
Khatri too is a successful corporate woman,
the Head of Defence Advisory Services of KPMG, who takes equal opportunity at
her work place as her right. But that wasn’t always the case in her earlier
work environment.
In the IAF, Khatri says, “we were treated
like puppet dolls and the refrain from my bosses before every posting was ‘I
don’t want a woman officer”. And when she finally got to her posting, she would
be given meaningless jobs, usually in areas where she served in an ornamental
capacity, such as in parades for visiting VIPs. But for women like Khatri, this
was a disappointment in the initial years. They had joined the service to fight
for the country but instead ended up fighting the system.
In 1998-99 Khatri fought for and became the
first woman officer to get herself posted to Leh. During the Kargil war, as a
logistics officer she was offloading IL 76 transport planes. Posting a woman
officer to a field station like Leh was considered too bold because a woman
would not be comfortable there. Another colleague of hers was being denied a
flying assignment to Agra because she would have to share a room with two boys.
That officer went on the flight and shared the room with the boys by just
putting up a curtain and dividing the room!
But having fought the system, Khatri was
able to prove herself as good as, or even better than her male colleagues. From
2004 to 2007 Khatri was posted in Delhi and her unit was in charge of the
preparations for Republic Day parade. At 2 am in the dead of winter, her
Commanding Officer asked her to transport some materials. This posed a dilemma
because she was a single parent with two young boys but at no stage did it
occur to her that she could ask for a reprieve. She says, “I bundled up my two
boys in a truck and off we went into the night. It was a great adventure for
them and they remember it to this day.’’ Khatri’s Commanding Officer then Group
Captain Prem Raj was so impressed by her dedication that he often said, “Neelu
is the only man in my unit”.
Apart from people like Khatri, there are
others who have broken barriers and excel in male dominated streams in the IAF.
The Indian Air Force has an all women 6-member sky diving team led by Wing
Commander Asha Jyothirmai. In May 2011, three women officers of the IAF climbed
Mt Everest, Flt Lt Nevidita Choudhary, Sqn Ldr Nirupama Pandey and Flt Lt
Rajika Sharma.
But despite these fantastic achievements,
women within the IAF still have a very hard time being taken seriously. Khatri
was a mountaineer and a car and bike rallyist during her tenure in the IAF but
she still had to fight to be given any serious responsibility. On one posting
where she was made incharge of rations, Khatri wilfully committed a traffic
offence by speeding past and overtaking an Air Commodore’s flag car in her
motorcycle. She did it so that she would be called in for an explanation and
then she could ask the senior officer for a job with more responsibility.
Contrast that with women in other armed
forces like the United States and Israel where they handle offensive weapons
not just as officers but also as soldiers. In Britain, women are eligible for
almost 96 per cent of all jobs in the Royal Air Force.
Why
are women kept out
But for everyone who is convinced that the
women officers are as good as their male counterparts, there are many more who
remain unconvinced in India. Group Captain (retd) Rajan Bhasin says he thinks
the women officers are very good but in his entire career in the IAF “he did
not meet even one woman whom he thought could have flown a fighter plane”. He
further explains that, “I think women officers have the mental toughness to fly
fighters but they would be wanting in physical endurance. If you want women in
fighter planes then you must first create the systems to test their fitness for
them.”
For women in the IAF who have seen their
colleagues do sky diving and climb Mt Everest, flying a fighter plane does not
seem an insurmountable challenge.
Major General (retd) Mrinal Suman has
written extensively on the issue of women in the armed forces. According to
him, “India has limited experience as regards induction of women in the armed
forces. The first batch had joined in 1992. Therefore, our knowledge of the
complexities and long-term effects of the issues involved is highly limited. On
the other hand, women have been serving in the militaries of developed
countries for a long time. These countries have acquired a deep understanding
of all the issues involved.”
Major General’s conclusion is that India
must relearn all that the developed world has learnt. He believes that for
cultural reasons women officers in India must not be exposed to combat roles.
There are several reasons according to Suman, but in the final balance the
Indian army is not ready for women officers in combat arms because societal and
cultural ethos continue to be mired in sex discrimination.
Lt Colonel Asha Kale was commissioned into
the army in 1994 and after serving 14 years she too feels women are not
suitable for combat roles because the Indian male soldier would not accept a
woman as a commander in battle. But as a woman who is discriminated against
Kale has a solution to that problem: If men don’t accept women as commanders
then we should raise all women units for combat roles!
According to Bhasin, at least in the IAF,
fighter pilots are at the forefront of battle and run the risk of being taken
prisoners of war in combat, “I don’t think women can be subjected to that”.
People who argue against that say all women
may not qualify for combat roles but they must have the opportunity to compete
for those positions. According to Khatri, “women like myself who come from
small towns and modest backgrounds break barriers when we join the armed forces
so it is not hard for me to take it further and work as an equal among men”.
The
fight from within
Women officers like Reshma Singh and Neelu
Khatri who have succeeded outside the armed forces in an environment that
provides equal opportunity for them don’t think that all women in the IAF would
necessarily succeed. In fact, Khatri goes further and says “unlike in the
corporate world where some 20 per cent of the people are very good and some 20
per cent are very poor and the rest 60 per cent make up the middle ground, in
the IAF I found some 20 per cent of the women are very good but the rest are
all very poor, the middle ground is missing.”
Maj Gen Suman underlines that women may not
be popular in the armed forces because many female officers use their status to
get preferential treatment in postings and in duties.
Khatri understands that if you have a large
section of women officers of very poor calibre then they will load the argument
away from giving them serious responsibilities. But she blames the lack of
middle ground on an organisational structure that does not put enough pressure
on them to succeed. For Khatri, it is not a question of whether women are
capable or not, but of giving them serious work and responsibility so that they
have the platform needed to perform.
Kale believes women are not deemed
competent to command units but in actual fact they are only not capable because
they are not given the opportunities to attend training courses in the same way
as male officers. She goes further, “there is a deliberate move to not allow
women to grow in the army because the army only has a shortfall of officers up
to the rank of Lt Colonel, so the male officers don’t want women to enter the
fray and make the competition tougher”.
But the lady officers are not giving up the
fight. If they are not allowed to go to the battlefronts they are willing to
fight the system from within. In the army and the air force, there hundreds of
women officers who are fighting cases in courts for their extensions in
service.
Despite all these problems, however, people
like Neelu Khatri and Asha Kale don’t regret joining the forces. “A large part
of my success is because of my training and experience in the IAF,” says Khatri
with a ring of pride in her voice.
As another International Women’s Day comes
and goes, and we recall all the Indian women who led the first war of
independence like Rani Laxmibai, women who were at the forefront of the Indian
freedom movement like Sarojini Naidu and others, Indian women who have been in
top leadership positions in politics, even women who have been in space like
Kalpana Chawla, it seems so strange that even after more than 15 years of the
induction of women officers in defence services, India still finds their
presence in the forefront of the field unpalatable and we still have controversies
and vehement debates around this subject.
ends
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