Farce is not the monopoly of the political classes, officialdom practices it in ample measure. There is a limit to its enactment and that point has long since been crossed. In attempting to secure the arrest of former Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav, the various institutions involved have functioned in a manner which is intriguing, just as it is disturbing.By seeking the help of the Bihar and Orissa Sub-Area, these officials, charged with the responsibility of upholding the rule of law, have violated the regulations themselves.And in the process they have caused organisational, institutional and systemic damage. Credibility was at stake, and the wager has been lost. In the course of events there has been yet further erosion in the image of the Government of India. The Republic has to be resuscitated but official India cannot call upon the Army to do so.The rules governing the use of the armed forces by civilian authorities are comprehensively codified, in simple language. Every year the armed forces assist various states during floods, and have been called upon innumerable times during riots. The only other instance can be under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act when there is a final breakdown of the rule of law. Neither of these conditions prevailed in Patna on July 30, but the officials nonetheless rushed to seek help from the Army. Their conduct is a pointer to one certainty officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation have little faith in the central police organisations sent to provide support for precisely such tasks.When that be the case who is going to bail them out? It certainly cannot be the Army. The charter of duties as clearly laid down in the Constitution specify roles for the several oraganisations that exist. Internal security is only the secondary task for the Army, and the primary one for the Central Reserve Police Force.But the buck still does not stop, and the Army still gets called upon, in this case when the hat has not even been dropped. It is high time the nation measured the cost of the frequency with which the Army has been used to tackle internal disturbances. An Army that has minimal contact with the civilian administration and its peculiar ethos is an Army under training in order to be competent to wage war.That is its primary role, but in the India of the last decade that has not been the case. The continued deployment of the Army in internal security duties has extracted significant costs in training, morale, materials and alarmingly so in its ethos.There is now an audible grumble amongst the soldiers and it suggests that the Army is doing somebody else's job and in the process still being taken for granted. It is not difficult to see why that is so when New Delhi continues to add battalions to its CPO's but cannot give the soldier an efficient rifle and modern webbing equipment. It is not a cantonment Army any more for the simple fact that it has not been allowed to be so.Civilianisation is creeping in, and heavens forbid, but there will come a time when given a task an Army officer will refuse to do so. It is better to avert such a situation.
