Centre’s Kashmir policy ignores that prolonged exposure to insurgency situations takes its toll on military personnel | The Indian Express

Centre’s Kashmir policy ignores that prolonged exposure to insurgency situations takes its toll on military personnel | The Indian Express

Written by Vappala Balachandran |Updated: May 10, 2019 9:29:58 am

The writer is a former special secretary, cabinet secretariat.

Centre’s Kashmir policy ignores that prolonged exposure to insurgency situations takes its toll on military personnel

The BJP government has landed us at the other end of the spectrum in Kashmir by putting the army directly against the public, thereby exposing them to unending strain

Army convoy plying on Srinagar-Jammu National Highway. (Express photo by Shuaib Masoodi/File)

It is a globally-accepted axiom that a regular army’s fitness to face external enemies gets impaired when it is frequently used against the domestic population in insurgency situations. This is because insurgency has some amount of popular support, as opposed to terrorism. India had to face insurgencies soon after Independence. As a result, we have done considerable research on the adverse effects to the mental health of our armed forces when exposed to prolonged insurgencies. Thus, it is not surprising that leading foreign military researchers have been citing our studies on this subject.