Narayan Menon, a retired air marshal, has a piece in Deccan Herald, where he laments the diminishment of the sporting prowess of the armed forces. From a time when the Services teams topped the medals tally in national events, the officer class refrains from participation in contact sports due to fear of injury resulting in career setbacks!
“Many reasons are attributed to this dismal state of affairs, but one factor not talked about is the adoption of a game called golf by the officer class,” he writes. “It is not unusual these days for itineraries of senior officers visiting lower formations being structured around the senior officers’ golf preferences. Does the senior office wish to “tee off” early morning or later in the day.”
Cricket grounds have been converted to golf greens, trees have been uprooted to create fairways, and vast tracts of defence lands have been reserved as golf courses, all to fulfil the golfing ambitions of commissioned officers who constitute just four per cent of the fighting forces.
Air Marshal Menon says the time has come to go back to “traditional” games and for the officer class to be discouraged from playing golf. Reasons:
# Golf is exclusionary. Only the officers get to play it, to the exclusion of the vast majority of the armed forces.
# Golf is a individual pursue objectives for individual profit, which is against everything the armed forces stand for.
# Golf has spawned a parallel HR system bypassing usual channels of communication, which weakens the entire system and dilutes military authority.
Read the full article: Driving a wedge: the golf divide
I could not agree more… There was a time when Officers led on the field… no matter what ‘the field’ was.
I can remember growing up in Cantonments, being taught my own lessons in Sports by young Officers, who had represented their unit, battalion, regiment, or even the services…. That was then. And even then, an Officer rising to the National-level was a rarity.
People were too scared of injuring themselves, being declared unfit by Medical Boards- and being ‘boarded out’ of a cushy Govt. job, at the unthinkable cost of playing a sport wholeheartedly.
Besides the compulsory ‘evening P.T’, Officers, both now and then, (the article doesn’t reflect a new trend BTW) do little more than indulge in a pet sport, most often playing for the physical benefit of it rather than competitevely.
For the Officer, the Compulsion to play a sport, seriously – remains only until he is in the Academy, where Sportsmanship remains serious and undiluted. Beyond that, the Sporting traditions of the Services vis a vis Officers, have fallen into serious decline.
Golf – for the senior Officer – is all about making the most.
The most of his Time…something to plug the holes in his evenings, even providing the opportunity to ‘talk shop – outside shop’. And of course, to make the most of his remaining career in the Defense… since Golf is the preserve of the ultra-rich in the civil.
As for the junior Officer – the perennial search for the ‘four ball’ (4 players who play a round of Golf together) provides a valuable way to bypass the rigid chain-of-command and gives opportunities of interacting with peers and seniors, often impossible otherwise, and that too in a convenient informal setting.
Many a posting has been discussed in a round of Golf, and Titleist or Callway golf balls are a favorite present always for the king-makers of the Services.
Is this piece a logical corollary to “Why don’t we hear of IT men excelling in sports?” Because the only sporting images I have seen of Narayana Murthy playing (when he is not playing to the gallery) is of him on his golf course with some Singapore something or the other. Just kidding, churumuri.
But seriously, does playing a certain kind of game for a long period of time really mould a person’s character and personality, and even help him at his job? Or are we exaggerating? Every cricket-baiter seems to think that it is the reason our country is like this only after 60 years. Can anybody say that playing the game has made us better team players?!
If chess is Indian, why have we lost three wars?
If playing individual sport helps us deal with the world better individually, why haven’t we produced the kind of entrepreneurs the US does?
Certainly, the army should not be reduced to a private club, where the officers keep out non-golfers. But as the old saying goes, the higher you go in life, the smaller the ball you play with. Football for the aam janata, cricket for the middle class, and golf for the upper class.
I completely agree with Air Marshal. There was a time officrers and Jawans used to mingle in football, hocky, basketball and boxing.
Now all the senior officers are busy in golfing? and juniors seeking favours doing the job of caddy
What is being said is all true , but then golf is not the only parallel HR system in the forces and the Retd Air Mshl also knows the same. Professionalism and Pathee are two opposite poles and the strength of the latter appears to be more than the former !!!!