Par panel asks Army to abolish sahayaks for officers

A Parliamentary Committee on Defence asked the Army on Thursday, to take a leaf out of the Navy and the Air Force to abolish the "demeaning and humiliating" practice of employing jawans as sahayaks of officers.

The strong recommendation from the committee comes after the Defence Ministry in its reply to a 2008 report on "stress management in the armed forces" had virtually rejected the suggestion that the sahayak system be done away with.

In an action taken report tabled in both the Houses of the Parliament, the committee said it was unable to comprehend why it was necessary to continue with the sahayak system that "lowers the self-esteem of a jawan" when the Navy and Air force have abandoned it.

"The committee is not able to understand the necessity of having the services of sahayaks by the Army officers particularly when the sister services, Navy and Air Force, have abandoned the practice," the committee said.

While reiterating its earlier recommendations, the committee said it desired that the Army should follow the examples set by their counterparts in the Navy and the Air Force and stop the colonial practice with immediate effect.

The committee had in its earlier report noted that the sahayak system had been prevalent in the Army in one form or the other since the British days and that numerous jawans were engaged at the residence of senior officers for domestic work and to serve the family members of officers.

The committee had said jawans were recruited for serving the nation and not to serve the family members of officers in household work, adding that there was no place for such a "shameful" practice in independent India.

In reply to the committee's suggestion, the Defence Ministry had said a sahayak was "a comrade-in-arms" to officers "symbolising trust, respect, warmth, confidence and interdependence, which are the fundamentals of relations between the leaders and the led."

It said sahayaks were soldiers, which provided essential support to officers and that they would not be employed for menial household work. The Army also stressed that it had given adequate

instructions to its units and formations to ensure that combatant soldiers were under no circumstances be employed on a job not in conformity with the dignity and self-respect of a

soldier, with responsibility on the officers and the commanders, to comply with the guidelines.

Noting that the 635 suicides and 67 fratricides reported in the armed forces between 2003 and 2007 were "high", the committee also asked the Defence Ministry to utilise the services of outside agencies to study the problem and understand the reasons objectively.

"The expertise and wide exposure of outside experts would be of great help while extracting the information from the armed forces personnel as they would feel more comfortable in sharing the information with them with no fear of ostracising themselves or losing seniority or rank status," it added.