NEW DELHI, June 8: The Indian army’s top brass is fuming over a secret US report which has labelled its officers as too intellectual and which says its infrastructure is crumbling, weekly magazine Outlook reported on Sunday.
The US report has further described officers from arch-rival Pakistan as more flexible, accommodating and easy to work with while calling their Indian counterparts protocol-bound and easily slighted.
The 141-page report titled “Indo-US Relationship: Expectations and Perceptions” is an assessment by the American Defence Department and draws input from Pentagon officials working with the Indian army.
“Indian elites are quintessentially intellectual. They thrive off finely-tuned arguments and logic, but US military outfits are businesslike and not interested in intellectual arguments — they are interested in practical issues,” the report says, according to the magazine.
“Consequently, they find India’s intellectual arrogance off-putting and counter-productive.”
Indian army officers dismissed the conclusion saying that though their officers were well-educated, most did not have the luxury of time to indulge in intellectual reading or writing until after retirement.
They added that the Indian army routinely served in the fiery heat of its northwestern deserts and at the Siachen mountain range, one of the world’s highest mountain ranges.
“The comparison with Pakistan does not stand. Every Pakistani officer has done time in this or that US academy; they probably have the same military drills. The Indian situation is different,” Brigadier Virender Saxena said.
New Delhi and Washington have been intensifying military cooperation in the last three years after US lifted sanctions against India for a series of nuclear tests conducted in 1998.—AFP
