EVERY once in a while, some facet of the vast business empire of the military comes under fleeting scrutiny — and then, just as quickly, disappears from the public radar. But what transpired at Monday’s meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Defence is worth reflecting on. Why, a committee member asked, are the Defence Housing Authority administrators appointed by the army chief and not by the defence ministry? The question is an especially loaded one because DHAs have come to represent all that is wrong with the army’s system of perks and privileges. From legislative cover not extended to other housing authorities — something the PML-N recently made a show of resisting in the National Assembly over DHA Islamabad — to converting land into staggeringly expensive parcels and farming them out to army officers, the DHA model is a system that allows vastly preferential treatment to an already coddled class of society.

Start with the theory behind DHAs: giving military officers an investment opportunity in that most prized of possessions — land. Already objectionable enough in theory, the reality is profoundly more disturbing. Take a random sample of any DHA society today and the ratio of civilians to ex-army officers living there is vastly skewed in the favour of civilians — meaning that DHAs are being administered by the army while largely catering to rich civilians. The reason is straightforward: the cost of living in DHAs is so high that many officers prefer to sell the plots or rent out/sell the houses they build on the plots granted to them by the state. The real trick behind DHAs is to acquire land at knockdown prices (which land authority can resist the army when it comes calling?). It is then developed through public money — by definition, whether generated from private business or received through the exchequer, all money controlled by the military is held in a public trust — and the plot assignees are then allowed to dispose of their gift as they see fit.

There are many ways to describe the design of DHAs and “institutionalised corruption” would not be too off the mark. Someone equivalent to a brigadier or major general in the private sector, say a mid- to senior-level banker, cannot afford after a lifetime of working in the private sector what the military routinely grants to its own in vast numbers. While it is the responsibility of the state to look after those who have spent their lives defending it, surely minting millionaires was not meant to be part of the equation. More scrutiny of DHAs will help expose the inherent unjustness.