Political Rent-seeking of Armed Forces is Detrimental to Democracy

The Wire

23-05-2025

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Political Rent-seeking of Armed Forces is Detrimental to Democracy
M.G. Devasahayam
6 minutes ago
In politics, rent-seeking activities aim to create false narratives to manipulate people's minds.
BJP supporters take part in a Tiranga Yatra to celebrate the success of Operation Sindoor and to express solidarity with the armed forces, in Nagpur, Monday, May 19, 2025. Photo: PTI
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Rent-seeking is a concept in economics that states that an individual or an entity seeks to increase their own wealth without creating any benefits or wealth to the society. Rent-seeking activities aim to obtain financial gains and benefits through the manipulation of the distribution of economic resources. Economists view such activities as detrimental to the economy and society.
The practice reduces economic efficiency through the inefficient allocation of resources. Also, it commonly leads to other damaging consequences, including a rise in income inequality, lost government revenues, and a decrease in competition.'
Applied to politics, rent-seeking means political leaders seeking to enhance their power and influence without any benefit to the people. In politics, rent-seeking activities aim to create false narratives to manipulate people's minds for covering up corruption, incompetencies and inefficiencies while gaining electoral advantages.
This is done through exaggerated claims put forth by 'self-appointed experts' and mass media indulging in 'fake nationalism' and 'cult promotion'. This kind of rent-seeking lowers nation's honour and could result in damaging consequences to its democratic fabric.
More of symbolism than facts
This is precisely what is happening to the Armed Forces in the case of 'Operation Sindoor'. The first major rent-seeking is the name 'Operation Sindoor' itself. The Wire puts it succinctly by drawing comparison to the 'Operation Trident' which was India's deadly strike at the Karachi airport which broke the back of the Pakistan Navy in the 1971 war: 'Fifty-five years later, on the morning of May 7 (2025) Indians across the country woke up to another Indian operation in Pakistan, code-named 'Operation Sindoor.' This Indian operation that struck at nine strategic locations within Pakistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) to hit terrorist dens across the border, is not comparable to 'Operation Trident' – not in terms of its effect, certainly not in terms of its aim. That's because unlike Operation Trident, Operation Sindoor is also expected to deliver dividends in domestic politics to the government of the day, or rather the Prime Minister.'
The second rent-seeking is making two young female military officers (one Army colonel from corps of signals and one Air Force wing commander who is a helicopter pilot) as the mascots to brief about 'Operation Sindoor' along with the foreign secretary, Vikram Misri.
This looked bizarre because once military operations break out, it is the job of the Director General Military Operations (a Lt General rank officer) to do the briefing along with his counterparts in the Air Force and Navy. This time around it was more of symbolism than facts to show-case the government as launching a 'military operation' to safeguard Sindoor, a vermillion worn by many Indian women to indicate their married status!
Even the communal angle was also ruthlessly exploited when the Madhya Pradesh Minister Vijay Shah made a public statement referring to Colonel Sofiya Qureshi, one of the officers who made the briefing saying that ' those [terrorists] who wiped out the vermilion of our sisters [in the Pahalgam attack]… we avenged these people by sending their sister to destroy them.'
Third is the whipping up of war frenzy through the vitriolic media which was nauseating. The hate-induced warmongering which pervaded the news broadcasts from these media actually amounts to an abetment of waging of war against another country punishable under Section 153 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
Giving all the credit to the ruling politicians
War is the worst curse for humanity, especially for a country where a meagre income of Rs. 2.9 lakhs per annum puts you in the top 10% bracket! Besides, death and destruction, wars could lead to collapse of the economy and sharp fall in GDP resulting in accelerated poverty and unemployment.
In this context, the famous words of the most celebrated soldier of the modern era General Dwight D Eisenhower, who went on to become the President of the United States of America bears testimony: 'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. … Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on an iron cross… I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.'
Then comes the exaggerated hypes of victory and giving all the credit to the ruling politicians in general and the Prime Minister in particular. Look at what the deputy chief minister of Madhya Pradesh Jagdish Devda said: 'Pradhanmantri ji ko bhi dhanyawad dena chahenge, aur pura desh, desh ki wo sena, wo sainik, unke charno mein natmastak hain. Unke charno mein pura desh natmastak hai. Unhone jo jawab diya hai (We would also like to thank the Prime Minister; the entire country, the country's Army, its soldiers are bowing at his feet. The entire country is bowing at his feet. For the response he gave).'
In 2019 too, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of UP made a similar derogatory statement against the defence forces by calling it 'Modiji ki sena'.
This mentality has even infested the Dravidian fortress of Tamil Nadu when a former minister of the AIADMK government, Sellur Raju made this rant while criticising a rally led by Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin in support of Operation Sindoor and the Indian Defence forces: 'Did the Army men go and fight? It was the central government which brought all this technology. The Prime Minister bought and gave [it] when Defence Minister Rajnath Singh asked for them. So first you need to appreciate the Prime Minister, but instead DMK is doing it for Army men. What kind of drama is this?'
Also Read: Modi Says 'Not Blood, Hot Sindoor' Flows In His Veins In First Public Address Since Op Sindoor
Rantings of the chief minister and the ministers only showed their outright ignorance or disrespect for the letter and spirit of Article 53 of the Constitution of India, which defines executive power of the Union as follows:
'(1) The executive power of the Union shall be vested in the President and shall be exercised by him either directly or through officers subordinate to him in accordance with this Constitution.
(2) Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing provision, the supreme command of the Defence Forces of the Union shall be vested in the President and the exercise thereof shall be regulated by law.'
A reading of the Preamble of the Constitution of India shows that it was promulgated, with the intention of having India as a sovereign country, which would ensure all the citizens the unity and integrity of the nation. Indian Armed Forces exist to uphold the said ideals of the Constitution.
Accordingly, the Army Doctrine-2004 clearly lays down its primary role as preservation of national interests and safeguarding the sovereignty, territorial integrity and unity of India against any external threat by deterrence or by waging war.
This is applicable to Air Force and Navy also. Armed Forces therefore have a constitutional duty to protect the country form any external aggression and internal turmoil. While undertaking any military operation it is this constitutional role that the Armed Forces play and therefore are not subservient to or beholden to any politician or political party in power.
Doing so, will seriously endanger India's democratic fabric. As it is, due to the extreme asymmetry in state, money and media power there is no 'level playing field' among political parties while contesting elections.
BJP's Tiranga Yatra is meant to further amplify this rent-seeking
Now, India's Election System (IES) itself is being weaponised. EVM-centered IES has three technical components. Microcontroller, to record the votes cast by the voter, voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPATs) to audit and verify that the votes are recorded as cast and counted as recorded and Symbol Loading Units (SLUs), the 'device' that feeds EVM candidate information.
Integrity of the microcontroller is suspect because their design and source of procurement are kept a closely guarded secret. According to technical experts, EVM contains multiple labile memories that records each vote as it is cast. It also has the key to candidate mapping in labile memory (through SLUs) since this varies in each constituency and is needed to print the contents of each VVPAT slip. The presence of labile memory through SLUs implies that those values can be manipulated. What is worse, SLUs are not subject to any security protocol!
Also Read: Row Over Operation Sindoor Message on Train Tickets: Opposition Says Govt 'Using War as Opportunity'
Through bluff and bluster Election Commission has reduced the VVPATs into meaningless 'bioscopes! According to experts, this deliberate denial of verifiability and auditability has facilitated spurious injection of votes in various constituencies by hiking of vote percentages in all phases of polling. Registration manipulation, which is the padding of the electoral roll facilitates this.
With the election system so weaponised, all that is needed is a media-driven 'nationalist narrative' to manipulate and steal people's mandate to capture power. That is why a military operation which should be 'secret and stealthy' is being given wide and wild publicity endangering the lives of defence personnel!
The 'Tiranga Yatra' BJP is hosting to 'honour Indian army' is meant to amplify this rent-seeking further! The objective seems to be to win the forthcoming Bihar assembly elections like the party did post-Pulwama in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. This is detrimental to India's democracy.
Major M.G. Devasahayam IAS (Retd), had fought in the Indo-Pak War, 1965 and also took part in counter-insurgency operations in Nagaland.
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