A parliamentary panel has expressed grave concern over an alarming trend of suicides and fratricidal killings in the Armed Forces and called for reducing the stress level causing psychological imbalance in the soldiers to take such extreme steps.

It has lamented the Defence Ministry's insensitivity and specious arguments to explain away the phenomena, asking it to make a realistic assessment of the problems plaguing the Armed Forces personnel to identify areas for urgent reforms.

There were as many as 635 cases of suicides and attempted suicides and 67 cases of fratricidal killings in the three Services in the past five years between 2003 and 2007 and yet the ministry downplaying the prevalence of this high rate has been deplored by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, headed by Congress MP Balasaheb Vikhe Patil.

'Besides adversely affecting efficiency and performance of the defence personnel due to impaired motivation, negative stress level also puts additional burden on the public exchequer in the form of man-days lost due to sickness, cost of medical treatment and loss of trained officers and soldiers,' says the committee in its report on 'Stress
Management in the Armed Forces' tabled in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

The committee has suggested that the duration of deployment of the defence service personnel in the counter-insurgency and high altitude operational areas should be rationalised to contain the stress levels.

Pointing out that the existing shortage of officers is also leading to greater stress among junior and middle level officers who have to perform multiple functions reducing intimate administration of personnel under their command, the committee said the Army Headquarters be impressed upon 'to keep the shortage of personnel at unit level to
the barest minimum, particularly in the counter-insurgency and border areas so that the situation does not go worse.'

It has pulled up the Defence Ministry for sharing with it only two of the nine studies undertaken by the Armed Forces and marking them as 'secret' despite having 'nothing sensitive or strategic which may adversely affect the interest of the nation'.

The committee got an impression that no effective follow-up action has been taken after these studies on crucial areas such as sensitising officers, improving basic facilities in the field, etc.

The committee called for making public these studies and concerted action by all concerned to achieve desired results.

'Veil of secrecy should be removed from such studies and the reports placed in public domain,' the committee said.

It recommended that organisations from both public and private sectors having expertise in the area should be associated for more such studies 'so that the causes of increasing stress are identified at its root in an independent manner and appropriate solutions found to remedy the situation'.

The report took offence to the Defence Ministry playing down the phenomena by claiming that 'the overall psychiatric mortality in the Armed Forces has been less than the national figures' and that there was a rising trend of psychiatric illness in India over the last few decades and 'Armed Force personnel drawn from the same society are not
immune to these influences'.

As regards certain measures initiated by the Defence Ministry in the recent past to manage stress in the Armed Forces, the report said 'it is premature to ascertain the efficacy of these measures at this stage' since the committee felt the issue has not been perceived by the ministry in the entirely to devise appropriate and timely strategy
to minimize the stress level of the served personnel.

Pointing out that the 'familial' reasons are one of the predominating cause of stress among the Armed Forces personnel, the committee recommended three specific remedial measures:

• Provide family accommodation at the station of choice of the personnel deployed on operational duties in counter-insurgency and border areas;
• Impart skill development and help to children of these personnel in getting admissions in schools and institutions of higher professional and technical studies;
• More funds to welfare organisations of defence services personnel and their family members to enable them to extend necessary help to the distressed families of different ranks and act as psychological counsellors to soldiers and their family members.

It also called for statutory provisions mandating the district authorities to address the problems and grievances of the serving defence personnel and their families within a stipulated time frame and a centralised mechanism to monitor progress on each complaint received from these personnel or their family members.