About the draft

A lot of people have a skewed view of the draft. They are’nt exactly wrong , the draft has been pretty unpopular in countries previously and there have been movements against it. But in a present day scenario where the chances of a major war are pretty bleak( inspite of threats from a nuclear iran and some other nuclear wannabe countries). The point is not many countries can get into a sustainable war as easily as they could in the 50’s or 60’s mainly due to globalization. More and more countries and depend on other countries for their economic survival. The Golden Arch theory by Thomas Friedman is a great example . It basically suggests that no two countries having a McDonalds outlet can ever goto war. That’s another issue altogether so I am not getting into that.

Coming back to the draft… a draft symbolizes a more just contribution from the society to the nation. It will help the country to develop a more pacifist foreign policy. Let me explain … the army (talking about actual combat forces) mainly contains people from backward communities. These are the people closest to enemy fire and have very few people who would stand up for them. The people running the country are generally elitist and are greatly influenced by lobbyists. A draft would force the government to look at war as the last resort in the” true sense”.

Putting it into perspective, this idea may not work in india. We have a huge army and huge youth population. So we can expand the draft to other non armed groups – there are loads of other groups that are struggling with attrition.

We make beautiful army movies and love them thoroughly but that’s about it. The army remains a institution that we admire from the outside and throw showy medals. But do we really care???

About including it in education reforms, I intended to suggest a way to pay our debt to society in response to people leaving their country after college and not returning. Look at it in the broader perspective