INVC,,
Delhi,,
The Indian Army conducted a Seminar on 24-25 May 2010, on “Review of Training”, under the aegis of Army Training Command at the IDSA Seminar Hall, New Delhi. The Seminar was attended by General VK Singh, Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen PC Bhardwaj, Vice chief of Army Staff, and all stake holders responsible for training and to include officers from HQ IDS, IHQ of MoD (Army), Regional Commands and Training Establishments, from across the country.
The Chief of Army Staff, while delivering the Keynote Address, highlighted the requirement for the Indian Army to remain relevant in the changing security environment and its consequent impact on the war fighting methods. He emphasized that the best doctrines, strategy, tactics and equipment cannot be a substitute to good training. He reiterated that training is the backbone, on which all other battle winning factors get dovetailed. The Indian Army, thus, needs to structure training to meet the challenges of the contemporary and future battle field. Modern infrastructure, Joint Training, Leadership Training and means of external evaluation will ensure that the Indian Army remains in a high state of readiness, to meet the Operational Challenges, across the entire spectrum. The Army Chief emphasized on the need of working out well established datum points, to assist in making an unbiased assessment of training at all levels. He also highlighted the need for out sourcing in order to adopt civil – industry methodologies, as applicable in the environment, to attain maximum advantage.
Lt Gen AS Lamba, AVSM, Army Commander, Army Training Command brought out the implementation status of previous studies, and initiation of this holistic review to improve upon and strengthen existing structures. This study has ensured that all the stake holders; the field force, training establishments, various directorates and all services are brought under a single umbrella, for the first time, to make ‘implementation’ that much more systemic. The Seminar worked on five major themes to bring out the essentialities:-
(i) Firstly, establishing the training needs based on the future security environment and arriving at the means and challenges to make it result oriented, cost effective and responsive.
(ii) Secondly, synchronizing the perceived gap between the institutionalized and the field forces training as also assessing the infrastructure requirements to undertake a pragmatic review of training.
(iii) Thirdly, establishing well documented datum points for assessment and evaluation of training.
(iv) Fourthly, jointness in training to meet our challenges and obligations.
(v) Fifthly, rapidly upgrading technology will be the driving force in the future war fighting paradigm. There is an urgent need for us to incorporate “technically aware population” for us to be at the right place so as to exploit these changes in a cost effective manner.
The Seminar was very well received by all the stake holders and brought out very relevant lessons, on making training responsive, innovative, cost effective and result oriented.
