Anything but a Village Defence Force : Appending the poor cousin tag
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: February 06, 2013 -

The VDF is anything but a Village Defence Force. The term is a misnomer.

Rupees three thousand per month as salary is a joke. This much is clear.

Launching a stir to air their grievances may fall in the grey area for while democracy allows for dissent, uniformed personnel resorting to something like cease work or off duty strike is highly undesirable, however justified their grievances maybe.

VDF personnel calling a Statewide bandh, an indefinite one at that, cannot be accepted under any circumstances.

Common people made to suffer due to the farce scripted and enacted by the Government has gone on for far too long. This too is clear.

It is also abundantly clear that the VDF is the poor cousin in the State armed forces and this is where the question of them being exploited and used by those who come higher in the pecking order becomes more than indicative.

Man power shortage is an alibi that has been mouthed more than occasionally and hence one sees VDF personnel manning traffic movement in Imphal and more.

Not exactly a job for a force with the name, Village Defence Force.

Can the Government satisfactorily answer what is the primary duty and responsibility of the VDF personnel ?

Be sure that if at all an answer comes, it will be cleverly worded to confuse rather than enlighten, or else this question will be given the quiet burial.

Allegations have come flying from the VDF personnel who are on strike, and while these are allegations, this should raise a pertinent question and that is whether the VDF men were recruited to serve the State and the people or to serve the personal interest of the suited, booted officials and the political class.

It is a vicious cycle. The police expected to serve the interest of the political class who happen to be in power and not the State or the Nation.

The cascading effect can be seen in the officers expecting the lower ranked personnel to serve their personal interest at the cost of dispensing their duties diligently.

Top this off with the joke of the monthly remuneration of Rs 3000 per month and the farce behind the very decision to recruit VDF personnel is complete. The Government should act.

Crack down on the VDF personnel who have threatened to impose an indefinite, Statewide bandh but at the same time, try to understand and spell out why the VDF was set up in the first place.

Disbanding the VDF cannot be the answer nor the right approach.

What will be right however is to clear the cobwebs which have clouded the mental faculty of the people who matter, so that they may come to terms with the point that people’s lives and livelihood are not something to be toyed around.

It should be drilled into the heads of the people at the helm that they do need to respect the uniform worn by the VDF men. Whether the VDF men respect their own uniform is open to question.

Stop treating the VDF men as poor cousins. Applying an Apartheidic approach amongst the men in uniform can prove catastrophic.

But does this really matter to the men at the top ?