Defense Campus Anthropology.
An Essay to be made into a Documentary.
The Defense officer’s campus life is nearly idealistic to the extent of picturesque advertisement of the American dream families in the ’70s living in row houses. The picturesque, impeccable, and prosperous environment of the campus raises the expectations of the individual and conditions the minds of the people forever. This amount of idealistic environment is delusional for the defense brats growing up on the campus with their parents. The idealistic environment of perfectly well-to-do young families on the campus provides a different perception for the defense brats growing up on the campus. This is the perceived reality for the defense brats because this is what they have seen since they were born.
Although, life in defense has its own challenges. Yet living on the campus is very peaceful and monotonous. The quiet environment of the Defense campus is conducive to mental contemplation. The monotonous environment of the officer’s campus doesn’t present the opportunity to experience daily survival struggles. The person living on the campus is deprived of the social skills that a person acquires in the form of subliminal learning from the events happening in the neighborhood living in the busy environment of the city.
Identifying social norms.
The families from different cultures live together on the Defence Campus. The defense campuses are cosmopolitan. There is class stratification between officer’s campus, junior commissioned officers, and noncommissioned officers. The three campuses are isolated from one another. The lifestyle of one campus varies from another. Although, there is no social stratification on officers’ campuses because of defense rules and regulations.
On the positive side, living with families from different cultural backgrounds makes defense brats adjustable, flexible, and inclusive. The downside is the lack of skill for identifying social norms, never experiencing social hierarchy, and never witnessing fine discrimination by people practicing social stratification.
The inadequacy to identify discrimination further has two levels. The first one is the lack of one’s personal skill to identify discrimination due to social stratification. The second one is looking for social validations preferably from parents to confirm the instance. The parents fail to acknowledge it. This pushes the brat into self-doubt/conformity bias.
The reason behind it is that a defense personnel’s average service tenure is 35 years. They have spent their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s the most productive years of their life in the defense environment. They learned the tricks and tactics of living in the environment from the environment they had lived in. When they joined defense back in their 20s, society was different which has gone through a massive change in all these years. Say a person in India joined the defense service in the late 70s and retired in 2015. Living within the boundaries of the Defense colony, Defense personnel and their family are politically and culturally detached from the events that transformed the Indian society between 1980 to 2015. The era of Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, the formation of the BJP, the formation of the Mandal Commission, and Harijan rights in the 80s. The economic liberalization, and rise of Hindu religious politics, and the Pokhran nuclear test that established India in the world’s military power equation are some of the major events of the ’90s. The age of Information Technology, outsourcing, the Kargil war’s impact on society, earning in US dollars, raising hope with income among the middle class, foreign investment, and indigenous space missions are some of the major events of the 2000s. The 90s and 2000s have a major imprint on the income and cultural transformation of the masses in India. The defense personnel failed to acknowledge it as they were engaged in service away from city life. Although everybody watched movies and shows on TV, and then the Internet arrived, that didn’t subsidize grassroots understanding of the changing social behavior and cultural dynamics of civil society through personal experiences. Similarly, looking at the civil life beside the campus that is located near the township and living in the civil society are two very different things. Also, civilians in general, behave within the limits, with an on-duty defense officer. Therefore, slender private interpersonal engagement with civil societies results in insufficient experience to subsume the progressive civil societies’ transformational environment.
Identifying and acknowledging the problem is only one part of it. The other part is mitigating the problem. People in the defense are living under the direct purview of many formal authorities. Directly complaining to the authority is a straightforward way to solve a problem. The defense personnel has the advantage of being heard on priority by formal government authorities to solve complaints and requests. Formal authorities act speedily to avoid escalation by the defense central government personnel. The defense personnel is a part of a parallel society. He would be transferred every 3 years. So the defense personnel doesn’t need to worry about building social capital to mitigate the problem. He won’t have to stay with the same people he is complaining about. This isn’t the case in civil society. Mitigating the problem may require communicating and tradeoff with different stakeholders of the society. A civilian has to live with the same people he is complaining against, in the same city. So, civilians need to build social capital with sound reasoning around the concern explaining the greater damage to society. Then the problem is solved by the tradeoff with the involvement of different stakeholders in the society.
The man in the house goes to the office every day. They have interaction with the locals in the office. Brat goes to school. Brat has interaction with other local children and teachers in the school. The wives of defense personnel are the major victims of the disillusion of campus life. They have the least interaction with civil society over the 35 years of her husband’s service.
Similarly, civilians living life in the civil society facing daily challenges and influences learn about the art of living in a civil society that changed over the years. The defense personnel’s wife fails to acknowledge the generation gap and the customary civil society conventions that their brat is going through.
Adjusting with Elderly and Sick.
The Grandparents generally don’t live with their son working in defense because of frequent transfers. Facing old, sick, special needs, and poor people in the house and vicinity is limited. Living with an old or sick person introduces a person to unpredictable and discomforting situations that demand a lot of adjustment. The defense brats and their family have never experienced such discomfort to make major adjustments.
Routine and Order.
The people living on the campus are generally healthy and fit. They are engaged in their designated jobs. They maintain a service routine strictly from 8 am to 5 pm. Everyone follows a routine. The routines seldom change. The routine would change for a few days during the transfer from one place to another. Then the same routine was established. Monotonous routines condition the brain to expect order in everything. Any deviation from order irritates the mind which results in anger issues. Sometimes the strong desire for maintaining order leads to the extent of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The picturesque neighborhood fuels the expectation. The environment minimizes the recognition of empathy, compassion, and the human factor.
The irritation and agony may likely surface in the defense servicemen post-retirement witnessing societal chaos and an unpredictable environment that is very different from their usual habitat. This type of irritation could surface in the young brat in the first year of moving out to a hostel for the first time. However, it is due to their tender age, that they would easily go through acculturation.
Post retirement all the responsibilities to maintain the house fall over one’s own shoulders. The responsibilities like repairing minor electrical faults, waterworks, and house repairs. Every type of assistance that once would be addressed officially at a call has to be managed to one’s own capability post-retirement. A civilian is accustomed to routinely managing such things usually living their life. But, encountering and fixing such unexpected issues leading to disturbing routine is found to be troublesome by old retired defense personnel. Overwriting the behavioral and cultural conditioning of the last 35 years to relearn the basics at old age and get used to the new way of life takes considerable effort, a learning curve, and time.
Envy, Income, Lifestyle & Economics.
Everyone on the campus has salaried jobs. They will receive their salary on time. This is one of the reasons they won’t need to worry about the impact of changing political scenarios on the economy. The impact of changing economy on a family’s standard of living. The impact on the family’s standard of living on the stress and burnout of the family members. The envy between people due to wealth will also be limited because of everyone’s determined salaries based on their designation. Lifestyle costs like mess socializing, parties, gym, swimming pool, squash, tennis, and badminton like sports cost were part of the campus privileges. Sometimes parents fail to acknowledge the associated costs of these latent lifestyle privileges in the life of their defense brats that have moved to civil society, such as the college hostel for graduation.
Trade Practices.
Growing up in civil society, a child experiences living with people involved in a variety of trades in the same locality. The relatives living in the locality and all over the city are also involved in different kinds of trades. Everyone has different types of challenges.
Favors, Trade-offs & Monetary transactions.
The scope of the monetary transaction is limited between people on the campus in comparison to civil society. Favors and tradeoffs are part of life for people living in civil society. The children also witness, engage, and are conditioned in the same way. A child growing up in civil society has access to a lot of different kinds of people. The kid is also making his own way of negotiating with others while growing up in civil society. The civilian kid soon learns to look at the world from shades of grey. The scope of daring tradeoffs is almost non-existent for the defense brat who continues to see the orderly world around him in shades of black and white. They also develop a strong sense of like and dislike.
Attenuate the Rebellion.
The Defense brats are living on the campus. The Defense campuses have little resemblance with inconsistent and eventful civil society. The defense job is transferable. By the time someone figures out a place, they are transferred and change schools. Living in a city with other relatives around is a different kind of experience. People, since childhood, have seen many situations unfolding such as their near ones and neighbors rebelling to find their own way. They experience it firsthand happening right in front of their eyes.
This is not the case with a brat of defense personnel. They don’t get to experience such rebellious individuals finding their own way that they could relate closely. We do hear such stories in our schools of these kinds of cases happening with our friends’ neighbors living in civil society. But we don’t relate ourselves to such cases because they are happening in a parallel society. In some way, we look down upon the eventful and chaotic civil society. Even in the wildest of cases, if a brat decides to be rebellious to run away or make a daring decision, they would find themselves on the campus located on top of a hill or in a remote location. Even if the campus is located within the city, the brat would barely know the city for a maximum of 3 years before transferring to another location. The brat barely knows their relatives because they would only visit some of them once a year during school vacation. So the relatives can’t be persuaded to participate.
The brats growing up on the campus don’t get to see the election campaigns, speeches, and the dance of democracy. A child living in the city had first-hand experiences with election campaigns and speeches. In some cases, he also participates in small exercises. Experiencing the festival of democratic election passively and actively through election campaigns imparts self-realization of participating in large social phenomena that make one feel like an integral member of society.
The notion of Security, Safety, and Fear in defense brats & families.
People in the defense are living under the direct purview of many formal authorities. The civilian society occasionally mingles with the parallel society of defense in a limited manner. People working in security forces and their families are generally treated with respect. The way someone behaves with utmost etiquette when they visit a faraway relative to stay over for a few days. Persons serving in the security forces have limited contact with civil society. Even more limited is their family’s interaction with civil society. Both societies maintain decorum while meeting with each other. The brat rarely gets pulled into civil society’s hierarchy even if the brat is studying away from home in some other city until the defense personnel retires. The defense personnel has the advantage of being heard on priority by formal government authorities to solve complaints and requests. Formal authorities act speedily to avoid escalation by the defense central government personnel. This isn’t the case once they move to civil society. Mitigating the problem may require communicating and tradeoff with different stakeholders of the society. A brat is not trained & conditioned since childhood like a civilian to build social capital with sound reasoning around the concern explaining the greater damage to the society. Their parents haven’t witnessed anything of such from the boundaries of the defense campus. So they are not prepared to acknowledge such instances, and least expect any support. Many retired defense personnel also subconsciously experience issues of social reasoning, tradeoffs, and social capital to mitigate day-to-day problems post-retirement. Although, they may not even be able to explain such issues due to a lack of sociology vocabulary.
The exercise of enculturation took place after the recruitment during the training for the defense service. The same type of enculturation didn’t happen during the retirement of the defense personnel moving back to civil society. These are the reasons to focus on the procedural rehabilitation of retired defense personnel by methods of acculturation and enculturation in civil society.
Although, retired defense personnel are connected through WhatsApp groups, but these WhatsApp groups are hijacked by mainstream political agendas and narratives. They seldom identify and discuss periodical societal phenomena on WhatsApp groups. Something of the sort of topics, Guruji from Gurugram (Link) speaks about. In no way I’m glorifying and advertising him. However, his perspective does bring peace and tranquility to the family dynamics by calibrating expectations from one another in the present socio-economic times.
I think it is important to re-establish the Rotary Club culture in modern days through online socio-psychology magazines and distributing paid hard copies at CGHS centers, where the retired personnel waits in queues. CGHS stands for Central Government Health Scheme Ministry of Health & Family Welfare Government of India.
