The recent Supreme Court order forcing our government’s hand in opening the doors of the National Defence Academy (NDA) to women candidates has left me with mixed feelings. I am in support of giving full opportunity to women to participate in and shoulder the responsibility for the defence of their country on an ‘equal footing’ with men, and to that extent, I welcome this action by the Supreme Court. What has left me puzzled, however, is that, if it was the ‘Principle of Equality of Opportunity’ that the Courts were rightfully seeking to enforce, then why limit the entry only to the Officer cadre – the doors should have been forced open to their entry as soldiers as well.
Even at the time we first allowed women to join as Short Commissioned Officers, I was on record to state publicly (and have said so in my book ‘India’s Armed Forces – Tempering The Steel’, as well), that this decision to limit the induction of women to only the Officer Cadre was a knee-jerk reaction and done more as a façade to show that we had inducted women in the Armed Forces.