The Rashtriya Rifles
The Rashtriya Rifles or RR (translation: NationalRifles) is a branch of the Indian Army under the authority of the
Indian Ministry of Defence. The RR is a counter-insurgency force
made up of soldiers deputed from other parts of the Indian Army. The force is
currently deployed in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Since the RR are under the authority of
Ministry of Defence, and furthermore were initially designated
"paramilitary" to get around an army manpower ceiling, they are
sometimes misidentified as part of the Paramilitary forces of India. In
actuality however, they are a force completely composed of Indian Army
personnel, who undergo pre-induction training and operate in a grid structure
to deal with insurgents at high altitudes.
Initial Doctrine
The last decade of the 20th century was
particularly bloody for Kashmir. By May 1990 it was clear that the Kashmir
Valley was in the grip of jihadist insurgency of an
intensity not seen before. It started out in the urban areas and then spread to
the countryside. The army, which till then was guarding the Line of
Control (LoC), the de facto border between India and Pakistan in
the state, was called in to assist in counter insurgency (CI) operations. Based
on its experience with low intensity conflicts in Nagaland, Sri Lanka and Punjab,
the Indian Army was quite wary of trying to replicate strategy and tactics
successfully used elsewhere. In Nagaland for example, the army had learnt that
physical domination of each and every village was one way to combat insurgency.
Long experience had taught the army the value of the grid system. In this
system all terrain in the affected area was divided into a grid. Each node at
any given time would have a platoon worth of ready-to-move soldiers, the
so-called quick reaction team, which would mutually reinforce other nodes. All
would be covered with heavier fire support and have adequate logistics.
However the grid often looked better on
paper than on the ground. The obvious reason for this was the terrain. In the
Wanni jungles of Sri Lanka where the grid had been successfully applied,
civilians and villages were few and far between, enabling heavy firepower
like attack helicopters and artillery to
be brought in to support troops in the grid in minutes. However, the Kashmir
Valley is very densely populated and there is a risk of significant collateral
damage from using heavy fire support. Therefore, troops on CI operations had to
do without heavy weapons and to make up for that, the grid had to be more
densely packed. This is where the army saw the need for additional forces in
the form of the Rashtriya Rifles (RR).
Raising
The army got the go-ahead to create the RR
from the Vishwanath Pratap Singh government in
1990. The initial sanction was for two sectors headquarters (HQs) each of three
battalions. When General B.C. Joshi became Chief of Army Staff, the promise his
predecessor, General Sunith Francis Rodrigues, made about
making the Pathankot-based 39th Infantry Division and the Bareilly-based 6th Mountain Division available for
Kashmir was pending. Joshi pushed a long-held army view, that India was
involved in an extended counter-insurgency akin to the Naga problem in the
northeast. Hence a new force, like the Assam Rifles,
was needed which could be permanently located in the area to counter the
insurgents. He was of the opinion that using the army divisions for CI would be
playing into Pakistani hands. He instead pushed for setting up 10 more RR
sector HQs consisting of 30 battalions, or the equivalent of three divisions.
It was also felt that in the bargain the army would have three additional
battle-hardened divisions, ready for rear guard action during war. In 1994,
the P.V. Narasimha Rao government gave a
conditional go-ahead for a period of three years. By 1994 the RR had 5,000
troops, all of whom served in Jammu and Kashmir.
After the government gave the go-ahead to
set up the RR, the army decided to milk its existing units by 10–20% of their
personnel to set it up quickly. The officers and men came on deputation from
all branches of the army including the Infantry, Army Service Corps, Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers, Artillery and Armoured Corps. The infantry provided 50%
of the troops, services provided 10% and other arms provided 40%. In fact the
army mothballed a few armoured regiments and transferred their manpower to the
RR. In raising the RR to full strength, the army also had to dig into its
war-wastage reserves, with the best available vehicles, weapons and radio sets
going to the RR. In fact, RR units were the first to receive bulletproof
jackets and specially designed Indian Army CI helmets known as patkas. With
manpower drawn from all its arms and services, the army had to deal with
serious shortages in many of its conventional units, as RR battalions are
maintained at full authorised strength. However once the teething problems were
overcome the RR proved it was worth the trouble.
Composition
The initial RR units performed well despite
certain inherent weaknesses in their class and composition. They were raised on
all India/all class basis with troops from all over the army, the logic being
that since the units were going to fight an insurgency, there should be no
scope for vested interests in accusing a battalion of bias based on class or
regional attributes. Unfortunately, this setup created problems in the field.
The initial RR units were like transit camps, with troops coming and going at regular
intervals. There was little camaraderie and cohesion among troops. There were
also numerous problems of administration and even of indiscipline. COs of
infantry battalions who were asked to provide manpower generally used to use
that as a chance to get rid of troublemakers. If the initial battalions
performed well in hostile conditions, it was mainly due to the professional
competence of NCOs and officers who were tasked to lead them.
Keeping this in mind, a decision was taken
to alter the basic composition of the RR battalions. Instead of its units being
composed of troops from all over the army, at least two RR battalions were made
an integral part of each of the infantry regiments and other arms. The majority
of troops in those RR battalions, along with the battalion's commanding
officer, are from the same regiment. This ensures not only functional cohesion
but also maintenance of regimental esprit de
corps. Each regimental center was given the task of raising 1–2
battalions in one years' time. During this period, the units were raised and
sent to Northern Command where they got
another 4 to 6 weeks to consolidate. All of them went through a structured
8-week course in special CI schools. They were then given another month to
stabilise and were then sent to the more dormant sectors of Kashmir and to the
Punjab. To provide some experience base, 6 RR battalions were exchanged for 6
Assam Rifles units. The entire experiment of drawing RR battalions from
individual regiments produced excellent results, even while the units were
deployed in the most difficult areas.
HISTORY
Effectiveness
The initial RR battalions deployed in the
terrorist-infested areas of Tarn Taran in Punjab and Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir proved
to be extremely effective. In Punjab, the deployment of the army and RR units
contributed significantly to the turnaround in the situation. Since then the RR
has been increasingly fighting the low-intensity war on behalf of the army in
Kashmir. Casualty figures indicate that from 3 out of 44 army casualties in
1991 being from the RR, the figure had gone up to 82 out of 150 in 1996. Up to
February 1997, 17 RR officers (including 1 Colonel, 4 Lt. Colonels and 7
Majors), 13 JCOs and 169 other ranks had
been killed in action. The officer to other ranks
casualty ratio for the RR (at 1:9.94 till February 1997) was almost double the
average for the army in the Kargil War and
the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 (at 1:20).
By the time the RR celebrated its 8th
anniversary it had become the most decorated organisation in the army, as it
had earned more that 500 gallantry awards. In fact, 25% of the units had
already been awarded the unit citation by the Chief of Army Staff for their
distinguished performances. By September 1997, due to the combined efforts of
the army, RR, and other paramilitary forces, the situation in Kashmir had
stabilised to the extent that the army decided to de-induct 13 battalions
(12,000 troops) including two brigades from the Kashmir valley over a two-year
period. In fact up to Spring 1999, the army had already withdrawn nine
battalions (8,000 troops) including a brigade from the Kashmir valley without
replacements. The last batch of 4 battalions (about 4,000 troops) along with a
brigade HQ commenced de-inducting in April 1999 and was supposed to complete by
mid-summer 1999. Despite all this the army was still contributing about 58
battalions to the CI ops – 36 in the Kashmir Valley and 22 in the Jammu region.
Funding
Another change that was made was to have
the Union Home Ministry (MHA) – instead of the Ministry of Defence – take over
the burden of funding the RR. Although this was a good step, in reality it
existed on paper. In 1997, the MHA owed the army Rs. 9.50 billion for the
RR. The budgetary outlay for the force was Rs. 2.63 billion in 1998–99.
This was upped to Rs. 3.75 billion in the revised estimates for that year
and the outlay for 1999–2000 was Rs. 5.87 billion. Clearly if the funding
were to come from the correct source in time, the army could use it for its
modernisation programmes.
Crest
The RR crest consists of the Ashoka
Chakra and two crossed rifles with fixed bayonets. Beneath, in a banner,
is emblazoned the RR's motto: "Dridhta aur virta".
Organisation
All units of the Indian Army have an organisational
structure called the War Establishment (WE). The WE is used to lay down the
number of men, vehicles, weapons etc. which a unit is authorised to use for
carrying out its assigned role. The infantry battalions in the Indian Army have
a standard organisation called the Inf Bn Standard. Other types of infantry
battalions are called by various modifications to the Inf Bn Standard according
to their assigned role, like Inf Bn CI, Inf Bn Mountains, Parachute Inf Bn,
Para Commando Bn and even (till 1975) Camel Mounted Bn. Till the RR came into
the picture, the infantry battalions tasked for CI ops were on the Inf Bn CI.
A battalion on Inf Bn CI had four infantry companies and retained their
battalion heavy weapons since they were dual tasked. The RR on the other hand
has an organisation structure tailor-made for CI operations. Each RR battalion
has six infantry companies and does not have the heavy battalion weapons which
the Inf Bn CI carry, although RR troops do train on them. The heavy weapons are
left back at bases as they are considered useless in CI operations. Thus RR
battalions do not incur the costs of a heavier unit. Also unlike regular army
units which were rotated out of the valley regularly, the RR concept was to
rotate personnel after fixed periods of deputation. Currently this is 2-3
years. RR personnel receive 25% more salary than regular army personnel and
additional benefits, thus often making it a coveted deputation. The RR units
are permanently located in "sectors", with each sector being the
equivalent of a brigade with three battalions. To create a distinct identity,
the RR has its own dress, special insignia and flag logistics.
Victor Force and Kilo Force come under the operational
control of 15 Corps. Delta Force and Romeo Force come under the operational
control of the 16 Corps. Each force is headed by a general officer commanding (GOC) with
the rank of a Major General. In terms of their location and
use, each of the units and sectors was seen as being interchangeable with a
regular, equivalent army formation. GOC Victor Force in some instances would
have 2 sector HQs and a regular infantry brigade in his charge. On the other
hand, when 8 Mountain Division moved to Kashmir, it came with 2 brigades which
were then augmented by adding a sector of the RR apart from a couple of
independent mountain brigades to it.
Recruitment
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