Lockdown leads to stress in paramilitary

Posted along the India-Pakistan border in the Jammu region, Anand Kumar (name changed) is desperate to go home. It has been close to 10 months that this jawan in the Border Security Force (BSF) has seen his family.

Hailing from Rajasthan, he had applied for leave and was supposed to reach home in the first week of April. But he could not move out from his border outpost as everything outside was shut. His colleagues say he remains depressed and hardly sleeps for a couple of hours and finds it difficult to focus on work.

Ditto is the case with several dozen personnel, not only in the BSF, but also the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force), ITBP (IndoTibetan Border Police), CISF (Central Industrial Security Force) and SSB (Sashastra Seema Bal), who are unable to go home on leave due to the lockdown.

Work-related pressures aside, stress levels among the paramilitary forces, especially those posted in hard areas, has gone up since the lockdown — something that has become a cause of concern for their higher-ups in New Delhi.

“There are many personnel of the paramilitary forces who have not seen their homes for last six, eight and even 10 months. Most of them had applied for leave to visit home but the Coronavirus outbreak which led to the lockdown has made matters worse. At the moment, there is a lot of stress within the forces,” senior officials from both BSF and CRPF told Deccan Chronicle.

Depression, anxiety, frequent mood swings, irritability and losing temper are among the problems the personnel in different ranks have been facing over the last couple of months. There are many who are hardly sleeping for two or three hours and mostly keep to themselves, sources said.

Officials said that counselling sessions for all personnel within their respective units, border outposts, training centres and other campuses, have been stepped up. “Stress is always high in our line of work but this time around, with all leaves cancelled due to the lockdown, the stress levels are even higher. We are counselling them, making them indulge in more sport activities, yoga and meditation. Personnel understand the situation and are not complaining,” they said adding that leave in the paramilitary forces is not granted easily unless it is an emergency.

To add to the woes is the increasing number of Covid-19 positive cases within the paramilitary forces. So far there have been over 750 cases in the forces. Among them, ITBP has 156 cases, BSF has about 125 and the CRPF 236 cases.

“I wanted to visit home for Ramzan and my leave was sanctioned in January. But it got cancelled due to the the lockdown. Now, I have the enemy in front of me (Pakistan), unseen enemy amidst us in the form of Coronavirus while our families are far away. We do talk to our families over phone and they tell us that our presence in these difficult times would have made their lives easy,'' said another personnel of the paramilitary forces posted in J&K.

As per the rules, personnel posted in hard areas (like Jammu and Kashmir) get 75 leaves per year while others are entitled for 45 days. With the Coronavirus outbreak and the lockdown, many of them could not proceed on leave. Those who did go on leave before the lockdown are stuck in their homes and unable to come back.

Many personnel that Deccan Chronicle spoke to admitted that the stress levels are high and they are desperately looking for a break. “It helps keep the morale high. Not visiting families for several months increases stress levels. Like everyone, we too have many things to attend to or sort out at home. But the lockdown has upset all our plans,” they said.