In a first, women may be able to join navy as sailors

NEWDELHI: Women may be able to join the Indian Navy as sailors in the future, with their induction in the non-officer cadre figuring on the agenda of a top navy conference that concluded on Friday, two people familiar with the move said on condition of anonymity. Women currently serve the navy only as officers and number around 600 in the maritime force.

The deployment of women on warships is also being looked into, one of the officials cited above said. The only combat role open to women right now is serving on submarine hunter P-8I planes as observers who take the final decision on launching weapons from the Us-built aircraft.

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman has urged the navy to speed up the enrolment of women, the second official said. Giving more opportunities to women was on the agenda of the three-day naval commanders’ conference, a biennial meet.

The navy is not the only service exploring the possibility of inducting women in the non-officer cadre.

The army is working on plan to recruit 800 women in the military police with an annual intake of 52, a significant move as the force only allows men in the nonofficer cadre. The Indian Air Force is yet to consider recruiting women below the officer rank, although it was the first service to lift a combat ban on women in October 2015 to allow them to fly fighter planes.

“Allowing women to join the navy as sailors will be fantastic. If women have been around in para-military forces for years, what stops the armed forces from inducting them in the nonofficer cadre,” said Wing Commander Anupama Joshi (retd), from the first batch of women officers commissioned into the IAF in the early 1990s.

“The IAF should also move in this direction now. The armed forces are the safest place for women to work,” she added.

The head count of women officers in the military adds up to nearly 3,300, but combat roles were off limits to them until the IAF took the lead in crushing internal resistance to induct them into the fighter stream. Six women have already been commissioned as fighter pilots.

Warships, tanks and combat positions in infantry are still no go zones for women, who were allowed to join the armed forces outside the medical stream for the first time in 1992.

In a step towards bolstering jointmanship, the minister has decided that the future commanders’ conferences of the army, navy and the IAF will also be attended by Chief of Integrated Defence Staff to the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee (CISC). The CISC heads the Integrated Defence Staff, a singlepoint organisation for jointmanship in the ministry that integrates policy, doctrine, war fighting and military purchases.