New recruitment system by Army | Fusion - WeRIndia

Indian Army is going to change its recruitment system soon. For the first time, a psychological test is going to be included in its selection procedure for non-officer positions. The selection system will be in trials from June by the Army. According to Manas Kumar Mandal, Director-General (Life Sciences) at the DRDO, they have recommended various suggestions to reduce fratricide and suicide rates within the forces. DRDO has been working towards for a while now, and it has recommended  all the suggestions which have given them positive results in reduction of fratricide and suicide rates.

Dr. Mandal , who has been an active researcher in this field, wants to integrate his findings into the recruitment system. He said that the incidence of suicides was high earlier at approximately 13.4 per lakh, but now the rate has declined significantly at around eight per lakh. Compared to this, the average rate in India is 12.8 per lakh. Many personnel in the forces face hard and challenging situations regularly, that too when they are far away from their families. Yet, they are protecting our borders. However, this can take a very heavy toll on their mental health. He added that their organisation has been constantly making efforts for lowering the rates of suicides and fratricides. Coming to the fratricides, they have been successful in their efforts by reaching almost every region. They have six courses on these in the Indian Armed Forces which eventually led to the decrease in fratricide. He claimed that after the introduction of these courses, currently there is no fratricide in the forces.

The system is getting implemented at the ADG-level. Dr. Mandal added that the changes were suggested to test the all vulnerabilities on the ground for PBOR (Personnel Below Officer Rank), at a level similar to the officers. The new system will be tested in trials, and within a time span of five years, we should see tremendous improvement in suicide rates.

An Army spokesperson said that the trials for this new system will first be implemented in few regiments but not the entire country. A manual had been prepared to conduct the trial and test.

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