The reputation of the Indian defence forces is taking quite a battering lately. Lieutenant Sushmita Chakravorty's suicide in Udhampur had stirred up a hornet's nest. The whole issue of whether women are capable of handling the pressures within the military has been underscored by her death.

Having stayed away from civilian society and built up a kind of hermetically sealed world, the armed forces now find it difficult to deal with situations and people outside their gamut of defence services when it comes to social issues like these. And this has got proved in Sushmita Charabortys suicide case. Look at the manner in which the Army has dealt with the suicide of a young, lady officer.

The Vice-Chief immediately reacted by saying that the Army was not yet ready to cope with women as officers. An honest admission, probably, but totally out of sync with the real world, where females have joined the work force in large numbers and have also proved to be strong leaders. Though the Ministry of Defence later said that he was misquoted, the remark brought to fore the problems that women are facing in the Army.

It is worth mentioning in this regard that though women have been serving in the medical corps of the military for a long time now, it was only in 1992 that the Army began inducting women for other duties as well. But there are cases where women have had to face indifferent, if not hostile attitudes, on part of the male o

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