When Justice A.K. Mathur submitted the 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC) report in 2015, his observation was rather blunt: “The main cause of the resentment among the services is that over a period of time the Indian Administrative Service has arrogated itself to all power of governance.”

His bluntness could be attributed to both the level of dissatisfaction within the Indian military, as well as the long-standing nature of the problem. As far back as 2008, scholars were warning that the exclusion of the armed forces from pay commission deliberations, combined with the dominance of bureaucrats, had left soldiers feeling they “once again ended up getting a raw deal.”

That resentment has deepened in the decade since. As the Eighth CPC’s work comes into focus, the same grievances remain, and

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