Each of us has some link at a family level, direct or indirect, with the armed forces. A parent, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, a son, or a nephew. At a personal level, we know the first-hand stories of a wife not knowing if an ‘exercise’ will end in a dead husband. Of a father not knowing if the next landmine will have his son’s name on it. At a societal level, we can’t forget the border battles, and much closer home, the comforting presence of the army trucks and the green helmets as they rolled in after the 1984 riots to calm fires in West Delhi residential clusters. Can’t forget that when everything else fails in civic life, the army is called in to restore order. The army is called in not just to maintain order, but even for things like making that foot over-bridge that kept collapsing before the Commonwealth Games. And we have to only look over to our immediate northwest to see what damage an army can do to a nation.