NEW DELHI: The armed forces, amid guarding the frontiers, maintaining operational readiness and helping civil administrations combat the coronavirus pandemic, are facing a confounding new question: Should explicit orders be issued to ensure their personnel wear masks that match their uniforms?
Senior officers of the Army, Navy and IAF, fortunately, have not yet been seen in public wearing ‘stars’ on their masks, akin to the ones worn on their collar tabs, to denote their ranks like some of their police counterparts are doing. The director-general of police in a state, for instance, made quite a splash recently by wearing a mask with ‘three stars’.
The Southern Naval Command (SNC) in Kochi seems to have stolen a march in the spit and polish environs of the armed forces by sternly directing its personnel to wear colour-coordinated masks. White m