PHOTOS: Indian, US troops set Thar desert on fire!

[Abingdonboy]

I think it is time that our Armed forces should stop being camera shy. These awesome videos are a classic example of coming of age for our military forces. I think if the military allows a bit of glamor factor to come in (like NATO forces), this would spread awareness about the inside life of armed forces and encourage youth to join.

There's a few issues to deal with here- firstly a main reason the Indian forces do not have the kind of exposure as say NATO militaries is because the MoD requires all official photographers/journalists to ask for express permission from them to produce multimedia content of their personnel. Additonally the Indian military, and SOFs especially (in a recent doc one SF explicitly stated this), they prefer to remain in the shadows yet let their actions speak for them. Also NATO nations allocate a significant amount of their military budgets on PR- the US for instance spends >$2 BN on PR alone per year. The Indian military spends far less relatively than this and it is only recently some measures have been taken to change this. Also it seems the Indian media, up and til recently, didn't seem too interested in covering the nitty-gritty of the Indian military in the same way the US/Western media are of their nations - this maybe a cultural/society thing.