Indian Foreign Policy takes new strides - always willing to experiment and help out its neighbours though it gets its fingers burnt at times. Newer possibilties and newer pacts are being formed in South Asian Politics.
It is nothing new to the Indian Government, keeping in mind the number of countries it already aids by training military officiers and personnel in its various defence institutions.
This new venture allows Singapore to overcome the limitations of land and airspace to train the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF). The endless, difficult and varying Indian terrain will allow the island-nation troops to have an experience in newer environments. This request is found favour with the Indian Defence Ministry and the neccessary paper work it being done to make it a reality.
The Singaporean troops according to the reports are to be based in Bambina and Deolali. Babina sounds like some hot exotic holiday location - sadly is one hot zone only in terms of a field firing range about 400 kms south east of New Delhi.
However the the second location Deolali - though unfamiliar to many, is situated in Maharastra, more correctly near Nashik. This place has an intresting history attached to it and I only hope the Singaporeans know about it.
Deolali Camp is an important Indian military center. Deolali camp which is one of the oldest centers in India, is located 16 km away from Nashik. The center and Artillery School was set up by the British in 1861. Deolali market is famous for shopping and is surrounded by gardens, playgrounds and wide roads. In the days of the British Raj, soldiers who cracked up under the stresses and strains of life in British India were invariably packed off to a military psychiatric hospital in the small Maharashtrian cantonment town of Deolali, near Nashik, to recover. Its name became synonymous with nervous breakdown; hence the English idiom "to go doolally", meaning to become insane or eccentric.
A trip then to doolally :) and good luck to the Singaporeans.
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