New Delhi, May 19: The Indian Air Force is asking its women to help draft rules for social and official etiquette for married couples who are from the service but the husband is not an officer.

The survey is being conducted after a corporal, an airman who married a lady officer, quit the service. All women in the armed forces are officers on short service commission.

Sixteen years after India’s armed forces allowed women into their officer cadre, the military is still trying to marry a tradition — that forbids non-officers from entering officers’ clubs — to the demands of modern-day etiquette.

The latest of the quandaries thrown up concerns a lady officer who married a junior who was a corporal in the Air Force Police. The corporal left the service about nine months ago. An air force source in Delhi said “he may have left for reasons unrelated to his marriage”.

But given the instant reaction of many officers — and not only of those in the air force — it is safe to assume that a military culture and a chain of command system that is rigid will tell on such relationships.

“As far as I know the couple are happily married and posted somewhere in the area of responsibility of the South Western Air Command,” said Indian Air Force spokesperson Wing Commander Mahesh Upasani.

He also said the air force had not forbidden the marriage. “We are a forward-looking service and the survey is only an attempt to get a feedback on what the lady officers feel,” he said.

There are nearly 1,000 women in an officer cadre of about 10,000 in the air force. Though instances of air force or army or navy personnel marrying among themselves is plentiful, nearly all of these military couples are from the officer cadre.

In the armed forces medical corps, there are many more examples of doctors and nurses marrying.

But the present case in which a flight lieutenant with the air force’s administrative wing chose a corporal in the IAF police as her husband has thrown up issues that the IAF apparently did not anticipate.

It may be unique but the increase in the number of women into the services means that this is not the last such case to come up.

Even many companies bar married couples from working in the same department, an army officer pointed out.

The case in the air force is being followed closely by all the services because new rules would not be exceptional.

However, an air force officer points out, even personnel below officer rank in the IAF are better qualified, on an average, than other ranks in the army. “We cannot imagine non-officers coming into the officers’ mess. When these rules were drawn up, it was for good reasons. Officers have to command the soldiers and there are times they have to blindly follow our orders,” the army officer said.

But Upasani said: “We have egalitarian norms governing the social lives of air warriors. We do not forbid lady officers from marrying our airmen but we need to formulate guidelines and the survey is part of that exercise”.

Though all armed forces have rigid rules, there are minor differences in the culture that their respective higher commands encourage.