In a decision that acknowledges the quiet architectures of care within Indian households, Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh has approved the expansion of the definition of ‘family’ for the purpose of allotment of Government Accommodation to Service Officers. The shift is administrative on paper, but personal in impact.
Under the revised definition, ‘family’ will now include parents, dependent siblings, and legally adopted children, alongside the existing coverage of spouse & dependent children/stepchildren. The change is expected to benefit all Service Officers, including Single Women Officers residing with their parents — a cohort whose lived realities have often sat awkwardly within narrower policy frames.
For years, accommodation rules mirrored a conventional template of the nuclear unit. Yet service life, with its transfers, field postings and prolonged separations, rarely conforms to tidy definitions. Ageing parents move in. Siblings rely on elder brothers or sisters in uniform. Adoption reshapes households in ways that policy must eventually recognise. This approval does precisely that — it widens the lens.
Importantly, the decision draws from the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act 2007, situating the move within an existing legal and moral framework. It reflects not only statutory alignment but an institutional acceptance that caregiving in contemporary India is layered, reciprocal and often inter-generational.
The expansion also carries a subtler message. Welfare, in the armed forces context, cannot be confined to pay commissions and pensions alone.
