After staunchly defending for long a flawed recruitment scheme, called Agnipath, for personnel below the rank of commissioned officers into the three services of the armed forces, the government is on the backfoot after facing reversals in the recently held Lok Sabha elections.
Its allies, primarily Janata Dal (United), is pressuring the BJP-led NDA government to rethink the scheme. The Army has now proposed changes in the scheme, but still not in favour of scrapping it.
The government should actually stop playing with fire and reverse the scheme as it is totally flawed. According to this scheme, all recruits will be hired only for four years. Personnel recruited under this system are to be called Agniveers. The scheme offers no gratuity or pensionary benefits.
Those protesting have complained that the new scheme hinders their claim for monetary benefits, such as pensions, since the Centre plans to absorb only 25 per cent of the ‘Agniveers’ after the completion of their four-year tenure.
Opposition parties have criticised and expressed concerns about the consequences of the new scheme. They have asked the scheme to be put on hold and that the scheme be discussed in the Parliament.
Prior to the introduction of the scheme, soldiers were recruited into the armed forces on a 15+ year tenure with lifelong pension.
The Centre’s main objective is to save funds spent on pensions. More than half the defence budget is allocated for pensions every year, while less than five per cent is allocated for research and development.
This sounds good on paper, but practically not possible to implement because of two reasons. Firstly, we have a huge young population, which sees defence as a sector for employment. Also, we have two aggressive neighbouring countries, who have drawn their sword many times against India, compelling us to go for all-round developments of defence services, including raising the army strength to commensurate with the increasing defence responsibility. This comes at a cost!
Peculiar nature of defence services is that it needs a younger profile in the army with early retirement. Gradually, there started demographic change in the defence services. From rural based recruitment, job necessity made urban youth join the army.
Before introducing Agnipath, a system of re-employment in the army to offset the early retirement, to some extent, got settled, which was running somewhat satisfactorily. But Agnipath scheme will nullify this.
It’s a bunch of young recruits who would be recruited in the army for four years, go back as civilians, as half-trained soldiers, without any stake in the society, and this may be fully frustrating. One wonders, how will 75% of raw recruits face the bullets in time of war, knowing they don’t have any financial security to take care of their families once they are gone.
Their status will be that of temporary workers in an industry. After a couple of years, a company will have 75% of half trained demotivated soldiers with frustrated officer cadre. After a few years, every year, thousands of untrained and disoriented young recruits will come out in this hostile world with some conceivable sum of money, falling prey to crooks and ultimately most of them may turn out to be half baked products and some of them a threat to the nation.
Whatever might be the advancement of weaponry, ultimate victory will depend on physical holding of the ground. That needs strength, courage, discipline, motivation, getting over fear, endurance and tribulation.
The biggest fallout of this scheme is that we are losing one of the prestigious regiments – the Gurkha Regiment. A day may come when we may be fighting against each other. The authorities mustn’t break the homogeneity of the army to save a few rupees. We seem to be going back to the 1962 era, when saving money was a greater criterion than safety and security of the country. The result was a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Chinese army. Does the government want a repeat of the 1962 debacle?
Don’t barter safety and honour of the country for a few rupees and so-called political gain. Don’t play with fire.
