The 8th Central Pay Commission should not overlook the welfare of the soldiers
Colonel Yogander Singh
One of the oft-repeated tropes is that one should not join the army for pay but only for serving the nation. In recent times, this scurrilous statement was made by the then Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen. Bipin Rawat and recently repeated by the present COAS, General Upendra Dwivedi during a press conference on 14 January 2025.
Maybe they were trying to explain that a soldier’s calling is for a higher cause. Or maybe, they believe that the economic suffering of soldiers and their families is not an unfortunate economic necessity, but rather an exalted virtue to be perpetuated even when the means to alleviate it are present. I consider this statement as scurrilous because it makes ‘pay’ a dirty word and comes from worthies who take a substantial pay-check home to a large bungalow, lavishly furnished at public expense, in Lutyen’s Delhi. This de-contextualised statement also contradicts the army’s own recruitment campaign which has traditionally highlighted pay and terms of service to attract requisite numbers and talent.
Today, India is in the throes of hyper-nationalism, where an average middle-class Indian, loath to send his/ her own ward in the harm’s way, is likely to demand that potential recruit to the military should accept the privilege of wearing the uniform as sufficient compensation! This self-serving narrative gets a flip when many top Indian generals either unable to understand the importance of context or caught in an image-trap, rhetorically try to project an idealised image of all ranks as a group moved by self-sacrificing patriotism alone.
This line of argument seems to indicate that the families of ordinary soldiers are, in effect, to subsidise the military service of their sons and daughters. This is not inherently unacceptable; when there is no choice, the soldier may have to subsidise his own service. For example, during the freedom struggle, the satyagrahis voluntarily courted hardships but they reaped the rewards in form of respect and status after the country won freedom, and even their progenies enjoyed pensions and privileges.
The politicians who make a career out of ‘service’ to the nation are not an exclusive Indian phenomenon, but the fact remains that they are indeed well served with a fat pay and unlimited perks while serving terms as member of Parliament/member of Legislative Assembly (MP/MLA) and pension thereafter. Hence, it is hardly desirable for the fourth largest economy—India—that the soldier and his family has to make an economic sacrifice above and beyond the personal one they have committed to.
However, in India it is the soldier who has been at the receiving end of belt-tightening in recent past. Helped in no small measure by woolly-headed quick-gun Muruguns manning top positions in military hierarchy, the golden era ideologues, armchair defence experts and defence bureaucrats have successfully argued that the soldiers live on the largesse of the taxpayers, and it is pay and pension of the soldier that is keeping India away from becoming a military superpower. They were, no doubt, helped by the unilateral offer of General M.M. Naravane, the then COAS, to start limited recruitment under a scheme called ‘Tour of Duty’. This opening was seized by the government to replace vast majority of soldiers with contractual workers bearing high-sounding title of ‘Agniveer’. Through this stratagem the government has effectively disenfranchised the military and placed majority of them at a level lower than the lowest employee of the central government hierarchy. His pay reduced, his leave entitlement has been halved and post demobilisation support removed.
It will be fair for someone to ask, whether the soldiers serve only for pay or are the concepts of ‘higher calling’ and patriotism irrelevant to the military service? My answer is straight forward—‘bhuke bhajan no hoye Gopala’ meaning ‘empty stomach makes short devotion’ or ‘virtues fail when hunger strikes’.
Of course, soldiers are supposed to contribute to the country; so are prime ministers or the COAS. I have never noticed that anyone is opposed to paying government ministers fair wages. The army has shortage of housing for all ranks in Delhi, with waiting period extending up to one year in the case of officers. On the other hand, the rules governing allotment of government housing allow a government servant to retain such accommodation for a period of three months extendable to a maximum of one year. Each and every retiring COAS utilises this facility of retention of government accommodation for the maximum period in Delhi. In case of politicians, it is a lifetime of living in the house after having served one truncated term as MP or MLA.
Liberal Indians are more likely to believe that service members join primarily for economic reasons. Those further to the left are more inclined to aver that service members join chiefly to escape desperate circumstances. On the other hand, is the present dominant discourse which believes that the privilege of wearing uniform is compensation enough for the Indian soldier. But what about the soldier himself? If you were to ask a potential recruit, he is likely to acknowledge that pay and benefits are a primary motivation for him, whereas his older colleague, who has put in a decade or more of service, will still give importance to pay but is likely to also add patriotic-cum-regiment narrative. It is a well-established fact of life that fair pay and terms of service are sine qua non to attract talent in requisite numbers to any profession or occupation or calling. It’s not about morality, it’s about economics.
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