The Agnipath scheme is against all democratic tenets; reduces soldiers to mercenaries
Colonel Yogander Singh
Schemes like Agnipath are born in an environment bereft of strategic thought and flourish because of public indifference. When introduced, Agnipath was vociferously opposed in four northern provinces. Out of these two, Rajasthan and Haryana have since been won convincingly by the BJP, underscoring the fact that in a deeply cleaved democracy the leaders with an elected majority can get away with almost anything.
Today, when Agnipath seems like a done deal, it is incumbent on every concerned citizen to demand its roll back. Not because it is a Modi project, but because it is a disastrous scheme for the Indian military. At a time when across the world, powerful and developed nations are investing massive resources and efforts in training and retaining their soldiers, Indian government has come up with a scheme which proposes to hastily train and then discard its soldiers as soon as possible!
Primary Critique
The creation of Agniveer at the lowest level of the government hierarchy is nothing but subterfuge to downgrade the soldier and deny him due remunerations. The employees of the central government are divided into some 19 plus grades wherein the junior-most central government employee called MTS (multi-tasking staff) is eligible for a minimum pay of Rs 18,000 per month plus grade pay of Rs 1,800. With DA at 50 per cent, the minimum take home pay of MTS comes to Rs 29,700, add the mandatory HRA and travel allowance and the pay package of MTS becomes Rs 34,000 per month. The soldier who stands two levels above MTS has a starting pay of Rs 20,200 and grade pay of Rs 2,000 plus DA, and military service pay of Rs 5,200 per month, taking his package to Rs 40,100. The Agniveer gets Rs 30,000 per month--fixed. The scheme has also drastically reduced their leave and other entitlements. Is this morally justified?
Violates the concept of a democratic government being an ideal employer: Periodic review of pay and allowances of the government employees are based on the idea that the government of India has to set benchmark for the state governments as also private sector for deciding the terms of service and pay package based on the qualifications needed. This is the concept of ideal employer! And births the idea of life-long association, wherein the employee gives his/ her best during their productive years and the government takes care of the employee till death do them apart. This has been the case in India too and remains so for all employees except the Agniveer! To avoid paying pensions etc., the government has gone about creating a new employee in the military, whose terms of service are based on the concept of ‘use-and-throw’ It is an example of transactional relationship, guaranteed to create a toxic work environment.
Breaks the covenant between the soldier and the nation: Across the world, all democracies adhere to the ‘covenant’ between its citizen-soldier and the state. Under this covenant the soldier promises to lay down his life in course of his duties and in return the state, through the government, vows to take care of him and his family in case he suffers debilitating injury or dies in course of his duties. An Agniveer is given a lump-sum amount of about 50 lakhs (rest is insurance and his own savings) for final goodbye.
Destructive of military ethos: To understand the ill-effects of frequent turnover of personnel on the unit cohesion and battle efficiency, let us take the case of Rashtriya Rifles. It does not have permanent cadre, rather all ranks come on a two/ two-and-half year tenure. Thus, on an average 50 all ranks are turning over every month, with entire battalion strength being changed every two-and-half year. This turmoil leads to inter-personal issues which adversely impact the combat efficiency of these units and there were alarmingly high number of such cases during the initial phase. To minimise this problem, the Rashtriya Rifles units were affiliated to infantry battalions, which have permanent cadre. This was done to stabilise the man-power profile of the Rashtriya Rifles by carrying forward the cohesion of infantry battalion to affiliated Rashtriya Rifles unit. This step succeeded in raising the cohesion within the Rashtriya Rifles units. Sadly, the Agniveer scheme is now turning the regular infantry battalions into temporary parking slots for tenure-based manpower. We are heading for complete destruction of the military ethos built on camaraderie.
Hasty and faulty decision: The admission by the defence minister in the Parliament to have held hundreds of meetings to finalise the scheme is in itself acknowledgement of the fact that the scheme was born and matured inside the sanitised environments of Delhi babudom, and no field trials were done, nor was the country taken into confidence before implementing such a fundamental change in the human resource (HR) policies of the military. Apparently, the failure of existing short service commission for officers has not been taken into account.
Spurious Claims
There has been intentional misrepresentation of the age profiles in other armies. The ministry of defence, led by the defence minister himself, has been citing its own study of the armed forces of the US, the UK, France, Israel, Russia and China which says that the corresponding average age in these countries is 26-27 years, with an engagement period of two to four years and a training period of three to six months. However, the MoD claims do not stand scrutiny.
US Army: Lower average age, for example, in the US Army is not by design but by default. An April 2005 study by the RAND Corporation recommended a number of ways the US Army could reduce its ‘first term attrition’ problem—the early discharge of soldiers during their first tour of duty. About 20 per cent of recruits who enlist never even start active duty, and another 36 per cent of those who do report to basic training fail to complete their first term of service (generally a hitch between two and four years). The report cited causes such as poor physical conditioning and low educational attainment. For example, recruits with GEDs (General Equivalency Diploma) drop out at higher rates than those with high-school diplomas. Surprisingly, the report found that college funding, bonuses, and the length of an enlistment contract had little to no bearing on first-term attrition problem. Rather organizational and cultural causes dominated.
PLA: The PLA is entirely different kettle of fish. They have a comprehensive employment and redeployment system wherein the soldier recruited in regular PLA is shifted to police and border guards or other tours of duty. This results in longer service for the individual with savings to the government as it is more cost-effective to turn a trained soldier into effective policeman than to recruit both the streams separately. Such a scheme if implemented in India would be a win-win solution for both the military and Central Armed Police Force/ police as it would allow a soldier to side-step from the military to police after certain years (seven to five) of colour service. But in India, such proposals have been shot down in past by civil wings of the government.
France, Russia and Israel: France and Russia have had a long-standing tradition of recruiting foreigners to make up for short fall and Israel, a nation of less than 10 million souls surrounded by enemies, in any case falls in a special category. The threats demand that every citizen also has to be a soldier.
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