From ONE RANK, ONE PENSION to NO RANK, NO PENSION

 A friend of mine who I respect a lot has written on Facebook: “I think the Agneepath recruitment scheme is excellent. One retires young with about 12 lakhs in his/her bank account. At 25 the retired Agniveer remains eligible for a wide range of jobs.”

For those unfamiliar with the beautifully named scheme, Agnipath is a plan is to recruit men between 17 ½ and 21 years in the armed forces. The recruits, called Agniveers, will be a distinct rank, different from all other existing military ranks. So far so good, but the catch is they will serve for 4 years and no more, although 25% of them will get the opportunity to join the regular forces. After drawing a fixed salary for 4 years, they will go home with Rupees 11.71 lakhs. No gratuity, no pension.

Moving back to my friend’s post, I do not know if he has lost his mind or is being deliberately provocative. His opinion is grossly untenable for the following reasons:

(1) The 25-year-old will be ready for jobs, as my friend says, but jobs won’t be ready for him, particularly in the current economic scenario.

(2) Hand over 11-12 lakhs in cash to 10 twenty-five-year-olds, 9 of them will either blow it away in months or invest in assets like a house, which unfortunately cannot be eaten. People with much better experience with managing funds find it tough to manage a corpus to yield enough for their monthly expenses, particularly when interest rates are falling steadily. Ask any retired person except the blessed government pensioners, you know how the cookie crumbles. Do you seriously expect a moderately educated 25-year–old with natural cravings for the good things in life—fast bikes and fancy clothes, not to mention wine and women—learn to invest astutely or begin a successful business in a decaying economy? You must be kidding!

(3) The Agnipath scheme is also called “Tour of Duty.” Does it allow us a Freudian peep into the minds of the Gujju idiots who consider the army a “tour”? Last night, I was hearing a retired Colonel’s opinion that the Indian Army needs 5 to 6 years to make a jawan battle-ready. Therefore, this bizarre four-year “tour” will not only make the armed forces weaker, it will also destroy the ironclad discipline and efficiency of the Indian army, which is one of the finest in the world. The traditions and discipline built over centuries of blood and sweat will be destroyed in a stroke of a failing government which doesn’t have money to pay pension. But has money for projects like the Bullet Train, the tallest statue in the world, PM’s fancy residence, and a subway for him to drive to office, and so on.

(4) When they are out of the army, how will these unemployed young men with incomplete military training (and discipline) be used by a religious fascist government? Will the Brown / Black Shirts from Europe in the 1930s come back? I don’t see any other way to deploy them given the shrinking economy, ever decreasing job opportunities, and our relentless journey on the fascist path.

(5) According to Yogendra Yadav, a rare politician who talks sense, the vacancies in the army at the jawan’s level was 16,500 eight years ago, but now it has ballooned up to 97,000. So, the government that blabbers ceaselessly on national security has neglected what matters most. 

(6) Yogendra Yadav also said Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar and a few other states with a martial tradition contribute a large percentage to our armed forces. Personally, I have seen, many from Kerala and Tamil Nadu join the army. However, unlike them, the North Indian states have little job opportunities outside the army. Therefore, from the teenage, boys there work hard, exercise, run miles and miles to prepare for the military. The new scheme has also made recruitment uniform all over India. Therefore, if a Haryanvi youth could look at say, 1000 vacancies in the past, now will find much fewer, perhaps 250. We can understand why young people have burst in anger in North India. And why young men are committing suicide.

I do hope there won’t be another suicide and the protests will be peaceful. Neither will another train be burned or any other property destroyed.

Finally, this is the latest of a number of disastrous steps taken by the current government which began with demonetization. Hopefully, this will be the last and one hopes the government will have the wisdom to shelve the bizarre plan immediately.

PS: I have copied the caption of the story from Facebook. I will acknowledge the author as soon as I see the post again.

17 June 2022