Agony of agniveers army pension needs pruning but agnipath protests show future soldiers’ anxiety needs better responses

Agony of agniveers army pension needs pruning but agnipath protests show future soldiers’ anxiety needs better responses

Violent protests erupted in parts of India’s Hindi-speaking belt against GoI’s new recruitment scheme for the military, Agnipath. Frustrated young men from key catchment areas for the military setting trains on fire is a symptom of the jobs crisis in the country. This crisis is particularly acute among young men. CMIE’s April 2022 jobs data showed for males in the 15-19 age group, unemployment was 50%, and 38.7% for the 20-24 cohort. Unemployment was as high as 76% for the 15-19 cohort in Bihar, the epicentre of protests. Losing one long-term job option is a big blow to these young men.

But that cannot be a reason to postpone Agnipath after its announcement. As this newspaper and others have argued, the military has a pension problem. A parliamentary committee report in 2020 said there are 3.2 million defence pensioners, with about 55,000 added annually. In 2010-11, pension outgo was 19% of total defence expenditure. In November 2015, OROP was introduced. By 2020-21, pension outgo rose to 26% of defence expenditure. The fallout of pension’s rising share is a corresponding decrease in expenditure to buy new equipment.

A comparative study of defence pensions by the Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis is insightful. The US in FY-2018 set aside 10% of the defence department’s total expenses towards pension. In the UK, the pension outgo in FY-2019 was 14% of the total defence spending. Given the lopsidedness in resource allocation in the Indian military budget, something had to give. Ideally, the approach should have been to prune intake and raise quality standards. However, political considerations seem to have played a role and a workaround was conceived to meet multiple aims.

Having decided on Agnipath, GoI should have anticipated the anxiety and pre-empted it. Post-announcement assurances of job preferences in paramilitary or police, or bank loans for potential entrepreneurs are inadequate to assuage youth who see the military as a career that meets aspirations. In this context, GoI needs to quickly design a more effective package to help demobilised Agniveers’ transition to civilian life. One reason why the US is able to keep pension costs down is that it takes 20 years of service to be eligible for a pension. It’s possible because America is more effective in employing former soldiers. That’s what young men of the Hindi heartland want too.