The flawed rationale behind Agnipath

News: Recently, the government launched the Agnipath scheme. It has sparked off vehement protests from aspirants to defence services.

Nature of Indian Defence Forces

India has always had a complete volunteer defence force. Indeed, there is fierce competition to join as the riots indicate.

There are strong economic reasons for such a high competition. There is economic security, and social status for service personnel.

What were the driving force behind such a move?

The armed forces are facing long-delayed modernisation. For example, the Indian Air Force have 30 squadrons of fighter jets against the needed 42 squadrons, the Indian Navy have 130 ships against the need of 200-ship; and the Indian Army is already short of 1,00,000 soldiers.

Financial motivations: The financial burden of the defence personnel salary and pension has increased. It has substantially increased the budgetary expenditure on defence pensions. The savings in the pensions bill would be directed towards the modernisation of defence forces.

At present, the Indian economy is incapable of supporting the needs of the India armed forces.

India has been facing an active military threat from two adversaries, China and Pakistan.

There are internal security challenges in Kashmir and the northeastern States of India.

Arguments against the scheme

The life is hard and dangerous in the Indian Armed Forces. Further, if you take away the pensions and the healthcare. It will reduce the soldier’s status to low level posts in many private sector organisations. In fact, many listed companies pay more to temporary workers on assembly lines.

The scheme seems to reduce the ranks of the unemployed and serve as an adjunct to the MGNREGA Act. The numbers make that argument absurd.

Various countries have scrapped conscriptions. For example, France scrapped conscription in 1996, The US scrapped conscription after Vietnam.

It´s hard to meet the security needs through purely voluntary recruitment without attractive economic alternatives.

The short-term recruitment policy has neither been theoretically modelled nor tried out as a pilot project.

It will have adverse effect on the professional capabilities of the armed forces is certain.

This will lead to further increasing the tail when the armed forces are already boasting of a poor teeth-to-tail ratio.

The Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy employ their airmen and sailors in very specialised roles. This requires technical skills, and a high degree of training and experience. The short-term contractual soldier will find it difficult to fulfil the requirement.

In the past, the government defended the class-based recruitment by asserting that due to this the Army has “performed exceedingly well’ and “changing to All India class composition will affect the functioning of the PBG [President’s Bodyguard] Presidential and the seniority structure of the regiment”. This is because soldiers draw their motivation from their social identity. The Government’s proposal for all-India all-class recruitment under Agnipath proposal lacks transparency in the reasoning.

There will be major problems in training, integrating and deploying soldiers with different levels of experience and motivations.

The 25% criterion for retaining short-term contracted soldiers could result in unhealthy competition, as it can lead to rivalries and jealousies amongst winners and losers.

There would be legal challenges as the Government has kept the contract at four years to deny the Agniveer gratuity and it is not counting the contractual period towards regular service. It could lead to political agitation for longer tenures and pensions to be picked up by the Opposition parties.

Source: The post is based on an article “The flawed rationale behind Agnipath” published in the Business Standard on 18^th June 2022; and “Agnipath, a fire that could singe India” published in the “The Hindu” on 18^th June 2022.