The Agnipath step-soldiers

Military professionalism is marked by a commitment to duty, a strong sense of responsibility for national security, expertise in military tactics, strategy and technology, ethical standards, continuous professional training and learning besides political neutrality. The Agnipath scheme, with its short service and high turnover, poses severe challenges and affects the very core of military professionalism.

Which is why, two years after the government sprung the Agnipath scheme in June 2022, there is a growing demand to scrap it. The government appears determined not to do any such thing, accusing the Opposition of spreading ‘lies’ about the scheme.

It is, however, not just the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and political parties but also several veterans, including two retired chiefs of the Indian Navy, Admiral Arun Prakash and Admiral K.B. Singh, who have spoken out against Agnipath. Excerpts from a yet-to-be-released book by former Army chief General Naravane (which is awaiting security clearance from the government) confirm that the scheme was foisted without consulting with the three services headquarters.

The scheme did not come up at the biannual Army commanders’ conferences either. This is the highest policy-making and discussion group of the senior-most leadership of the Indian Army; almost all reforms, modernisation schemes and induction of new weapon systems are deliberated at these conferences.

The government has stoutly maintained that the scheme was discussed threadbare with stakeholders and experts before being rolled out. Retired army officers involved in implementing Agnipath have appeared on TV to state it has gone down well, a claim laughably divorced from reality.

Most army veterans are appalled at the scheme, which involves six months of training and assured employment in the services for four years. At the end of the four years, two-thirds of the recruits are to be demobilised and sent back home, while the remaining one-fourth are retained. They are even more aghast at the government rolling out such an experiment in one go, and not as a pilot project to first assess its effectiveness.

What’s worse is that the scheme followed a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic in 2020 when there were no recruitments. (It is instructive to learn that recruitment for the police and the Central paramilitary forces did not stop.) The average annual recruitment of 60,000 meant that between 160,000 and 180,000 young men who should have joined the services did not.

Negative impact on our cutting edge

The scheme not only destroyed the hopes and aspirations of lakhs of young boys from rural India, it also negatively impacted the army and its units. It takes about seven-eight years to train a soldier capable of handling a tank, BMP (an infantry fighting vehicle), air defence and artillery weapon systems.

The technical training so crucial for retaining the cutting edge has been ignored by Agnipath. The drastically reduced training period has meant sending half-trained ‘Agniveers’ to the units and the border. Already, several have been killed or have tragically taken their own lives.

In the units, a large number of man-management issues have cropped up, due to different terms and conditions for the Agniveers and the permanent soldiers. Agniveers cannot be given any technical training, cannot be sent on military courses or even deployed on sensitive duties.

They are allowed only 30 days leave in a year as opposed to 90 days allowed to regular soldiers. The competition among Agniveers to become permanent after four years is also likely to create unhealthy and harmful conditions in an organisation that relies on camaraderie and team spirit as the basis of its fighting strength.

The life of an Agniveer in the barracks is not very happy, by all available accounts. He is unsure of his future, gets mostly sentry duties, and is often ridiculed by regular soldiers. “In fact, some units have issued strict instructions that Agniveers are not to be given even unsupervised sentry duties,” says a serving officer.

The scheme puts not only the recruit but entire families under immense psychological stress. Most of the Agniveers come from rural backgrounds. When 75 per cent of them return to their villages, rejected after four years as not being good enough, not only does their social standing take a hit, they also have to deal with the long-term fallout of rejection. Promises of lateral induction of ex-servicemen in Central paramilitary forces and state police have seldom been honoured. The dangers of unemployed youth with military training can only hurt society, not improve it.

There are already reports of our young men fighting in the Russian Army and joining the French Legion. This is going to create more problems in future.

The real issue is whether the new recruitment scheme improves our combat effectiveness, and helps the services to recruit the best possible manpower. If short-term recruitment is truly good for the army and the nation, then why not introduce similar schemes for inducting officers or introduce the scheme in the state police and Central paramilitary organisations?

The real reason behind Agnipath is said to be the urgent need to reduce the ostensibly ballooning ‘pay and pension’ bill of the defence services. Ironically, a similar urgency is not noticed in the case of ‘pay and pension’ of the bureaucracy, other Central government services and security forces.

There is merit in the argument that with future wars likely to be fought more with new technology than foot soldiers, the defence services can become leaner. There is also merit, however, in the counterpoint that the Indian Army’s remit is to secure and fight in mostly hilly, mountainous terrain on the LAC with China, in Jammu and Kashmir and in the North-East, where foot soldiers are required.

My own personal opinion from the beginning has been consistent. Agnipath is a disaster and needs to be scrapped before more damage is done. On TV panel discussions, several ex-servicemen have echoed similar concerns.

Admiral Arun Prakash, former chief of the Indian Navy, was constrained to remark, “A lot of attention is (rightly) being focused on in-service disparities and poor post-demobilisation prospects of young Agniveers. But is anyone worried about the huge operational handicap imposed on combat units, forced to accept barely trained recruits, fit only for sentry duties?”

Another former chief of the naval staff, Admiral K.B. Singh, who retired barely seven months before the scheme was introduced, said: “The fact that this scheme will degrade combat effectiveness is known to all who understand national security.”

I interact with a large number of youths and have never lost touch with my own village. I know several families of martyrs and how much the old parents cherish the monthly pension that they continue to receive every month, long after losing their young sons. Every month, they remember the departed and gratefully acknowledge that the nation has not forgotten their children’s sacrifice. This is what serving in the defence forces has meant to generations of Indians.

To deprive Agniveers of similar privileges is certainly not fair or even reasonable. The Union government’s budget has increased manifold in the last several years and to fret about high pensions for soldiers when the government seems to have no shortage of funds for publicity and various questionable schemes is hardly proper.

In my view, the scheme must be rolled back and treated as a ‘test case’. Nobody’s ego should come in the way of restoring the old recruitment process because the biggest damage done is to the pride and dignity of serving in the defence forces. In one stroke, the scheme has pushed the armed forces to the very last choice among rural youth after state police and paramilitary forces. The long-term damage of not getting the best, most motivated, youth for our Army, Navy and Air Force is disconcerting.

We have an unsettled international border of over 7,000 km on the Pakistan and China fronts. Can we afford this kind of dilution at the very cutting edge of our armed forces?

With inputs from A.J. Prabal