• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Personnel - Agnipath

More than half of the Indian government’s defence expenditure of $70bn – the third highest in the world after the US and China – goes towards pensions and salaries for Indian military personnel. It was shooting upwards by the year and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government was unable to initiate a substantive reform within the existing structure. With 1.4 million personnel, India's armed forces is the world's second-largest, after China. Every year, 50,000-60,000 young men join the forces in search of long-term jobs.

The Army in May 2020 proposed the ‘Tour of Duty’ model of recruitment that would let young individuals voluntarily serve for a temporary period of three years. It breaks with the old recruitment process, which allowed for 15 years of service in the army with a fixed income and substantial pension. The idea is to attract more youth to join the Army, fill up officers’ vacancies, and later, reduce burgeoning defence pensions, which make up nearly 30 per cent of the defence budget after ballooning when the ‘One Rank One Pension’ (OROP) scheme was implemented. One of the names being considered for the scheme is ‘Agnipath’ (literally, the path of fire), with the volunteers set to be called ‘Agniveers’ (fire-warriors).

General MM Naravane, Chief of Army Staff, Indian Army explained the much talked about concept "Tour of Duty" in June 2022. The ‘Agnipath’ scheme or Tour of Duty would expose a larger section of Indian population to the military way of life and gives them a wider exposure. It also provides the nation with a large pool of disciplined workforce, with varied skill sets. Facing out-of-control military pensions, the government will now recruit soldiers on four-year contracts. By freeing funds for modernisation, the government is laying foundations for a smaller but smarter army, designed for future wars.

Since only about 45,000 ‘Agniveers’ will be recruited per year (compared to the usual 60,000 at full-tenure recruitment rallies), and only one-fourth will be retained after four years, the most elementary calculation shows that at the current rate of 50,000-60,000 retirements each year, by 2030 the armed forces will field about 25 percent fewer personnel than they did before the Covid break.

The controversial proposal of the Narendra Modi government, strangely called ‘Tour of Duty’, which has been doing the rounds for the past two years. It is ostensibly aimed at cutting the pension bill of the armed forces through surreptitious means of ‘exposing the youth to the armed forces’. Eager unemployed young males are meant to be selected for three years of service, and then encouraged into civilian life through corporate employment or re-induction into the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF). The terms of service could even stretch to five years, but no more. And hence no pension. The youth unemployment rate in India reached 26 percent in early 2022, a staggering figure for a country where more than half of the population is under 30 years old. This new measure gives a four-year contract, with no guarantees. For some it only postpones their arrival to unemployment.

All Army units would have manpower on an all India basis. The regimental system in the Army would go, but not immediately. The government’s intention is to kill the Army’s regimental system, which is the bedrock of fighting arms and comradeship; ‘Naam, Namak aur Nishan [ honour, loyalty and identity]. Naam is the Name/Reputation of the Regiment or 'Paltan' [ a regiment of infantry (now historical)]. While this ethos permeates the whole of the Indian Army, it is seen the strongest in the fighting arms like Infantry, Armored and Artillery which have the Regiment and Battalion concept. The reason being men spend most of the professional lives in one Regiment / Battalion and identify very strongly with it. But as regards regimentation, there are mixed units in the army, which have in no way performed lesser than the ‘pure’ regiments.

Instead of recruiting professional soldiers to serve for a full career of pensionable service, the Indian military, under a new policy called “Agnipath” (path of fire in Hindi), will now recruit them on a short-term contract basis as “agniveer” (fire-brave in Hindi), a new military rank. They will be contracted for four years, including the training period and exit without any pension, health or education benefits. Up to a quarter of them may be taken back as regular soldiers afterwards, creating competition for retention within the ranks in the bargain. It will fundamentally interfere with how India’s armed forces are organised, with potentially devastating consequences if not handled correctly.

By 2022 recruitment hadn’t happened for the last two years, as neither the Army, Navy, nor Air Force held any rallies, and which has already led to a shortfall of about 1.3 lakh soldiers. Having stopped recruitment in the armed forces for the past two years under the guise of the coronavirus pandemic, even as political rallies and big religious events continued unchecked, this will mean more than 100,000 jobs in the military in the next two years. If shortfalls of the last two years have to be made up, these numbers will only rise further. And a faster turnover of these contracted young men would result in the release of more vacancies every year.

There had been no major studies of the government’s proposal within or outside the Indian defence services, no white paper had been produced by the government, the matter was never debated in parliament or in the parliamentary standing committee on defence and the public was never informed before the announcement was made.

The Army had put into place a model for recruitment that selected from every state as a percentage of its male population, a formula called Recruitable Male Population (RMP). RMP of every state depended on census figures and ensured that the Army represented the country as a whole, and not a select cabal. This impeded any coup chances, an unsaid but honestly accepted fact. Now, however, there is a proposal as part of ‘Tour of Duty’ to do away with RMP and recruit from across the country without any formula or percentages.

The Indian Armed Forces are a source of employment for youth, particularly those who haven't received quality education required for other jobs. What sweetens the deal is job security and lifelong pension. In the rural heartland, from where the bulk of our soldiers are recruited, a career in the military drives lifelong-respect, economic security for the family and enhancement of the family fortune. The sudden Agnipath announcement after a hold-up of normal recruitment for over two years, caused massive upheaval, with an upsurge of anger across the nation by aspirants.

The jobless young know their politics better than venerable, well-meaning seniors with decades in uniform. They do as they come from the hyper-politicised and polarised heartland. They also know the hopelessness of the job market. They see the absence of opportunity where they live and feel their own lack of skills needed for jobs in distant, booming growth zones. A government appointment whether in the railways, state government, police, anywhere is the only lifetime guarantee of a safe, well-paying job. The armed forces are by some distance the best.

Violent protests against the new army recruitment plan in India flared 18 June 2022 as angry youths set ablaze at least a dozen passenger trains, vandalized government offices, buses and police vehicles and burned tires on highways and blocked them in many states. Many of the protesters were young men who aspired to military careers as a path out of poverty. They carried Indian flags and shouted, "Roll back Agnipath. We don't want short-term jobs. We want permanent jobs." Mapping the nearly 45 places where rioting had broken out, there was a hornet’s nest in Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bundelkhand, southern Haryana and Rajasthan. These are India’s primary low-wage migrant labor exporting zones - for example, where the mostly poorly paid and security guards doing daily double shifts come from. This anger came almost entirely from BJP/NDA-run states, the very core of the Modi-BJP base.

Federal upper house (Rajya Sabha) MP and committee member Shaktising Gohil reckoned that youth in the rural areas of India, who view the career in the forces as means of social mobility and respect, would be particularly affected by the temporary recruitment rules. “Respect and long-term job security have been the two biggest draws of a job in the Army. The Agnipath scheme won’t be able to guarantee either. It won’t give them the same prestige that’s bestowed upon the permanently commissioned Indian Army soldiers,” Gohil stated.

“There won’t be any promotion and chances to extend the contract beyond stipulated four years, including three months of training, are minimal,” Gohil added. The federal lawmaker also claimed that spontaneous protests after the scheme was announced indicated widespread resentment among the youth against the temporary recruitment rules and over the delay in resuming the process for permanent recruitment into the forces.