Soldier —- Deserves An Honourable Career, Not A Contract Job

The Agnipath Scheme is already under fire from various quarters. The youngsters are angry, and are venting it all out through protests which have turned violent in many places; properties worth crores stand damaged while scores have been injured. The youngsters have got their reservations about the scheme, while a regular jawan who has reached a certain point of his military career, is also weighing the options, even though we do not know what those in-service are thinking about the scheme. But the Government’s intentions are clearer than ever: it thinks that it has put forth a ‘solution’ to the exchequer, aimed at trimming the fat portion of the defense budget which goes in to take care of the pension bills. But it is beyond that.
As a nation, which has always been proud of its army, ensuring vigil along the borders, more so, in the areas with tough terrain: ranging from the bone-chilling temperature in the north and facing the sizzling sun on the other side, don’t we owe them everything for the duty which they discharge? Can the nation expect non-regulars, who’d join the army because there is unemployment out there and are driven primarily due to monetary gains, to lay their lives down in case of a war?

The Government, while it moves ahead, is likely to do a great disservice to the country through the ‘Angipath Scheme’ because it might end up doing what the military contractors of the US Army did in Iraq and Afghanistan. The scheme, while side-lining the regular army men, leaving way less for them to have even as they are serving the country with their blood, should have been tested on a low-risk organization first and not the defense forces where the risks are high—and could prove disastrous in case of a war.

To say it, the scheme is all about saving money, nothing beyond that, and one might even ask why wasn’t such a policy implemented in other areas, and why only the defense? Why do only jawans have to face the cut to save the expenses and why bring in any tom, dick and harry to run, and be a part of an army which is the second largest in the world?

There is a need to uphold the honor and dignity of the defense careers and if the so-called ‘Agniveers’ are led inside, who could be anybody, what becomes of the tradition of discipline, organizational ethos, and integrity of the army that stands out globally? Blunt enough, the way matters are moving ahead, it is quite predictable that the Government is hell-bent to decimate these values once and for all, and also jeopardize national security. The Government needs to understand that the ‘Agnipath Scheme’ is quite different from the farm laws where the Govt later sidestepped and apologized. The army deserves to be honored, kept away from the reforms which are ill-planned and executed poorly because for what the jawans of the defence forces do for the country, they deserve everything, let alone just providing them a handsome salary and a comfortable post-retirement life.