Government’s decision to roll out Agnipath, a scheme which lays down a four-year ‘Tour of Duty’ for the Indian youth in the armed forces, has been discussed extensively before and after it was announced in a press conference by the defence ministry. This scheme has generated immense curiosity and debate because it affects the entire nation especially the youth. Besides other aspects of this scheme, which have been discussed at length, Agnipath is likely to impact the society because many young (mostly unemployed) trained ex-soldiers, sailors and airmen would now form a sizeable component of the Indian environment.
The key issue that merits attention is what would happen to the ‘Agniveers’ after they go through their Tour of Duty? The words ‘Agnipath’ and ‘Agniveer’ give some romantic ideas about soldiering to the youth but the reality of serving as a soldier with dignity and then being left unemployed when in early 20s would make any young man feel extremely insecure and vulnerable. No assurance has been given by the government that the ‘Agniveers’ would be employed in other organs of the government after their four-year stint with the armed forces. Industry being encouraged to hire them offers limited or no solace.
More than 65% of India’s population is below 35 years of age. The average age of an Indian is 28.7 years compared to 38.4 years of China and 48.6 of Japan. ‘Youth Bulge’ has the potential to contribute immensely towards development of the country if employed gainfully. However, the same youth can be a big threat to the society and national security in case they are jobless especially when they are well trained in weapon handling and fieldcraft. It has been experienced that these young unemployed men are most vulnerable to be misguided into crime and anti-national activities by forces inimical to the India’s growth story.
There is no open-source information available on how many former Army soldiers joined various terrorist organisations or criminal gangs but while operating in counter insurgency areas, it had been experienced by my organisation that a terrorist who had earlier served in the army had much better survival skills, caused much more damage to the security forces and the society and took much more effort of the security forces before he was eliminated. He could often jump the cordon and escape because he knew the army’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), battle procedures and battle drills of operations such as the ‘Cordon and Search’ or ‘House Clearing’ drills.
During the counter insurgency operations in the 90s, it was revealed during the police investigation of some terrorists, that an ex-army terrorist who had served in the Corps of Engineers and was trained in handling explosives while in the army used to travel to different districts of that state to help other terrorists in assembling and planting Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). He lived to harm the state for a much longer time than an average terrorist. With his elimination in an encounter, IED incidents in the area and the state came down drastically. Such was the impact of one such ex-soldier. That is not to say that all ex-soldiers will join the terror groups or the criminal gangs but even if miniscule numbers join, the damage can be disproportionate.
Moreover, these men know too much about the layout of the military units, bases and defence establishments because they had served in them and had access to many other sensitive establishments, which makes them identifiable targets of intelligence agencies of our adversaries. Therefore, keeping them suitably employed is also a national security necessity.
Why did soldiers follow their leaders (officers) assaulting up the barren mountains like ‘Tiger Hill’ during Kargil war? Besides the love for the country, which every Indian has, it was the bonding between the officers and the men, which made them follow their officer unmindful of the danger to their lives. An officer would be betraying the trust of his men in case he is unable to help them after they had given their best to the army under his leadership during those four years. The officer-man relationship is life long and not tenure specific. Therefore, in keeping with the ethos of the armed forces, it is incumbent on the government to ensure that those ‘Agniveers’ who want a job after completing four years’ of the Tour of Duty are assured of a job with the central or a state government except those who wish to work in the corporate world or be self-employed. To maintain a balanced age and experience profile, the period of Tour of Duty could be suitably enhanced to about six years.
Logically, it would have been expected that the scheme would ensure that such a trained young manpower of this country is not wasted because it had cost time, effort and funds from the exchequer to train these soldiers. To optimally utilise this national asset, the scheme should have mandated induction of ‘Agniveers’ into the Border Security Force (BSF) or central police organisations such as the Central Reserved Police Force (CRPF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) or the state police forces on the completion of their Tour of Duty.
By providing well-trained and combat experienced manpower to these forces, the training burden of these organisations would have reduced substantially thereby resulting in savings to their budget and making more policemen available for internal security and related duties. They would have also carried certain military ethos to other organs of the state resulting in multiplication of the Gross National Power and better synergy between various ministries and departments of the government. Such a provision would have created a ‘win-win’ situation.
Unfortunately, vested interests would not allow such optimisation of resources as it would adversely affect their fiefdoms. In fact, lateral induction of well-trained battle-hardened officers and soldiers from the army to police organisations and paramilitary forces has been a subject of discussion for decades with limited or no success.
In order to make the Agnipath scheme a success, it is recommended that it should become the feeder scheme for large part of government jobs thereby assuring all ‘Agniveers’ of jobs after their Tour of Duty, should they opt for it. The scheme should be kept open to mid-course correction to ensure that it is in sync with the military ethos to achieve goals of national security. If implemented with the above spirit, it would bind the nation through commitment, camaraderie, national spirit and perfect work ethos.
The author was head of Army Service Corps. He is a distinguished fellow at United Service Institution of India. His PhD thesis was ‘Peace, Security and Economic Development of India’s Northeast’. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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