The flawed rationale behind Agnipath

The Agnipath scheme has sparked off such vehement protests because it is obviously unsatisfactory for aspirants to defence services. It can be dressed up anyway the government chooses, but the idea sends a clear signal of extreme financial weakness.

The inductees would serve four years. About a quarter would be retained and regularised to serve out normal 20-year terms. The rest would be demobilised with a one-time severance package of Rs 11-12 lakhs.

The annual per capita expenditure on serving defence personnel is about the same as the severance package. Pensions, healthcare and other benefits for soldiers who serve out a full term add up to far more than that.

India has always had a completely volunteer defence force. Indeed, there is fierce competition to join as the riots indicate. If you step past the concept of martial castes and traditions, which the Raj’s ideologues created after a revolt led by Brahmin soldiers, there are strong economic reasons.

The life is hard and dangerous. But there is economic security, and social status for service personnel. If you take away the pensions and the healthcare, the terms on offer in this scheme are much the same as those in low-level posts in many private sector organisations. Many listed companies pay that much and more to temporary workers on assembly lines.

Another way the scheme has been presented is that it could in theory, temporarily, reduce the ranks of the unemployed and serve as an adjunct to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.  The numbers make that argument absurd.  The scheme would absorb 46,000 people this year, and up to three times that many in future — that’s roughly 150,000 persons per annum at peak recruitment.

The unemployed and underemployed range upwards of 100 million, and may be more than twice that, given the successive impacts of demonetisation, goods and services tax, and the pandemic. To tackle unemployment meaningfully, it’s necessary to create 1.5 million employment opportunities every month. That’s more than 10 times as many jobs needed per month as the Agnipath will create every year.

Obviously, this is being compared to all sorts of recruitment and conscription schemes from all around the world.  Mostly conscripts have to serve between two and four years. North Korea, Russia and China have conscription. At the other end of the economic spectrum, so does Singapore, Switzerland, Israel and many European countries.

In Russia it’s a hangover from Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. In China and the Democratic Republic of Korea, it is seen as a useful tool of indoctrination to turn the average male into a dedicated believer in one-party systems. Israel has universal conscription — women also serve. This is forced upon Israel by demographics and geopolitics. It’s a small country, with a small population, and it’s hated by its neighbours. Sweden and Finland also have universal gender-neutral conscription. Singapore is really tiny.

The Swiss conscription policy creates a large, well-trained reserve and they believe this has helped ensure centuries of neutrality; not only do the Swiss offer banking services to all, they would be a tough nut to invade. France scrapped conscription in 1996. But citizens still have to commit to being called up in an emergency.

At the inception of World War-I, Britain was the only combatant nation without conscription. It introduced conscription during both World Wars and dropped it later. The US scrapped conscription after Vietnam — famously, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump both avoided being called up to serve.

The global experience suggests a possible ideological basis for such schemes. Nasty regimes use them as a tool for keeping individuals in line, a la North Korea, Russia and China. Or, there’s an emergency as in the Ukraine. In the case of Israel, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Singapore, there are small populations with high per capita incomes. It’s hard to meet the security needs through purely voluntary recruitment due to the attractive economic alternatives. Do any of these considerations hold for India?