Agnipath Scheme: In-depth Guide

An Overlook into the Agnipath Scheme

Massive protests demanding the rollback of the Agnipath scheme has continued across the country.
Hundreds of people have been injured in various places in the violence that marked the agitation against the new armed forces recruitment scheme.

India faces threat from two adversaries mainly China and Pakistan and other threats internally in Kashmir and the northeastern States.
So, there has always been an idea of modernisation of the armed forces and increase defence spending.
In the recent budget, the allocation for salaries and pensions accounted for 54% of the total budget.
This trend has remained consistently from decades In the current financial year, ₹1,19,696 crore has been budgeted for pensions, along with another ₹1,63,453 crore for salaries.
The argument is that, the savings in the pensions will encourage more spending on modernisation of the defence forces.
It is estimated that Indian Air Force requires 42 squadrons of fighter jets but currently the there are only 30 squadrons.
This is also similar in the case of Indian navy which requires upto 200 warships currently has 130 and the army is also short of 1,00,000 soldiers.
So, it is clear that the introduction of Agniveer scheme is to tackle the economic hurdles in the defence sector.

To prevent the domination of a particular group based on state, linguistic community or ethnicity, the army had an idea of a State-wise quota for recruitment.
It was based on the idea on the Recruitable Male Population of that State which was implemented from 1966.
So, there is an apprehension that introduction of Agniveer scheme, this idea of state wise representation will wane.
According many researches ethnic imbalance in the armed forces will increase the chance of civil wars and can be a threat to democracy.

As this is new to the armed forces, the exact consequences of short term recruiting is still not known.
But there are apprehensions that it will hamper the professional capabilities of the armed forces.
The government has to handle the high turnout of young soldiers and invest heavily on their training and increase the administrative setup.
The Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy employ their airmen and sailors in very specialised roles, which require technical skills, and a high degree of training and experience.
They form the backbone of the system that keeps the warships at sea, the fighter jets in the air, and high-tech weapons and platforms operational.
Because the short-term contractual soldier model (the Agniveer scheme) is going to take a few years to fully play out at an organisational level, the actual degradation of operational capability will only be known then.

Source The Hindu