Rank injustice

OROP. One Rank, One Pension. The frenzy at Jantar Mantar has reached such a fever pitch that each day its formal announcement is delayed by the government, the chances of one or more deaths by hunger strike increase. The fast-unto-death by Col. Pushpender Singh (Retd) and Havildar Major Singh (Retd), and joined by Havildar Ashok Chauhan a day later, entered its ninth day on Tuesday.

A grim scenario, but this was a doomsday scenario furthest from anyone’s mind back on that dusty Hayana afternoon on September 15, 2013, when Narendrabhai Damodardas Modi, the outsider from Gujarat, bulldozed his way into the national political scene as a Prime Minister presumptive, with a mammoth public gathering at Rewari, including a large number of veterans, and demanded, amongst other issues, a white paper on OROP. He pledged to the assembled veterans that if returned to power, he would ensure that this longstanding demand was fulfilled. Well, the wheel has turned a full circle, and now it’s payback time. Time to fulfil election pledges, made perhaps in the heat of the moment, but made nonetheless, and as such to be redeemed.

All Central government servants can serve up to 62 years of age, the only exception being the defence forces, whose retirement is rank and age based, from 18 years of service for a person below officer rank to 60 years of age for a lieutenant general. Given the average age at entry for officers and jawans, around 20, large numbers of fully fit individuals are released into civilian life at the median age of 40 years, without many viable options for a second career.

So where does OROP enter into this dismal equation? Simple — costs of living are rocketing and the soldier of today is finding it difficult to make ends meet for himself and his dependents. Pension is based on last pay drawn at the time of retirement. But yesterday’s soldier, now a pensioner, is even worse off because the pension of his rank in his time is much lower both in amount as well as value than that of his present day counterpart. Periodic upwards revisions of dearness allowance have proved inadequate.

Weather-beaten old military veterans have periodically gone through the gesture of returning their medals to their supreme commander, the President of India, to register their protest against official apathy in the matter of OROP, a feeble flapping of wings by an irrelevant group which barely makes any ripples in the official domain, including the present one, except momentarily when some political scion decides to buy into the opportunity of the moment and lands up at the site to express a fleeting “solidarity” with a cause he is totally unfamiliar with.

It provides him a whirlwind photo-op from which some fleeting political benefit can be squeezed out. The effect may soon dissipate in the heat of Delhi sun, but it does serve as a small, perhaps miniscule, reminder to the graceless national leadership of the continuing dissatisfaction and unhappiness of a forgotten community.

A career in the armed forces is a steeplechase, with water hazards galore, and many, both officers as well as personnel below officer rank (PBOR), fall at the first hurdle itself. The OROP agitation has taken on a life of its own, and it is inevitable that there would be a certain amount of negative reaction within the armed forces. But outwardly the “fauj” has maintained total impassivity, though their silence should be deafening in its own context. Soldiers of the present generation are no longer traditional stereotype of dull-witted yokels — they are intelligent, highly trained, highly skilled craftsmen in a deadly trade, ardent nationalists, not mercenaries or contract soldiers fighting for pay. The government has (again!) come out with its amazing stock in trade statements: (a) the government does not have the resources to grant OROP, (variously calculated to be between Rs 5,000 and Rs 9,000 crore); (b) if granted to ex-servicemen, the public sector, the paramilitary forces and the civil establishment would also want the same. Both issues can be dealt with separately, perhaps on another occasion.

Meanwhile, the veterans have rapidly adapted to the prevalent customs of the strange world outside the service — meetings at Jantar Mantar, processions, slogans, fasts and even intended self-immolation. All this is very alien to their traditional environment, and many within the community are themselves uncomfortable with it. In their own time, they constituted the “Ultima ratio regis” — the king’s last argument, India’s last resort when all else has failed, and they have the track record to prove it. That’s why, it is the possible longer-term implications of such agitations which should be of concern to present and future governments — its effects on the serving soldiers, sailors and airmen, including their officers, who constitute the rigidly disciplined world of the defence forces.

The relationship between the serving soldiers and their veteran forebears is umbilical, and their perceptions and values fundamentally identical. The OROP agitation by ex-servicemen presents a complex paradox of service values and ethos impacted by the realities of the world outside the services. At this stage, all that can be said is that matters are seriously wrong and require that they be looked into.

The OROP movement by ex-servicemen is perhaps not a desirable development, but then there is no other credible, alternate method of drawing the government’s attention to an intrinsically social issue. Meanwhile, the post-Ufa meeting between the national security advisers of India and Pakistan has been cancelled by Pakistan in the face of India’s refreshing firmness not to discuss any aspect of Kashmir with its permanently hostile neighbour. So be glad India, that you have one of the finest armed forces in the world, on land, sea and air. Look after them, even pamper them somewhat, but above all, be thankful, because if you have to call upon them they will be there.

The writer is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former member of Parliament