Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Grievances of armed forces‏ by Maj PM Ravindran ..Pune

The report 'Govt revises disability, war injury pensions' made shocking reading. Particularly the claim that 'with this decision, the Govt has addressed most of the grievances of the armed forces'. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, there are plenty of problems that have never ever been brought to light and it is the awareness of the deceit of the decision makers that had made the leaders of the Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement (IESM for short) restrict the priority needs to just four. The practice earlier had been to list out all the problems and the decision makers would address the most insignificant of them all and go to town claiming that most of the problems had been addresed. And this is what has happened now also, as is evident from your report. The IESM has been protesting at Jantar Mantar since 16 Dec 2008 (Vijay Diwas, commemorating the victory in Bangladesh!) and the four crucial issues that are being pursued are: One Rank, One Pension; lateral employment of ex-servicemen in central police and paramilitary organisations, constitution of a National Commission for Ex-Servicemen to address their problems on the lines of womens commission and minority commission and lastly, including an ESM representative in all committees/commissions/bodies where decisions impacting on the interests of the ESM community are being made. This should also include the central pay commissions. It goes without saying that none of these issues have been addressed or resolved till date. Worse, the present government has made matters worse.

The issue of One Rank, One Pension has been hanging fire for the last over quarter of a century. So there is no gainsaying that all aspects of this demand would have been studied in details before the Congress party included it as a promise in its election manifesto on 2004. Now not only have they gone back on this promise but even made a mess of the 6th central pay commission recommendations, forcing the most reluctant veteran community to take to the streets protesting against the rampant discriminations that have become manifest even to the most gullible of soldiers. In the matter of lateral employment, while the 6th CPC recommendation has not been implemented, what should have been implemented after this recommendation had been implemented was implemented post haste. That is, once lateral employment was ensured the notional extra weightage given for pensions was to be done away with, but the government without implementing lateral employment did away with the weightage thus substantially reducing the pensions of soliders who have retired at the prime age of 35 to 37 years and were thrown into destitution. Though the National Commission for ESM has been accepted in principle nothing concrete has materialised. And the very fair demand of having a representative in all decision making bodies concernig ESM welfare does not even seem to have been registered as the recent constitution of two committees to sort out the anomalies in the implementation of the 6th CPC recommendations seem to suggest.

It is necessary that the media, and through them the public at large, also learnt of the treason being perpetuated by the present government. This is in the matter of creating rift between officers and personnel below officer's rank (PBOR). As has been brought out earlier the government is yet to implement the lateral employment scheme for PBOR. But recently the government approved time scale promotion to officers with 15 years of service to the rank of Colonel. While this is a very much required decision, because police officers who were equivalent to Majors earlier had been already sporting the badges of rank of Colonels after completing just abut 10 years of service, the very concept of time scale promotion to Colonels had been introduced just about 5 years back. Based on Bagga Committee recommendations this was then introduced at 25 years of service. Later it was brought down to 20 years and for this reason alone the issue of bringing it down to 15 years was not on the priority list of the demands. But this has now been accepted only to show that the present agitation by IESM, led ably by retired Lt General Kadyan and his team, is only meant for the welfare of officers. This is the same game that politicians have been playing through trade unions to make or break enterprises. But unfortunately when it comes to the armed forces and its veterans this dangerous game is loaded with security concerns and the morale of the armed forces personnel. It is important that right thinking citizens understand it and call the bluff before it is too late.

Yours truly

Maj (Retd) P M Ravindran
2/18, 'Aathira', Sivapuri