It's not pay - it's a question of status.

Lt Gen HS Bagga (Retd), former Director General (Personnel) in the Army and co-author of the Ajay Vikram Singh (AVS) Committee report on restructuring the Army officer cadre, tells Aditi Phadnis why the men in uniform are not happy.

The government has taken two important HR steps to address the problems of defence personnel. It has announced some financial breaks in the Sixth Pay Commission report, and it has accepted recommendations of the AVS Committee relating to promotions. Are you satisfied?
Let’s take the AVS committee first. A few recommendations have been accepted, but most haven’t.

The government has agreed to create and fill additional vacancies of selection grade officers ranging from Colonel to Lieutenant General. It has also agreed to reduce, for purposes of promotion, the number of years in service put in by officers of the rank of Captain and Major. The Lieutenant Colonel was earlier a selection grade rank given after 16 to 17 years. It has now been made a time-based rank after 13 years. The government needs to be complimented for this decision.

But the most important recommendation which could have been a permanent solution to HR issues — making the Short Service Commission (SSC) the prime entry system into the Army — has not been accepted.

When you join the Army, you have the option of making a permanent career of it or leaving it after a fixed tenure. SSC is not an attractive proposition for youngsters today as it does not provide them a full career. After serving for a short tenure, their rehabilitation is the central issue. The report suggests that they be trained for another profession while they are in service.
At this point, we take in 1,000 regular commission and 500 SSC. This ratio, it was suggested, should be reversed as the utility of an officer is felt the most at the junior level. We don’t need so many senior officers because the Army follows a hierarchical system — a steep pyramid, if you like, having a large number of junior officers and very few senior officers

The problem is that all junior officers are extremely capable and it is very difficult to overlook them for promotion if they stay in the system.We need officers to peel off after 12-15 years of service. This can be achieved and more SSC appointed if we do the following:

Pay Rs 1 lakh for every year of service (because these officers will not be entitled to pension, for which the minimum service needed is 20 years).

Give two years’ study leave before the end of the tenure so that they can find an appropriate alternative career.

Relax the age norms for the UPSC exam so that these officers can take the central services examination.

Make Military Science a subject in the UPSC and allow them to take only four subjects in the examination.

Transfer them laterally to paramilitary forces as an alternative career.

Till the SSC is effective, the age profile of our Army will not change.

What happens today? Today, 1,000 officers join as permanent commissioned officers and all 1,000 are in the reckoning for promotions. We promote approximately 400 out of 1,000 as Colonels every year. The rest are superseded as there are no vacancies. If there are only 500 in the reckoning, hardly anyone will be left out.

You cannot lower the age profile overnight. In the interim, we had suggested five steps:
Additional selection grade vacancies — Col and above — which the government has done. This will bring the age profile down for a few years.

Allow officers to undertake any course in any university at the Army’s cost, while being considered on duty.

Provide paid vocational training or study leave without asking the officer to do residual service.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is ready to take Army officers but they say they must be trained. So the government could attach superseded officers with any industrial house at the Army’s cost.

An attractive Voluntary Service Severance Scheme that encourages superseded officers to leave after 20 years of service to start their own venture.

So what has the government done?What they’ve done is accepted the recommendation to create additional vacancies across all ranks, without creating the peel-off effect as suggested. This is shortsighted, because it just postpones the problem that will have to be faced again four or five years hence.

We’ve heard the views of the Chiefs on the Sixth Pay Commission. There is a feeling that whatever you give them, the services are always whining.This is not true. The Chiefs are not asking for additional salary — it is a question of status. Successive Pay Commissions have succeeded only in elevating the status of civil, police and paramilitary forces. In the 1960s, the Raghuramiah Committee had recommended the Army be equated with the IPS. Okay, we said. But over the years, the police have been upgrading their senior ranks, so the senior ranks in the Army are automatically downgraded. For example, in the Warrant of Precedence pre-1947, the head of the police in a state, that is, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), was equal to a Brigadier. Post-1947, an IGP became equal to a Major General. This obtained till the mid 1970s. Today a Director General of Police draws a salary higher than a Lieutenant General, because successive Pay Commissions have increased his salary to match a Lt General’s. Is this justified?
Status today in the Order of Precedence is equated with the salary, or the pay band in which one is located. The Sixth Pay Commission has fixed four pay bands. The civil and paramilitary forces including those working in Army Headquarters who were junior or equal to a Lt Col have been placed in pay band 3, whereas a Lt Col has been placed in pay band 4. We have a large number of Lieutenant Colonels. While their status has not been lowered, the status of other officers has been raised higher than them. This can create operational problems.

Let me give you an example. We have a Lt Gen commanding troops in the north-east which comprises several small states. He handles counterinsurgency operations. Each state has a DG police who was earlier drawing less pay than a Lt Gen and was required to attend all the meetings called by the Lt Gen to coordinate operations among several states. However, ever since the pay of DG Police was raised higher than that of a Lt Gen, they are reluctant to attend such meetings. If the Service Chiefs have voiced their concerns on these two issues should it be taken as an affront ?

This is not the only issue. Earlier Persons Below Officer Rank (PBOR) drew 75 per cent of their pay as pension. Normally a person’s pension is calculated on the basis of the last pay drawn, whereas in the case of PBOR it is calculated on the basis of the highest pay scale of the rank he was holding: for example, a Sepoy may have drawn Rs 3,700 per month at the time of his retirement, but if the highest grade in a sepoy’s salary was Rs 4,700, it was on Rs 4,700 that his pension was calculated. This actually worked out to a pension of nearly 75 per cent. The Sixth Pay Commission has reduced this to 50 per cent, on the ground that the soldier will be entitled to serve in the paramilitary forces after they leave the Army. The problem is, the second part is not happening. So the Chiefs are saying: give them their original pension.

We should not look at this as a problem of the defence forces. We should see it as a national problem.
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