Written By Darshan M (Grade 10)
Agnipath is a new scheme introduced by the Government of India to recruit soldiers to the Indian Army. Right now the average age of our Indian Army is 32 years which eventually lead our government to launch this scheme to hire new young soldiers. No recruitment has taken place in the Indian Army for the last two years because of the pandemic. On average every year Indian Armed forces recruits 60,000 people.
This scheme proposes the idea of selecting young and ambitious people between 17.5 – 21 years and these joinees will be called “Agniveers”. These age criteria had been raised to 23 years for the first year after implementation.
This will be a slot between officers and jawans categories. According to the scheme, Agniveers will have to undergo a training process for initial six months, followed by active services for the next 3.5 years.
Extra training will be provided for Navy and Air Force recruits. According to the scheme plan by the government, in the first phase, they will recruit 46,000 new Agniveers, and eventually, after 4 years this number will grow to 59,000.
The Agniveers will be paid on a monthly basis, where in their first year they will receive Rs 30,000 out of which Rs 21,000 will be given to them and the rest RS 9,000 will be deposited to the Agniveer Corpus Fund. After four years of service, Agniveers will earn interest on their deposit earning 11.71 Lakh as Seva Nidhi Package, In addition, insurance worth 48 Lakh will be provided by the government.
If we consider the benefits and schemes provided to Agniveers on paper there are more benefits as compared to the old schemes proposed by the government.
No recruitment has taken place in the Indian Army for the last two years because of the pandemic and soldiers who were 21 years old in 2020 feel that this Agnipath Scheme is a missed opportunity. The reason why people are upset is that they feel that they have wasted two years of their life and now the scheme has also changed.
Whatever happens, when a scheme is passed in the parliament by the government they would have gone through various series of debates and discussions to come to a conclusion.
Featured Image Courtesy – The Quint