In the Indian countryside, some of them wear shorts and white vests, and they run on the road in groups in the early morning or late at night. The hard work of physical fitness is nothing more than to one day obtain the "iron rice bowl" of the army. However, the Indian military last week launched the Road to Fire new recruitment program, which drastically cut long-term military positions and turned recruits into short-term contracts for four years. This shattered the dreams of a large number of rural youth as the only way out, triggering demonstrations and riots throughout the country, reflecting that India's economy is in dire straits, employment is grim, and young people can only cry out in despair.
Originally, military service in India was 17 years, and all veterans were entitled to a lifetime pension. However, according to the new conscription plan, a large number of long-term positions in the military will be replaced by four-year contract soldiers. The goal of the "Path to Fire" is to recruit 45,000 to 50,000 young people aged 17.5 to 23 years into the army, and only 25% of soldiers can be renewed for 15 years after completing half and three and a half years of service, and "abandoned generals" who are not renewed will not receive pensions.
In India, where the economy is sluggish and the gap between rich and poor is severe, the work of well-paid and well-paid military personnel is regarded as an "iron rice bowl", so joining the military has become the goal of many young Indians. In the poorer northern regions, there are many private institutions that provide "chicken elite classes" for young people to help them prepare for the army.
The source of conscription in India is from rural areas, and for young people in rural areas, joining the army is one of the few viable employment options. In addition to the ideal salary and welfare of military personnel, the social status is also good. The military in the eyes of the Indian people does not have the same corrupt impression as other government officials.
Their concerns are justified. Young people in northern villages such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana see the military as their main source of employment. It gives them prestige, good marriage opportunities, job security and a good pension. So it's a huge change for them. Retired Air Force pilot Vishnu Unnithan told the media Onmanorama.
India's working-age population, which has more than 1 million people entering the working age every month, is clearly underemployed, with the country's unemployment rate reaching 7.7% this month, and India's working-age population has fallen to just under half of the workforce.
Over the past two years, India has suspended recruiting because of the epidemic, but the large number of young people who are waiting for it is now receiving such bad news. Pramod Kumar, 20, told THE VOICE OF AMERICA: "I have worked hard in the past three years to join the military, and if I succeed in getting a recruitment, I hope to be a long-term worker with a guarantee of 20 to 30 years." I don't want to be forced to retire after 4 years or lose my job again.
The Indian Army currently has a total strength of about 1.4 million, the second largest in the world, after China (more than 2 million); Military spending in 2021 will reach $76.6 billion (about), ranking third in the world, a sharp increase of 33% from a decade ago. The Indian Army is a professional army that recruits between 50,000 and 60,000 young people every year. Ordinary soldiers can serve until the age of 50, work long and stable, and enjoy a generous pension after retirement. Moreover, conscription is not strict for caste classes, and even lower castes can join the army. Moreover, even the lowest-ranking soldiers are paid two or three times the salary of the general low-caste workers, so joining the army has become the hope of low-caste young people.
However, this class inequality will not be eliminated by entering the army. In the military, low-caste soldiers often have difficulty entering the ranks of officers above the school level, and often engage in the hardest, worst, and most dangerous jobs, but based on the military's good welfare and guaranteed income, it is still a dream "advantage" for low-caste people. The indian army's main source of soldiers is also low-caste soldiers, which explains why the participants in the area where the demonstrations broke out were poorer.
In Bihar, about eighty percent of the population is engaged in agriculture, and young boys from rural areas are eager to enter the army. Garav Kumar Singh, 19, and 20 boys in the village often train ten kilometers together: in the countryside, if you can become a soldier, your social and economic status will change immediately. You can have a good marriage, you can easily borrow a mortgage, and you can have a stable income to help your family. For rural families in Bihar, the army is the lifelong guarantee of the whole family.
Although "joining the army to make a living" is the "popular consensus", this mentality is obviously not conducive to building a fighting army. Therefore, there is no shortage of support for this conscription reform in the government. Ved Prakash Malik, india's former army chief of staff, described: "The army is a volunteer force, not a welfare institution." On the other hand, recruiting military personnel on short-term contracts is even more unprofessional and difficult to build a sense of cooperation and mission.
Among the military powers, India has the highest proportion of its defense budget on personnel costs, with up to 59% of expenditure on military salaries and pensions, which is higher than that of the United Kingdom (about 30%) and the United States (about 38%) who have always been generous with military personnel; Only 25% of the military equipment is spent, which is lower than the traditional military powers such as the United States (35%), China (41%), Russia (33%), and the United Kingdom (42%), which shows that even if India's military expenditure is huge and the degree of modernization is low, it is obviously unable to promote the upgrading of weapons and equipment.
On the other hand, India's per capita expenditure (including salary, equipment and training expenditure) on active duty is also low, with only $43,000 per capita spending per year, compared with $522,000 in the United States and $129,000 in China, a significant gap. It can be seen that although the Indian army is built with manpower, it is completely inferior in equipment and training.
The Modi government introduced the reforms, nominally to rejuvenate the military, but analysis believes that another more important purpose is to cut spending, especially the ballooning military pension, which now accounts for half of India's defense spending.
Moreover, based on the fact that india has not been at war for many years, the army is also in a state of "pampering" to some extent, and the obesity problem of soldiers and older officers is even criticized. As mentioned above, India's expenditure on each soldier is actually not as good as that of a military power, and the food and exercise in the military are not ideal. In 2016, a sample survey of 767 soldiers found that one-third of them had overweight problems, and the following year, it was reported that the authorities had questioned the military's combat ability, and the military adopted a "zero tolerance" policy for the obesity of soldiers, and set the waist circumference as a key factor in promotion, and all military personnel had to pass the "obesity assessment" every year.
In fact, the Modi government has pushed up military pensions for votes, in fact, this can also be blamed on the Modi government itself, in 2015, because of the election commitments, significantly increased the pensions of veterans, and launched a regular adjustment program to protect military pensions from inflation. In that year, many high-ranking military officers staged demonstrations in New Delhi demanding an increase in pensions, gaining popular support. Moreover, Modi's People's Party at that time was facing elections in Bihar, which has a population of 100 million, is one of the poorest and most populous states in India, and is certainly the main "vote bank" for Modi's rural population (rural youth are also mainly military sources). Welfare is distributed to the military, so it is also suspected of affecting voters.
However, this reform 7 years ago has placed a heavy burden on the government's military expenditure, and Modi is now opening a knife in the recruitment of soldiers, hoping to curb the crazy expansion of military pension expenses, causing a backlash in the rural population and the anger of the youth.