Sep 1 Some weeks ago, the government announced a new scheme to recruit young men for our armed forces: Agnipath. This set off a wave of debate and protests and demands for it to be rolled back. I'm not sure that will happen, but there are questions that remain about Agnipath.
This scheme has a lot to do with something other countries are also grappling with: how do we pay pensions to an aging population? And that's what prompted this column I wrote, considering this issue via some numbers. An aging country considers its soldiers, https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/an-ageing-country-considers-its-soldiers-11661447080721.html Do let me know what you think. cheers, dilip PS: Aging? Ageing? I used the first in my draft (below), it got changed to the second in print and online. --- An aging country considers its soldiers What's one thing you can say with certainty about countries that "develop"? Meaning, broadly, countries that manage to raise their per capita income numbers? Probably many things, but what I'm getting at in asking that question is this: such countries grow older. That's because increasing wealth brings desirables like greater levels of education and healthcare, lower birth rates and longer lives lived. When you have relatively fewer people born, and if the people already born live healthier and longer lives, it's easy to see the result. In a nutshell, over time, you have fewer younger people, more older people. So with India. We talk about our "demographic dividend", meaning the large pool of youths in the working population, and it's real. But there are two ways to consider that. One, the young have always been a large fraction of India's population, meaning we've always had this demographic dividend. Two, this particular dividend is steadily eroding, because we are a steadily aging population. Here are just a few random figures to support this statement. Life expectancy rose from just over 40 at Independence to about 70 today. From 1971 to 2001, the fraction of our population aged 35-60 rose from 21.4% to 22.2%. If those seem like ancient history to you, I'm only tossing them out to show that India has been aging for decades. Still, you want more recent numbers, so consider what's happened between 2011 and now. Indians over 65 years of age were 5.17% of the population in 2011: that number has steadily risen to 6.78% last year. Indians under 14 have gone from 30.4% of the population in 2011 to 25.78% last year. Finally, there's our recently trumpeted Total Fertility Rate (TFR), the number of babies the average woman expects to produce in her lifetime. Trumpeted, because the TFR has dropped to just over 2 today, from nearly 6 at Independence. Less babies: fewer young people. For the TFR, 2 is considered a significant milestone, because it is "replacement level". If every couple produces two babies, they effectively replace themselves, no more. That means the population will stabilize. (Strictly, replacement level is taken as a TFR of 2.1, because some babies die. But let that be.) All these numbers, to underline the point that as India "develops" - a desirable goal, you'd think - we are also becoming an older society. That simple reality comes with various consequences that we have to find ways to cope with. Consider one of those. My father had a long and successful career in the IAS. When he retired at 58 in 1979, he was Secretary in a Central Ministry - that is, at nearly the top of the IAS hierarchy, of his profession. His salary then was Rs 3500 per month. It's an amount that seems almost laughable today, but in 1979, it meant something substantial. In retirement, the government gave him a pension. When he died in 2007, the pension transferred to my mother, at half the amount my father was getting. She started with Rs 16,500. Various cost-of-living and pay commission adjustments mean that 15 years later - and 43 years since my father retired - my mother's pension is just over Rs 100,000 a month. There's more, too. Before the IAS, my father spent three years in the Navy. By the time of his death, his pension for that service was Rs 17,000 a month. You might do some calculations to compare these increases to inflation; to find out how much my parents have cost the national exchequer; to know, too, that the pension has lasted 11 years more, already, than my father's entire career in the IAS. In any case, you might remember that this is how a nation chose long ago to thank my father and other Indians like him for their service. Perhaps you see where this is going. The government is concerned about the growing cost of pensions for our military personnel. Concern apart, why this growth? Precisely because India is aging, as detailed above, meaning more pensions must be paid, and for longer periods. I don't know how military pensions are decided, but I imagine it must be a similar calculation to pensions for bureaucrats like my father. Whatever it is, we are told that retirement benefits now account for over half the defence budget. We are told that this eats into our ability to buy advanced defence equipment. This concern has resulted in the recently-announced scheme to recruit soldiers, Agnipath. Under Agnipath, new recruits in a given year will serve four years in the forces. After that, 75% of that batch of recruits will be given a certain sum of money and asked to return to civilian life. The remaining 25% will continue in service, presumably till they retire, after which they will get pensions and other benefits as usual. This has been advertised as a way to prepare the forces for the new age of technological warfare, to give the nation's employers a steady stream of trained and patriotic young men. But there is that burgeoning pension bill. Agnipath has angered many young Indian men. They worry that their dreams of a long and honourable military career, and the subsequent generous lifelong benefits, have gone up in smoke. So I'd like to offer three perspectives here: One, retirement benefits are, again, how we chose long ago to thank Indians for their service to the country. In a time of flag-waving and calls to patriotism, surely such gratitude fits right in? Two, Finance and other Ministers have always pronounced that we will not compromise on defence spending. Then why compromise on pension payments? We are willing to spend on modern defence equipment. Let's be as willing to spend on taking care of our soldiers. Three, the best way to lessen military spending is to lessen the chance of war. Can we do the hard work - yes, it will be hard work - of bringing our neighbours to the table and negotiating an honourable, lasting peace? -- My book with Joy Ma: "The Deoliwallahs" Twitter: @DeathEndsFun Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Dilip's essays" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to dilips-essays+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dilips-essays/CAEiMe8q1j7MUkphHVU6bAOph1%3DoghhMNDo6q%2BNVu_RHssXNPFA%40mail.gmail.com.