The exact same thing can represent very different things to different people. Consider a birthday cake, with lit candles on top, surrounded by a curious bunch of kids, impatient for the main character of the day. For kids, the cake represents celebration and is a satisfying mouthful of sweet umami. The cake revenue for the bakery that supplied it and the number of workers it has to justify employing. For one nutritionist, taking a depressing look at the unhealthy obesity of most of the attendees, cake represents the kind of sugar overdose that should be reduced, if not eliminated, from children’s diets. To the cultural nationalist, willow candle flames represent the mingling of traditions with imported practices.
For the government, the Agneepath scheme is the key to the modernization of the Indian Armed Forces. China, India’s strategic rival in the region, spends $200 billion more on its armed forces than India’s estimated $67 billion. An increasing portion of India’s defense budget is claimed by pensions. As military capability increasingly depends on technological sophistication and the ability to bring together diverse resources—from synthetic-aperture radar to satellite intelligence, remote-operated drones, long-range artillery, human intelligence and precision ammunition, with planned logistics If India continues dedicating larger and larger portions of its relatively small defense budget to pensions, it will put its armed forces at a greater disadvantage.
But for India’s youth, Agneepath represents a key way to close the door to securing jobs. India’s unemployment rate is rising and is pegged at 7.2% in May, down from the 7.83% the Indian economy monitored in April. The government disputes these figures, but the Office for National Statistics’ periodic labor force survey also shows an unemployment rate of 8.2% in January–March 2022.
Now, employment figures in India are not entirely reliable. Labor force includes those who are available for work, i.e. either on the job or looking for work. The labor force participation rate is the ratio of the labor force to the working age population who are over 15 years old but below 65 years of age. The unemployment rate is the proportion of people seeking work in the labor force. Now, a strange thing about India is that its labor force participation rate is steadily decreasing. It was 47% in 2016, already low for the young population, and just 40% in December 2021. It is 68% in China and 58% in Bangladesh. The figure for women in India is less than 20%. It is entirely conceivable that these figures hide the true state of unemployment in India. Many people who are not even included in the official labor force may be working or even fully prepared to work. There are economists who argue strongly that women’s participation rates are underestimated.
Another problem is the extent of unemployment in India – rural, in particular, agricultural work, acting as a sink that few businesses provide. Among those who are now taking to the streets against Agneepath, there may be many who are considered officially employed, as they can help with the family farm, but are looking for formal sector jobs. They are ardent job seekers, even if not officially unemployed.
Unemployment is over 20% in prosperous states, but just 0.7% in Chhattisgarh. In places where people live on the margins of subsistence, one cannot afford to be unemployed. This makes low unemployment rates a sign of economic stress, not welfare.
The undeniable thing is that there is a huge shortage of good jobs in India.
India seeks strategic autonomy by being able to chart its own course in world affairs, without succumbing to any other power. This requires strategic capability.
India needs to develop its economy, especially in the areas of technology, securing an increasing share of output in the form of taxes and allocating more money for defence. If the enemy can deploy supercomputers and artificial intelligence to break into your code, you may need quantum computing and encryption in your toolkit, in addition to main battle tanks. In an ideal world, there would be neither a constraint on the defense budget nor a need for large defense outlays. In the world we really live in, India needs more money for its armed forces and better ways to spend it, to improve the to-to-tail ratio – more state-of-the-art weapons and less infantry and ‘Batman’.
Agneepath is designed to significantly reduce pension expenses. If most enlisted personnel leave after four years without pension benefits, the Armed Forces will have a young combat force in peak physical condition and no pension obligation except for a small contingent of officers and soldiers who serve for 15 years. continue. India will also have a large stock of trained people who can be called upon to serve in an emergency.
Given the apparent fit of Agneepath reform into the larger plan to modernize the armed forces, why are young people on a war path against it? Don’t accuse him of being a traitor.
Since colonial times, Indians have valued the government job: it provided a guarantee of service, a guaranteed pension, and good working conditions. The pace of economic development of independent India has not particularly eroded this culture. Most of the private sector jobs are in the informal sector, with indefinite tenure, low income and no pension. Therefore, the Armed Forces and Railways are very lucrative career options for most Indians: getting a government job with good pay and pension. Agneepath turned out the armed forces as a beacon of light in the world of employment. Now only the railway is left.
If India had a vibrant job market, it would have lost the opportunity to risk its neck on hard borders or fierce woodlands where rebellious rebels are ambushed, more so than it apparently does.
India must fix its power sector, so that food-processing industries can move into rural areas, create jobs and encourage farmers to produce more, build new cities to engage migrants in city jobs To build other infrastructure, to improve the quality of education. Invest in healthcare at all levels. This will create employment and youth of India will become employable.
Until then, all a government can do, when it initiates significant, inevitable reforms of the Agneepath type, is to better communicate the benefits to the nation and provide mixed incentives to make change more enjoyable.
The government should sympathize with the protesters, but should not back down from Agneepath. India needs to find more funds for modernization of the armed forces, from within the allocation that India already has for defence.