Reported By:
| Edited By: |Source: DNA |Updated: Sep 08, 2015, 09:28 AM IST
The manner in which the government was compelled to announce the One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme after retired armed forces personnel took the agitational route sends out a dangerous, if unintended, signal to other protesting groups.
Rather than implement electoral promises and assuage grievances proactively, governments develop a habit of complacency and are stirred out of their slumber only when push comes to shove. The veterans’ success in extracting their longstanding demand for OROP will not be lost on those powerful caste groupings demanding reservation benefits or on the several other interest groups organised around regional, religious and class identities which have the potential to hold the State to ransom. We saw it in evidence during the 2011 anti-corruption protests when civil society lost its patience over the 45-year-long complicity of the political class in delaying the Lokpal Bill and launched a powerful protest movement under Anna Hazare’s leadership. The country witnessed the unedifying sight of the political leadership and the central government losing its nerve and roping in the civil society actors into a drafting committee to frame the Lokpal Bill — ceding Parliament’s supremacy in the legislative domain. It is another matter that the present government is yet to constitute the Lokpal and could be creating fresh ground for another round of turmoil.
Though the OROP announcement is broadly in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s electoral promises, the veterans are driving a hard bargain. They want the base year for calculation of pensions to be 2014, while the government has pegged it at 2013. They also want pensions to be revised every two years instead of the government’s offer to bridge the gap between current and past pensioners every five years. To ensure that pensioners who retired at the same rank and with the same years of service get the same pension, the government has offered to fix the pension as the average of the maximum and minimum pensions at 2013 levels. However, the veterans want the pension re-fixed at the maximum pensions drawn in 2013. The veterans are also unhappy with the one-member judicial commission to review the OROP implementation. Instead, they want a five-member committee comprising three ex-servicemen, a serving armed force personnel, and a civilian official from the defence ministry. These are mere technicalities that can be sorted out, considering that the major stumbling block – the government’s hesitation to accept the core demand of one rank one pension for same years of service in view of the fiscal burden — has been overcome.
The veterans’ pessimism despite their hard-fought victory reveals a trust deficit with the civilian leadership in the defence ministry. It is significant that none less than PM Modi had to step in and cool tempers over the last-minute insertion of a clause in defence minister Manohar Parrikar’s announcement that personnel who “voluntarily retire” will not be covered under the OROP scheme. While the defence ministry said this was introduced to prevent mass premature retirements after the Seventh Pay Commission awards are announced, this has firmed up the veterans’ fears that the OROP scheme could still get subverted. This distrust is evident in the veterans withdrawing their hunger strike but refusing to completely call off their protest. What remains of the OROP proposal after the withdrawal of the exception clause for premature retirees is a really generous offer from a government that is extremely conscious of the ballooning of the non-plan expenditure of the State. The veterans could do incalculable damage to their cause and the government’s credibility by delaying the scheme.
Politicians on their part should learn the art of engaging with protests and defusing political threats before they become full-blown crises.
