A younger military was the centrepiece of the government’s Agnipath pitch when it launched the scheme four years ago.
“It will enhance the youthful profile of the armed forces and provide them a fresh lease of ‘josh’ (enthusiasm) and ‘jazba’ (passion). It is envisaged that average age profile of Indian armed forces would come down by 4-5 years by implementation of this scheme,” the defence ministry said at the time.
The government has effectively reversed the Agnipath scheme’s most defining feature: short-term service intended to maintain a youthful military profile. “You require a mix of youth, technology, and maturity. “It makes little sense to let trained personnel go and then invest in training a fresh batch. “Both the government and armed forces have a unanimous view that the scheme has been extremely successful. Whatever benefits we were expecting, we got all those benefits. If we are to achieve Viksit Bharat, we must move with flexibility, adapting to society’s needs and incorporating changes happening in the world’s systems and environment — including changes in warfare methods,” the minister added.
The shift from releasing 75% of Agniveers after four years to retaining all of them for full-term service marks a sharp departure from the original plan. Only young men and women aged between 17-and-a-half and 21 are eligible for recruitment under the scheme.
The move to retain all Agniveers addresses concerns within the armed forces over losing personnel trained for specialised roles, military affairs expert Lieutenant General DS Hooda (retd) said. Also Read I Cabinet gives Agniveers two-year service extension, announces CDS The evaluation of Agnipath was part of the scheme, Vaishnaw said. Chief of Defence Staff General NS Raja Subramani on Wednesday said that one of the principal reasons for the rethink was that the character of warfare has changed in the last few years. The changes meet the requirement of the armed forces, both in terms of having a youthful, motivated force, as well as having a mature and technology-enabled force,” he said at a joint cabinet briefing on Wednesday with Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
