(Dr. Shashi Tharoor is a two-time MP from
Thiruvananthapuram, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
External Affairs, the former Union Minister of State for External Affairs and
Human Resource Development and the former UN Under-Secretary-General. He has
written 14 books, including, most recently, Pax Indica: India and the World of
the 21st Century.)
New Year's Resolutions, it is said, are made to be broken. There's
something about a new dawn that inspires the earnestness of yearned-for virtue
in most of us, and we solemnly pledge to do this and that in the course of the
New Year which we never thought ourselves capable of fulfilling in the old. And
then, as the New Year turns less new, we tend to regret those rash resolutions,
modify them, ignore them, or most of all, simply forget them.
Our new government didn't wait for the New Year to make something
of a habit of breaking its promises, as a celebrated Congress Party publication
on the BJP's many U-turns pointed out in early December. To some degree, this
is unsurprising in most democracies: after all, as New York Governor Mario
Cuomo famously pointed out more than two decades ago, "you campaign in
poetry, but you govern in prose".
Extravagant campaign promises tend to look much more difficult to
fulfil when faced with the reality of government.
But still, it is something new to discover a government breaking a
promise that it has repeatedly made not just in its campaign but on the floor
of Parliament, expressed by the Finance Minister in his Budget speech and
repeated by the Prime Minister himself. A failure to fulfil such promises is
normally, in most parliamentary democracies, a resigning matter, but our
government carries on, blithely unconcerned. Meanwhile, of this particular
promise, there is no sign of any intention to actually fulfil it.
This entirely reasonable demand - made by people who have risked
their lives to protect our borders, our nation, and us - was acceded to by the
UPA government, echoed by the NDA, and announced again by the new regime after
its ascension to power. Barely two months ago, Prime Minister Modi declared
emotionally on his visit to the troops in Siachen that "One Rank One
Pension has been fulfilled".
It seems the Comptroller of Defence Accounts has estimated that
the cost of One Rank One Pension could be as high as 9,300 crore. It may sound
a lot, but the estimated budget for Mr Modi's much-vaunted statue of Sardar
Patel is 1,500 crore, which puts this sum in perspective.
At a recent media conclave, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar
hedged his bets, suggesting that ex-servicemen would get 80% of the promised
pension, and adding that "100% satisfaction to everyone is never given in
real life." This is an utter travesty. Is Mr Modi prepared to stand
before the nation and say that we should not believe anything he promises, but
that he will try to deliver 80% of it? If the Kargil war had happened on his
watch, would we have to be content with getting 80% of the heights back?
Our soldiers never make 80% effort; they give 100%, indeed more.
The nation owes them at least this much.
It is true I have a soft corner for our armed forces. I believe
they embody the best of what India can be, but so rarely is: they are motivated,
professional, meritocratic, competent, reliable, free of caste and religious
prejudice, and they take risks the rest of us would not dare to. Yet we treat
them in a disgracefully cavalier fashion.
During my UN peace-keeping years, when I dealt with a large number
of senior military officers and issues from around the world, I was appalled to
see how poorly our professional officers were valued by our self-regarding
bureaucracy.
Whereas our officers, man to man, outshone their counterparts from
Western militaries in their competence, intelligence and humanity, our system
subjected them to various petty indignities. A full Colonel with over 25 years
of service behind him is ranked by our babus below a Director in protocol
terms. I have suffered through peacekeeping seminars in which a knowledgeable
Indian military officer had to defer to a callow bureaucrat in discussions on
military matters. At a time when post-Cold War peacekeeping called for serious
levels of military expertise at the UN Headquarters in New York, India remained
the only Permanent Mission to the UN (of any major peace-keeping contributor)
not to post a military adviser. Our diplomats believed they knew it all
themselves.
This attitude extends to conditions of service across the board. A
Joint Secretary, with nineteen years of professional experience, is deemed the
equivalent of a Major-General, who not only has thirty years but has commanded
men and materiel, made life-and-death decisions and protected our nation. We
pay pensions to a lot more Joint Secretaries than Major-Generals (only 0.8% of
army officers ever attain Major General rank). Yet we are now quibbling about
the cost.
Who are the people we are cheating here by pinching pennies? Some
20 lakh ex-servicemen and four lakh widows. It is time to ask the Government of
Messrs Modi and Jaitley: gentlemen, have you no shame?
It is ironic that the BJP, which prides itself on a robust
attitude to defence, should betray its own promises to the men who actually
defend our country. Building a War Memorial is symbolism, which the Modi
government seems much better at than substance. Actually making a difference in
the lives of our retired service personnel is the kind of tangible benefit this
government shrinks from too often.
As far back as 2003, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on
Defence recommended One Rank One Pension, calling it "a debt" the
nation had to pay. It is a debt our Government must honour. Not to do so is an
act of dishonor. It dishonours the nation and the flag these men have fought to
defend. And it thoroughly discredits those who would treat the well-being of
our jawans and officers as one more election promise to be lightly cast aside.
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Story First Published by NDTV: December
31, 2014 16:06 IST
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