In a village on the edge of Jhunjhunu, the most rigorous selection board in India does not sit at a regimental centre. It sits on a charpai under a neem tree, and it is chaired by the father of a marriageable girl. He does not ask about the boy’s 1.6 km timing or his firing scores. He asks one question, with the patience of a seasoned interrogator: “Pakki naukri hai, ya Agniveer?” (Does the boy have a permanent job, or is he an Agniveer?)
For four years, that question has been the real review committee of the Agnipath scheme. On November 4, the Union Cabinet finally submitted its answer. To understand why it took so long, one must first understand the village.
Fauji ka Beta hai
For a boy with a Class 10 or 12 certificate in Haryana, Rajasthan, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh or Jammu and Kashmir, the army is not merely employment. It is respect without a bribe, and a clean salary that climbs to around a lakh a month by the time he retires as a Subedar, when the open market offers the same boy a fraction of that. In the city, a job is what you do. In the village, it is who you are. And no title in rural India carries quite the weight of four words said with a straight back: “fauji ka beta hai.”
In the city, a job is what you do. In the village, it is who you are.
It is a tradition older than independence. It is the grandfather who fought in 1971 and the chacha who still walks to the mandi with a fauji chaal. It is the village where every second house has a photograph in uniform on the wall, garlanded on the right days. Ask a boy here why he wants to join the military, and he will rarely say patriotism. He will say “ghar mein sab fauj mein hain”, which is patriotism with its sleeves rolled up.
And it is folklore, carried home on leave and retold at every chaupal. The family quarter, the unit mela, the canteen, the CO who knew every jawan’s village by name. The mother who keeps her son’s first letter from the regimental centre in a steel trunk. The whole village that turns out, silent and upright, when a son comes home wrapped in the Tiranga. Here the army is not an institution. It is a relative.
So, the boys prepare as a joint venture of the whole village: pull-ups on the mango branch at dawn, a GK booklet at the tea stall by noon, shoes polished for a uniform not yet issued.
Granite in 2022
Into this world, on June 14, 2022, arrived Agnipath. It promised a younger, fitter, tech-savvy force. Four years of service, a tax-free Seva Nidhi of about ₹11.71 lakh, and a warm send-off for the 75 per cent who would return to society as disciplined and motivated youth. Society, it was assumed, was waiting with open arms. Society, it turned out, was waiting with questions, most of them asked loudly at the village chaupal.
The government’s reasons were not frivolous. Defence pensions consume close to a quarter of the defence budget, and every rupee spent on pensions is a rupee not spent on drones, guns or submarines. On a spreadsheet, a shorter commitment made perfect sense. But the village does not read spreadsheets. It heard only one number, and that number was four.
Railway coaches burned in Bihar. Veterans wrote anguished columns and were told they did not understand modern warfare. Those who asked whether a four-year soldier could master a modern weapon system were gently dismissed as nostalgic. A serving Lieutenant General, then Additional Secretary in the Department of Military Affairs, faced the cameras, defended the scheme and appealed to the youth to end their agitation. The stone, everyone was told, was granite.
The boys joined anyway, because that is what such boys do. And when the Agniveer came home on leave, the village did not quite know what to call him. The old men said fauji. The aunties at the handpump said ‘Agniveer ji’, with a small pause before the ‘ji’. On the border, he was a soldier. In the village, he was a probationer.
Clay in 2026
This week, the Chief of Defence Staff, General N S Raja Subramani, announced that the 75 per cent not retained will now be offered a second engagement of two years on enhanced pay. After six years, all willing Agniveers may be enrolled as regular soldiers, subject to objective selection criteria. The four-year entry stays. The 25 per cent merit retention stays. The scheme, we are assured, has not been discontinued. It was simply, as the CDS put it, never ‘set in stone’.
One must admire the geology. The granite of 2022 has turned out to be soft clay, kept moist all along for future shaping.
The Chief of Defence Staff, General N S Raja Subramani, announced that the 75% of Agniveers not retained will now be offered a second engagement of two years on enhanced pay. After six years, all willing Agniveers may be enrolled as regular soldiers, subject to objective selection criteria
So, what has changed? One variable: the criterion. In 2022, the decision was taken on a spreadsheet. In 2026, it is being taken on an electoral map, and on that map one state glows brighter than the rest. Uttar Pradesh votes in early 2027. UP’s Deputy Chief Minister has welcomed it
What Moved, and What Did Not
Let us do what any staff officer does: list the factors, then see which ones moved.
The pension bill has not shrunk. The need for seasoned soldiers on the LAC and the LoC has not changed. A recruit takes years to become a soldier, and years more to become the man a section commander trusts at 3 am on a frozen ridge. The age profile debate has not been settled. Technical training still cannot be compressed.
So, what has changed? One variable: the criterion. In 2022, the decision was taken on a spreadsheet. In 2026, it is being taken on an electoral map, and on that map one state glows brighter than the rest. Uttar Pradesh votes in early 2027, and from Meerut to Ballia, from the Doab to the Terai and up into the hills of Uttarakhand, recruitment is woven into family life. Within hours of the announcement, UP’s Deputy Chief Minister welcomed it. Nobody under the neem tree was surprised by the speed.
The Rank of the Messenger
Notice, too, who carried the news. In 2022, the scheme was defended before the cameras by an Additional Secretary. In 2026, the revision was explained to the nation by the Chief of Defence Staff himself. Call it a review or call it a rethink; the rank of the messenger has risen in step with the size of the turn.
This is a pattern worth noticing. When a policy is unpopular, it acquires the voice of a general. The uniform is the most trusted institution in the country, and that trust is a national asset, not a public relations budget. Each time it fronts a decision whose drivers lie elsewhere, a little is drawn from an account that is very hard to refill.
Trust in the uniform is a national asset, not a public relations budget.
Win win, with a Rucksack of Footnotes
To be fair, and a soldier must be fair, this is good news for the jawan. Two more years of pay, skill and seniority. A second shot at permanent enrolment. Units keep trained hands instead of training replacements every year. The CDS called it a win-win, and for the boy in the barracks it largely is. The government deserves credit for listening, even if its hearing improved remarkably close to an election.
So, the Agniveer has two more years. Whether he becomes permanent, we will know in 2028. But whether he gets the bride of his choice? That file is still pending with the most powerful selection board in the country. And it does not accept press conferences as evidence
But the uncertainty has not been abolished. It has been rescheduled, like a monsoon that has been forecast but not yet arrived. Earlier, the Agniveer worried about year four. Now he will worry about year six, and the phrase “subject to objective selection criteria” is carrying a very heavy rucksack. How many will actually be absorbed? Will the extra two years count towards pensionable service? Will a man enrolled at 27 have the same career runway as one enrolled at 19? What happens to the quotas in central police forces and state police, built around a four-year exit? And if every willing Agniveer is eventually absorbed, what has become of the pension saving that started this journey? Either the arithmetic of 2022 was wrong, or the arithmetic of 2026 is optional. Both cannot be true at once.
Back Under the Neem Tree
Which brings us back to the charpai in Jhunjhunu. The prospective father-in-law has seen the news. His WhatsApp group has sent him four forwards about it, three of them wrong. Across the lane, the retired havildars at the chaupal have already convened their own review board and, as usual, returned a unanimous verdict in favour of the old system. The father-in-law is a practical man. He wants to know only whether there will be a family quarter, a canteen card and a pension. In the village, a pension is not a line item in the defence budget. It is the difference between a man who is a fauji and a man who once was one.
Policy can be revised in a single Cabinet meeting. Folklore takes a generation to rebuild.
So, the Agniveer has two more years. Whether the ruling party wins UP, we will know in 2027. Whether he becomes permanent, we will know in 2028. But whether he gets the bride of his choice? That file is still pending with the most powerful selection board in the country. And it does not accept press conferences as evidence.
The writer served 37 years in the Indian Army, including command of a Mountain Division in the Kargil sector and as Deputy Commandant of the National Defence Academy. He writes on strategic and military affairs
