Army Chief General Bipin Rawat on Tuesday reviewed the reports of four study groups set up to recommend ways to restructure the force to enhance its combat effectiveness and save money for capital expenditure. Apart from a proposal to reduce the 13 lakh strong army by at least 1,50,000 over the next few years, the commanders also discussed the possibility of increasing the pensionable tenure from the existing 15 to 20 years for jawans.
At present, the jawans are eligible for full pension after a service of 15 years. Given the improvement in life expectancy and enhanced levels of fitness over the last five decades, the Army feels a jawan can now go home after 20 years of service. It will save the government money in terms of pension and expenditure incurred on training a raw recruit into a fighting soldier, officials said here.
The four study groups to review the Army Headquarters, promotion of jawans, cadre review of officers and restructuring of various arms respectively gave their presentations to the Chief besides seven commanders. A much wider group will have final review during the Army Commanders conference next month and if the recommendations are approved then the proposals will be circulated amongst the army personnel for their feedback. The final nod will come from the Defence Ministry and officials said the proposals will be implemented early next year.
The proposed reduction in strength is expected to save at least Rs 5,000-7,000 crore annually and will add at least 20% to the existing capital expenditure of the budget, they said.
The Army is facing an increasing burden of revenue expenditure and pensions leaving very little funds for new purchases and modernisation. In this year’s defence budget, the Army’s share was Rs 1,28,076 crore for revenue stream while Rs 26,688 crore was the capital allocation.. The current revenue to capital ratio is around 83:17 which is unviable. While the ideal ratio is 60:40, the target is 65:35 which itself will be a great achievement, officials said.
Apart from reducing the strength to make the force leaner and better equipped, the Army is also mulling doing away with the rank of Brigadier and brigade headquarters as part of the officer cadre review.
This is expected to free up significant number of officers who will be available for field duties. Army headquarters too is likely to see a major churn with several departments doing overlapping functions merged or off-loaded away from the headquarters.