New Delhi, June23: A total of 254 meetings that lasted 750 hours is what it took for the Indian defense establishment to roll out the country’s most radical military recruitment policy- Agnipath. The scheme was initially meant as a pilot project, involving 100 officers and 1,000 soldiers, and was called the ‘Tour of Duty.
Sources in the defense establishment said that the Agnipath scheme has not only been discussed in detail but that National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval and Lt Gen. Anil Puri, Additional Secretary in the Department of Military Affairs (DMA), has said there will be no rollback.
While there has been a focus within the military to bring down the average age of soldiers, especially within the Army, from the 1980s, the actual work on it began only in 2020, from an idea that germinated in 2019.
It was in 2019 that the then Army Chief, General M.M. Naravane, first spoke about a new concept of recruitment — Tour of Duty.
“The Tour of Duty is an idea that we are toying with at the moment,” he had said.
He argued that many times during visits to schools and colleges, army officers would come across students who were “curious to know what life in the Army is all about, but not necessarily want it as a full-fledged career”.
“This was the germination of the idea. Can we allow our youth to experience what army life is all about for a short period? It is in this background that we are looking at it. Can we induct 1,000 for three years with a truncated training period of 6-9 months…?” he had said.
