Children of a lesser God: Has the perception changed after a decade?

MANY national dailies carried a news report about the abysmal neglect of ex-servicemen pensioners and much more. Some of it was in an abridged form and therefore, it becomes necessary to quote a few pertinent lines which appeared in The Hindu only: "It was a mockery of the well-settled principle of service jurisprudence that pay and allowances (and pension which is a deferred payment) were compensation for sacrifices made in service. Lack of such appreciation by the Pay Commission in the past was evident from the fact that all of them treated the soldier as a semi-skilled worker. It is callous to treat a person who handles the Bofors guns, rocket launchers, missiles, tanks and state-of-art missiles (Prithvi and Agni) as a semi-skilled worker."

These were some of the observations made by a Division Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Mr. Justice B. N. Kirpal and Ms. Justice Ruma Pal. They issued a notice to the Ministry of Defence on a PIL filed by the All-India Defence Service Advocates Association (AIDSAA).

The petition had pointed out many anomalies. While implementing the Fifth Pay Commission's recommendations, the Government had brought in a provision directing that full pension at the rate of 50 per cent of the average of the last 10 months emoluments would be paid only if a person had served for 33 years. This may be justified in the case of civil employees, but in the defence forces, there is no common fixed age of superannuation.

About 94 per cent of the people retire with 17 to 24 years of service. About eight lakh get 33 per cent of the emoluments as pension instead of the 50 per cent fixed by the Pay Commission.

Soldiers are forced to retire early in order so that the army remains young. Soldiers, who are 58-60 years old, would have the mandated 33 years service like civilian clerks but, even though their temper and spirit would be willing to fight for their motherland, possibly an army of old men may not be able to easily handle young Pakistanis and Chinese. A 60-year-old Indian clerk would of course be a better than equal match for any 60-year-old Pakistani or Chinese post office or sales tax clerk.

It has also been stated that low pay, early retirement, service in inhospitable regions and family sacrifices put the defence forces at the bottom of the career choices of the youth.

The Armed Forces had an edge of 15 to 20 per cent over civilians in terms of pay and allowances and pension throughout the world and pension ranged from 75 to 100 per cent of the last pay drawn by them was the case in India till 1947.

Departmental bias
One of the reasons for the raw deal given to the defence personnel in the matter of fixing pay and allowances and pension was the absence of a separate Pay Commission for the armed forces as in other countries. Besides the Commission suffered from "The inevitability of departmental bias of civil services towards the Armed Forces."

This writer was one of the three petitioners (the only ex- serviceman in India) in the pension case in the Supreme Court in 1982. The judgment is a kind of Magna Carta for the pensioners.

But the bureaucrats in their mind set of delay, threatened to nullify the judgment by going to Parliament. This is based on my personal experience with the mandarins in the North Block. They did not go to Parliament, however, but have otherwise ensured a continuous nibble of the pensionary benefits to ex-servicemen.

There is another most unfortunate category of family pensioners; this is divided into ordinary family pension and special family pension, the latter being the entitlement where the death of the jawan or officer is attributable to service reasons.

Only the other day was referred to me the case of the widow of a sailor, M. O. Oommen, who went down with INS Khukri in 1971 and was awarded the Vir Chakra (Posthumous). She had applied for revision of her family pension at the correct time along with various documents. While other widows getting ordinary family pensions have already received the revised pensions and arrears, the orders regarding the special family pension have not yet been issued by the Government. So she waits and waits!

Why cannot ordinary family pension be given to her, in the interim, until her special entitlement comes when the bureaucracy has had the time to issue such an edict.

Pathetic case
There is the other most pathetic case of jawans who have served the Raj and also put in some service after independence. One such case was that of Sepoy Abdul Hafeez of the erstwhile Dewas State Forces who served from 1943 to 1948 in India and in the mountains of Italy during World War II. As a special case, he was sanctioned a compassionate allowance of Rs. 9 a month and received Rs. 27 every quarter. Unfortunately he lost his pension book, three or four years after the sanction of this compassionate allowance and for that quarter Abdul Hafeez received Rs. 26 only.

Poverty haunts another World War II veteran even in the twilight of his life. The 82-year-old Mohammed Bashu who served in the army between 1942 and 1947 as a sepoy has been eking out a living as a daily wage manual worker in a brick kiln on the outskirts of Eluru town in Andhra Pradesh. There are many more such cases.

And lastly, the Defence Minister, Mr. George Fernandes, on April 10, 1999, made an announcement in the holy city of Anandpur Sahib. While undoubtedly some progress has been made, it is still a far, far cry from implementation of the Minister's announcement.

Ironically those who have salaries fixed like the Chiefs of Staff of the Army, Navy and Air Force and the Army, Navy and Air Force Commanding in Chiefs, have fully benefited, those who were on a running pay scale only got a pension assessed on the minimum of the rank even though they had rendered full and complete service to entitle them to the maximum pension of the rank. So where is the justice for the young retired Naik or Major? For the older ones, in this category, life ebbs fast!

The Supreme Court judgment of December 1982 has a quote which can also be mentioned here. Quoting Cardinal Wolsey: "Had I served my God as well as I did my King, I would not have fallen on these days.." And it also finds an echo in Shelley: "I fall on the thorns of life, I bleed..."
Rear Admiral Satyindra Singh (Retd)
Children of a lesser God

Comment: The Sixth Central Pay Commission has taken a giant step over the Fifth Pay Commission in creating extraordinary Pension muddles/ anomalies which will take ages for Judicial Intervention to resolve. The bureaucrats cobweb of pension tables and and anomalies is going to haunt the ESM for ages to come!