“Reform In Right Direction”: Manish Tewary on Agnipath Scheme

Manish Tewary on Agnipath Scheme: “Keeping in mind in these day and age you need a young mobile army. You need more investment on technology and weaponry. That’s not going to happen if you have a very big footmark on the ground”. 

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The government’s new Agnipath scheme for the army is a “step in the right direction” given the huge shift in the nature of modern-day warfare, Congress leader Manish Tewari told to media in an interview today, differing from the party line on the subject. “Keeping in mind In these day and age you need a young mobile army. You need more investment on technology and weaponry. That’s not going to happen if you have a very big footmark on the ground and that’s where the plenty of your money goes,” he told media in an interview. 

The disclosure of the new radical, short-term recruitment plan has been followed by protests sometimes violent in many states by youngsters aspiring to a career in the army.

Manish Tewary on Agnipath Scheme: The Congress has been hard in its opposition of the scheme, saying it “compromises the armed forces and youngsters became soon unemployed”.

Congress Senior party leader Rahul Gandhi has also exhorted young people not to accept the Agnipath scheme, on twitter. He tweets:

Mr Tewari, who in the past has louder his opinion even when it differed from the party line, told to media that there is a “far more important and basic point” – which is the shift in the nature of warfare over the past some decades.

“If you look at armed forces going back three decades, there has been a more mobile expeditionary force, which depend more on technology, which depend more on latest weaponry and which has a younger age profile – so that under those condition this is a much-required and awaited reform,” he said.

Manish Tewary on Agnipath Scheme: He Added, “…Plus even if you like it or not, the burgeoning pension bill due to the One Rank One Pension Scheme, I think must have gone into the calculus of the government”.

Admitting that the young citizens of the country have a “legitimate concern”, Mr Tewari, however, pointed out that the armed force of the union “is not an employment guarantee programme”.

Still, in the current condition, the government, he said, should “build into the scheme” that after the four year of service is up, there will be opportunities for people in paramilitary forces and the state police and there would be other forms of Security jobs.

Manish Tewari also tweeted: