NEW DELHI — Thousands of young Indians took part in violent demonstrations on Friday, blocking trains and setting train cars and tires on fire to protest a cost-cutting move by the government that they say will destroy their dreams of a safer job in the military.
Protests began on Tuesday after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government announced changes to how it would recruit new members of the armed forces.
The government has described the measures as essential to making the country’s armed forces “younger, fitter” and “more diverse”, but many experts say it aims to cut the country’s defense budget, more than half of which is spent in salaries and pensions. †
Under the new system, 46,000 people aged 17 and a half to 21 would enroll this year for four years. After that, only up to 25 percent of them would qualify for extended military careers. The rest would receive a small payout at the end of their shift, but no pension.
Hundreds of thousands of young people seeking job security in a lengthy military career saw the announcement as another blow to their dreams.
“What are we going to do after four years? Who gives us a job?” said Prince Raj, 23, who is from the eastern state of Bihar and hopes to become a soldier. “Our protest will continue until the government accepts our demands.”
The protesters have called on the government to scrap the new plan entirely and instead maintain the same recruitment process, with the prospect of a career lasting perhaps two decades and a retirement at the end of it. “We spend three to four years preparing to be selected and after that, if we get a four-year job, it’s not fair,” said Pankaj Pundir, 17, of Muzaffarnagar district in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
This year, hundreds of applicants for railway jobs burned train cars in Bihar state in protest at what they believed to be Mr Modi’s unfair hiring practices. More than 12 million people had applied for 35,281 jobs.
In acknowledgment of unemployment problems, Mr Modi this week ordered his government to recruit one million people into vacant government positions within 18 months.
“The announcement of a million jobs is good, but that will only fill the vacancies,” said Jayan Jose Thomas, an economist and professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi. “Given India’s demographic structure, protests like this will continue unless we can create more jobs.”
As protests spread, reaching multiple districts in at least six Indian states on Friday, Mr Modi’s government announced some concessions. It would raise the maximum age limit for admitting new recruits to 23 so that those who missed the opportunity to be recruited in the past two years during the pandemic could apply.
However, the concessions did little to calm the anger unfolding on the streets and in train stations in the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Telangana and Madhya Pradesh. Protests quickly spread to other parts of India on Friday, including New Delhi, the capital and the states of Odisha, West Bengal, Punjab and Jharkhand.
In Bihar, where protests have been fierce in recent days, hundreds of protesters armed with sticks destroyed train stations and set train cars on fire on Friday. Violent gangs blocked railway lines by burning tires and vehicles on them.
Similar scenes took place in Uttar Pradesh, where protesters destroyed trains, buses and shops. Hundreds of protesters, mostly men in their 20s, took to the streets and shouted slogans in the Chandauli district.
In the southern state of Telangana, police and firefighters tried to put out a burning train car that had set a mob on fire. Tensions remained high in Haryana state, where authorities shut down the internet on Thursday and Friday to prevent protests from spreading.
Many protesters said they were discouraged by the government’s recruitment plan, which offered no job guarantees after four years of loyal service.
“They will kick us out after four years,” Lavjinder Singh, a young army aspiring candidate in Haryana state, told local news media, explaining that he had spent the past seven years training to qualify for a place. “What will those 75 percent people do?”
Ranjeet Kumar, a former Indian army soldier who leads a training academy of 100 army aspirants in Bihar, said the protesters were also frustrated over delays in the recruitment process. Their demands, he said, were justified.
And, he said, one thing was clear: “They are not interested in the military for four years. They want to go into the military for a full term.”
The protests have come as India faces a situation it has feared for nearly two decades: a two-front conflict with hostile neighbors China and Pakistan – both nuclear-armed. The Indian and Chinese soldiers have been trapped in a border dispute in the Himalayas for more than two years.
India has one of the world’s largest armies, recruiting tens of thousands every year. Military experts say one way to manage such a large army and still pay for updates to its defense equipment is to recruit people on short-term contracts.
But the jobs themselves must be made “attractive” both during and after service, said HS Panag, a retired lieutenant general who served in the Indian military for nearly four decades. Nor should they appear “exploitative”, Mr Panag added.
The government plan announced Tuesday falls short on both counts, he said. “It appears to be exploitative because they have not provided all the incentives they are talking about,” including “insured guarantees” for recruiting into paramilitary forces. The military job package would pay only about $15,000 in total, far less than what a soldier would earn after about 15 years of service.
Economists say the government also urgently needs to focus on job creation. Aside from the defense sector, which employs more than 1.3 million people, other areas such as education and healthcare can take in hundreds of thousands of job seekers, Professor Thomas said. “A very large proportion of the workforce is looking for work,” he said. “And they are looking for a regular job with security, which only offer government jobs.”
Mr Raj, the army aspirant from Bihar, pointed out that the government’s recruitment plan targeted the most vulnerable in India. “It’s just the poor families whose sons go into the army and sacrifice their lives,” he said. “Which sons of politicians sacrifice their lives to defend the country?”