People who are for OROP must read this.......

A motley crowd of subedars, naik subedars and the lowly have been protesting at the historic Jantar Mantar of New Delhi for the past two months. These people are being aided and abetted by the very affluent and well-settled retired Generals from the Armed Forces. What do they want? One Rank One Pension or OROP. But hear this they want this to be made effective from 30 years back. Now the Indian combined forces have a strenght of 1.5 mn. Let us believe in the cyclicality and similarity of retirement procedures and depending upon when the Forces reached their optimum level, an equal number, say 1.5 mn people should be getting hired and retired very year.


As a layman, whenever you join a service-the terms of employment are elucidated. These include Pensions and Family Pensions to take care of Widows. The Army has the Army General Insurance and Army Wives Association to seek and provide both insurance and resettlement to the decapitated, injured and retired people from the services. Now, pensions are linked to the last pay and linked to an inflation clause always. So person from the Forces can claim he was not aware what he will get post retirement.


Today's salaries are extraordinary for these guys. Let us say 1.5 mn people are granted a hike of Rs 3000 on an average, it will still vary by rank, per month. This works out to Rs 6000 crore additional bill for the Retired. Multiply it by 30 years and you have just created a Rs 1.80 lakh crore liability upon yourself. This is not a one time figure, annual bills could exceed Rs 10,000 crore indefinitely. The guys from the forces are not only greedy, they are being ludicrous and trying to fleece the nation in the name of protecting the country.


That might well be so. But when they go and seek 1.5 mn jobs every year they seek subsistence. Not patriotism but to get 3 good meals a day for their familiies. If a few hundreds get injured or killed every year, then this is the risk they took. And this risk is not less a risk than any other guy driving in Delhi takes. Extend this logic to the Police, State Security Agencies, Special Forces, NDRF, CISF, CRPF and BSF and the entire national Budget will go into paying Arrears of the Security Forces.


In the face of the so-called Coal and Telecom scams, this staggering figure will top everything. The media talks in innuendos and no one from the Retirees or the MOD places a figure they are pitching for.

This pure evil, pure greed, a loot of the nation and sheer exploitation of a new dispensation in power that was stupid enough to Sell OROP as an Election promise. A promise they should have never made and can never fulfill. And one from which the nation may never recover.

....................By an Indian who cares for the nation. more