You're out of options, General Satbir Singh: Take the OROP now and head for the courts

By Bikram Vohra (Disclaimer: This report was written before the government’s decision to leave out ‘premature’ retirees from the OROP scheme was announced. Read the latest analysis here ) The government is set to announce its One Rank One Pension (OROP) proposal at 3 pm. And from all accounts, the ex-servicemen are set to reject it. There is a thing called principle, and it is alive and potent, and it fights and flies in the face of pragmatism. It is also hard to hang in there when the ground support is melting away like lava. The ex-servicemen will be confronted with just this pressure if they insist on continuing with their demands after Saturday. You don’t have to like it, but when it comes to games of political chess, the bureaucratic babus of India are grandmasters at the board and these soldiers are no match for them. [caption id=“attachment_2422350” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] General Satbir Singh. IBNLive[/caption] The announcement by the government of the sanction of the OROP should have been greeted with whoops of joy. Instead, there is a sense of betrayal because the annual pension review is not integrated in the decision, and the government has chosen the clever path of giving in unilaterally but not totally. Argument: the concession has not been brought about through mutual negotiations and the petitioners have not been party to the contents of the final document. The general sentiment is that there is no honour in such a conclusion. The former soldiers feel like prisoners of war who are not party to their release and what it entails. They have just been told the war is over, they can go. Two ways of looking at this situation. One: The review could have been added in the announcement and then acted upon each year as per the socio-economic conditions prevalent in the country at that juncture. Once the protest had disbanded, it would have become impossible to bring the steam back into the cooker and the ex-servicemen would just have had to accept the situation from year to year. In the long term, it may have been the better choice for the government. Two: The government doesn’t like to be strong-armed into surrender, however legitimate the demands. If it is seen to capitulate, others will leap onto the bandwagon. So it has chosen the half-and-half option and predicated it to a scenario in which the nation per se gets a bit fed up with the whole thing, and begins to believe the former soldiers have pushed their luck. It’s a pretty simple equation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has kept his word. They wanted OROP, they got what they wanted, now back off. Spin doctors will catapult this imagery across the nation and are probably already hard at work to dispense this pearl of wisdom. I am afraid that the agitation may continue and it is perhaps exactly what the government hopes for. With every extra day of protest at Jantar Mantar, the ex-servicemen begin to look that much more ungrateful. To the average mind, you have eaten the grass, Sir, what are you hanging around for? So the question is that if they reject it as an association, are they speaking for thousands of other soldiers and officers who want this financial relief and are probably saying , hey there, let it go, we have fought and won the high ground? More vitally, can the government implement OROP despite the rejection by the protestors? Yes, it can. That way the General Satbir Singh-led regiment literally gets isolated and that seems to be the aim. Reduce the agitation to a mere handful of old men making strident sounds and get on with governance. “After all, people of India, we kept our pledge, honoured the 15 August made by the Prime Minister to our brave soldiers, now we cannot keep responding to other demands. Come on, chaps, be happy.” It will be very easily forgotten that the annual review (or even a bi-annual) was integral to the OROP movement. So, if we concede that the government has won by ‘losing’ and given the OROP mandate with a five-year review element, all of which has the Ex-Servicemen’s League teed off, what now? You are General Singh.  What are your options? You can continue to sit at Jantar Mantar until your own cadres start wondering if it is worth it. How long can you keep going? Even worthy causes run out of stamina. You can accept it all gracefully now while putting on record your disagreements, and then go legal for the annual pension review using the precedents that exist for it as your platform. Fight for it in the courts. That is smart and logical and gets you to leave that Jantar Mantar stage with grace and dignity intact. And the OROP in your pocket. And your principles.