NEW DELHI: The Government has revised upwards the pensions for all lower ranks who retired before 1996. The benefits will apply with retrospective effect from January 1 this year.

According to official sources, pension of the lowest ranks would increase substantially. For example, the pension of a sepoy will increase by about Rs. 600 a month and in the case of naik by Rs. 400.

The additional outgo will be about Rs. 460 crore for 12 lakh beneficiaries.

The Government has increased the weightage for calculating the pensions of sepoy, naik and havildar ranks to 10, eight and six years respectively from the existing five years, subject to a maximum qualifying service of 30 years.

There will be no increase in pension for those already getting over 30 years qualifying service with the existing weightage of five years.

The Government said the aim was to improve the benefits of personnel below officer rank (PBOR) who constitute the bulk of the armed forces and have to retire at a relatively young age.

With these measures, a sepoy with 17 years of actual service would get pension equal to that of a civilian after 30 years of actual service, because of two factors — weightage and benefit of the maximum payscale.

From the rank of naik onwards, the pension on completion of term of engagement would become equal to or more than the civilian pension for full service of 33 years.

The better emoluments come in the wake of studies revealing that soldiers retire ahead of their time and die before their civilian counterparts.

The low lifespan could be due to the stress of military service but the author of a study that revealed this "surprising" fact recently believes that the main reason the "culture shock" associated with the resettlement process after a soldier retires during his early middle age.

The former chief of the Army's Pay Commission Cell, Surjit Singh, has argued that the root cause is their inability to develop a second skill while in service.

At the same time, Maj. Gen. Singh says that money is not the only factor as government spending on pensions has increased by five times in real terms over the past two decades.

Along with other former officers, he advocates an army with a small core of "whole life" soldiers assisted by "short engagement" men who revert to the mainstream after a short stint in uniform.

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