Opinion Delhi must reach out to Nepal, address its concerns on Agnipath. Gorkhas from Nepal are an inalienable part of Indian Army

The Agnipath scheme for recruiting personnel for the armed forces has had a fallout in Kathmandu that Delhi cannot afford to ignore — or leave unaddressed. The Indian Army recruits soldiers for its seven Gorkha regiments from ethnic Gorkha communities — two-thirds from Nepal, and one-third from India. Until the last recruitment, this worked out to about 1,400 recruits from Nepal annually. Over 30,000 soldiers from Nepal serve in the Indian Army at any given time, and there is a 1.4 lakh strong community of Indian Army pensioners in that country. In a country battling massive unemployment, the annual inflow of Indian Army pensions and salaries is a vital injection of money into the local economy. Kathmandu was evidently taken by surprise when the Agnipath scheme — under which 75 per cent of recruits would be let go after four years with no pension benefits — was announced. Apart from the uncertainty about the numbers to be hired in Nepal, and the question of how the returnees would be absorbed back into the Nepali workforce, there is concern about the impact of the All Country All Class recruitment on ethnic Gorkha regiments in the Indian Army, and on Gorkha recruits. The Narendra Modi government must reach out, and address Kathmandu’s anxieties.

The recruitment of Gorkhas takes place under a 1947 tripartite treaty between the governments in India, Nepal and Britain. The Indian Army set August 25 as the start date for the recruitment, subject to approval from Kathmandu — in the past this approval has been granted routinely. This time, the government in Nepal has conveyed that the recruitment cannot go ahead for now as it needs to study the impact of the new scheme, which it has also described as a violation of the treaty — one of the terms of the treaty is that Nepali citizens must be allowed to serve long enough to be eligible for pensions. In a country where anti-India sentiments are high, the recruitment of Gorkhas has given a crucial institutional connect to the people-to-people relationship. When PM Modi visited Nepal in 2014, he highlighted the Gorkha link — Gorkhas are deployed at the LoC in Kashmir, and the LAC with China. PM Modi rightly said that India had won no war without the sacrifice of Nepalis.

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The message that the Nepal government is suspending the recruitment drive comes only days ahead of the Indian Army chief’s customary annual visit to Nepal. It is still not too late to initiate consultations with the Nepal government on this matter and ensure that the 75-year-old practice of recruiting Gorkhas in the Indian Army continues into the future.