The recent announcement of PM scholarship for ex-servicemen wards strikes as strange if you come to think of the lack of facilities and encouragement for retraining the young veteran to transition into civilian life.
Countries like USA provide extensive benefits to veteran in the form of GI bill through which the veterans are provided fully funded tuition, books and living expenses for studies in universities and many veteran take benefit of this to train themselves to become professionals like doctors, engineers, lawyers, accountants and business executives by completing advanced study.
An ex-servicemen who quits service at 25 or 30 can not hope to get this types of facilities in India and many of the Ex-servicemen retire when they have whole life ahead of them. The only hope they have is to live on the meager pension for the rest of their life.
Even the institutions like Army Welfare Education Society who run a series of good schools and colleges and professional institutes keep these veteran out by creating barriers like age restrictions in their institutions.
Why should the wards who did not serve the country in the services and who are most likely not going to serve in the armed forces be given scholarship while veterans are denied this facility by the government and even the veteran welfare funded institutions of the services.
If this happens in USA, there would be so many protests by young veterans.
Before the wards of the veterans, veterans come first. This basic principle is forgotten by every one. The young veteran has no voice. The decision makers are generally those who are past their age to train for a second career and hence they influence decision making for educational benefits for wards rather than veterans.
This is total neglect of the young veterans who leave the services and can not train for alternate careers.
Will the government, MoD, Director General Resettlement and the Ex-servicemen welfare departments and the Service Chiefs wake up to this issue and solve it for the young veterans?
http://www.publishaletter.com/editorchoiceletter.jsp?plid=17195
Chandra Nath,
Los Angeles, California, USA.
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