India’s armed forces serve in extremes that most citizens will never encounter—Siachen’s sub-zero altitudes, humid counter-insurgency grids, maritime deployments, and long stretches away from family. The unwritten compact has been simple: the state will look after those who look after it. Over the past two years, many veterans say that compact has frayed. The 2023 Entitlement Rules (ER 2023) and Guide to Medical Officers (GMO 2023) have narrowed the path to disability benefits; health care through the Ex-Servicemen Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS) is buckling under arrears and attrition; and the SPARSH pension portal’s digital transition has stranded thousands in technical limbo. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) continues to contest disability awards in higher courts—often against widows and severely disabled soldiers—despite repeated judicial admonitions.
This composite feature examines how policy shifts, administrative gaps, and litigation have converged to produce a crisis of confidence among serving personnel and veterans—and what a pragmatic fix could look like.
The new rules and an old morale problem
The Integrated Defence Staff says the 2023 framework merely streamlines entitlements, curbs misuse around “lifestyle diseases”, and renames the “disability element” as “impairment relief” without reducing benefits for the deserving. Veterans disagree on both substance and symbolism. Renaming the disability component to an “impairment relief” that is not treated as a pension has been read as an attempt to recast a right as a discretionary allowance, with potential downstream tax consequences and easier avenues for future dilution.
At a practical level, reduced assessed percentages for chronic conditions like hypertension and Type-2 diabetes—now frequently pegged at 5 per cent—drop many cases below the 20 per cent threshold required for any relief. The insistence that cardiovascular ailments count only when linked to high-altitude duty disregards well-documented stressors in so-called “peace” locations: prolonged field postings at older ages, round-the-clock readiness, frequent moves, and family separation. Courts and past policy guides had accepted the nexus between service stress and cardiac disease; the 2023 pivot narrows that window.
A further flashpoint is the reintroduction of a 10-year minimum service requirement for invalid pension in non-attributable/non-aggravated (NANA) cases—scrapped in 2020 after judicial intervention. The change means a young soldier invalided with an unacceptable disability after, say, five years—perhaps from an off-duty accident—may leave with no pension at all. If a rulebook can produce such a perverse outcome, morale inevitably suffers.
Finally, semantics matter to soldiers. When “war injury pension” becomes “war injury relief”, the signal—fair or not—is that the state is repositioning away from the language of earned entitlements. For a profession built on honour and obligation, language is policy.
Courts keep stepping in—and asking the obvious
The judiciary has repeatedly held that disability benefits are not largesse but recognition of risk and sacrifice. In a recent judgment dismissing a large batch of MoD appeals against Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) orders, the Delhi High Court reaffirmed that the benefit of doubt belongs to the soldier unless a medical board can clearly show a pre-existing, unrelated condition. Other courts have echoed key points: a peace posting does not necessarily negate stress; the burden of proof rests with the authorities to establish NANA; and medical board findings cannot be casually dismissed.
The legal through-line is blunt: if the state cannot demonstrate why a disability is unrelated to the rigours of service, it must pay. Yet the ministry’s litigation engine continues to contest AFT awards in thousands of cases, generating cost, delay, and anger. The optics of the sovereign battling amputees, widows, and senior veterans for years over a few percentage points is an own goal in civil–military trust.
ECHS: a safety net with holes
When ECHS launched in 2003, it promised accessible, affordable, reliable care for ex-servicemen and their families. Two decades on, veterans report a pattern: chronic payment arrears to empanelled hospitals; stagnant package rates misaligned with current costs; periodic mass suspensions of cashless care; understaffed polyclinics; and inconsistent availability of essential medicines. Private hospitals complain of low tariffs and long delays; veterans face out-of-pocket expenses, refusals, and a complex referral process.
The geography compounds the inequity. Rural and semi-urban polyclinics struggle with staff and diagnostics; long referrals add weeks to care pathways; emergency protocols are murky; grievance cells vary wildly in quality. Even where the government has acted against errant hospitals that demanded advance deposits, the root problem—stretched budgets and slow settlement—persists. The result is predictable: attrition of quality providers and a downward spiral.
A reset is overdue. Clear the arrears. Update package rates to reflect 2025 realities and index them accordingly. Enforce 30-day auto-settlement for small bills. Expand and modernise polyclinics to absorb more frontline diagnostics, reducing fragile referral chains. Introduce mobile units and structured tie-ups for remote districts. Standardise on-the-spot grievance desks with resolution authority, not mere form-filling. Publish district-wise turnaround times and denial rates to drive accountability. Veterans do not need ceremonial praise; they need a functioning system when a stroke or a sepsis clock is ticking.
SPARSH: digital by design, exclusion by default
SPARSH, the MoD’s unified pension platform, aims to replace a patchwork of bank-managed payment systems with a single, auditable, transparent pipeline from sanction to disbursement. The goal is sound. The execution has been bruising. Data migration from legacy Pension Payment Orders introduced errors in names, dates, ranks, and qualifying service; log-ins fail; OTPs don’t arrive; life-certificate uploads glitch; corrections take months; and in too many cases, pensions simply stop—devastating for super-senior veterans and widows with no other income.
The platform assumes stable connectivity, digital literacy, and patient persistence—assumptions that do not hold for a cohort largely drawn from rural India. While India Post Payments Bank counters, help-lines and outreach camps exist, capacity is dwarfed by need. What the system lacks is triage: a human override for stoppages affecting the very old; a bank-channel fallback for those who cannot or will not use the portal; and empowered facilitation centres that resolve problems on the spot rather than forwarding tickets into a queue.
For a widow or a 90-year-old veteran, a pension stoppage is catastrophic. Human override is not optional; it is essential.
The human reality behind “lifestyle disease”
“Lifestyle disease” is a poor fit for military life. Ask a Commanding Officer who is 56, still rotating through field and formation posts, sleeping little, carrying legal and operational liability, and fielding calls at 2 a.m. That is not “lifestyle”; that is the job. Hypertension, ischemic heart disease, and some psychiatric disorders do not appear in a vacuum. They co-evolve with decades of operational tempo, relocation, isolation, and professional risk. Policies that write off such conditions unless tied to high altitude or a specific named operation ignore the continuum of stress in uniform.
The AFT and High Courts have repeatedly read this reality into their orders. A sensible entitlement regime would too. The answer to potential misuse is better medical board discipline, second-opinion triggers, and fraud analytics—not category bans and hair-trigger denials that sweep in the deserving with the doubtful.
How to restore trust—six practical decisions
Re-centre the presumption: Reinstate a service-friendly presumption for conditions with well-evidenced stress links (cardio-metabolic, some psychiatric). Require boards to record specific, reasoned grounds for NANA, subject to audit.
- Fix the percentages: Revisit reduced disability percentages for chronic conditions so that genuine cases are not arbitrarily pushed below eligibility thresholds.
- End the litigation reflex: Issue a binding instruction limiting appeals to cases with clear errors of law or fact. Establish a MoD-AFT liaison cell to implement orders promptly.
- Stabilise ECHS financing: Clear arrears, index packages, restore provider confidence, and expand polyclinic capabilities. Public dashboards will keep everyone honest.
- Humanise SPARSH: Build a “no pension stoppage for super-seniors and widows” rule; provide bank-channel opt-ins; and empower facilitation centres with real authority.
- Speak plainly and own the past: Words such as “relief” instead of “pension” fray confidence. If the 2023 terminology was intended as neutral drafting, say so and correct the record. If parts were counter-productive, amend them.
The cost of inaction
Defence policy is ultimately about deterrence and readiness. Morale is a weapon system; cynicism is a vulnerability. When serving personnel watch their seniors battle the state for a decade to secure a modest disability award, they draw conclusions about whether the institution will stand by them if fate turns. When a widow’s pension stops because an OTP failed, trust dies a little. When an ambulance turns away an ECHS card because the package rate is unviable, the message is unmistakable.
India does not lack for intent or resources to fix this. It needs administrative will, clear rules that align with medical reality, and a presumption of fairness baked into every screen and form. Veterans do not seek charity. They ask for what was promised: a pension that arrives, a clinic that treats, and a rulebook that understands the life they led in uniform.
Until that is delivered, the word most often heard in canteens, WhatsApp groups, and outside tribunal halls will remain the same: betrayal. The state can change that word. It should—quickly.