The question of dignity and fairness for India’s armed forces has resurfaced, this time centred on a seemingly technical issue — the Risk and Hardship (RH) Factor Allowance. It was meant to ensure equal compensation for all who serve in hazardous and inhospitable conditions. Instead, it has deepened the divide between soldiers of the armed forces and personnel of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs).
What began as an effort to standardise pay has turned into a dispute over recognition. The disparities between those standing shoulder to shoulder on India’s frontiers are not about money alone. They are about morale, respect, and the bond between the soldier and the state.
A system built to equalise that widened the gap
When the Seventh Central Pay Commission (CPC) introduced the “Risk and Hardship Matrix,” it sought to bring consistency to allowances across services. For extreme conditions such as Siachen, a new “RH-Max” category was created, acknowledging that danger and discomfort transcend uniforms.
Yet two ministries — Defence for the armed forces, and Home Affairs for the CAPFs — issued separate notifications. Over time, their parallel decisions produced divergent results. The inequity became glaring after the Pulwama attack in 2019, when the Home Ministry revised allowances sharply upward for CAPFs deployed in Jammu and Kashmir and Maoist-affected areas.
CAPF jawans began receiving ₹17,300 a month, and officers ₹25,000. Soldiers and officers facing identical or harsher risks continued to draw ₹9,700 and ₹16,900 respectively. Though the Defence Ministry later revised the figures with retrospective effect from 2019, parity was not fully restored.
In the high-risk R1H2 category — which covers LoC and counter-insurgency postings — the imbalance remains. Over a typical 30-month deployment, an Army officer loses more than ₹13 lakh compared with a CAPF counterpart.
Even geography is a factor. CAPFs deployed in areas such as Pooh-Sangla or Moorang-Thangi in Himachal Pradesh receive allowances that soldiers do not, purely because the Ministry of Defence notification omits those locations. CAPFs in the Jammu–Akhnoor sector draw higher allowances for guarding the same line of control.
And the inequities go further: CAPFs retain their RH allowance for up to 30 days of leave, while soldiers forfeit it as soon as they are away from post. CAPFs receive double House Rent Allowance in hardship areas; the armed forces remain on single rates.
Morale, not money, is at stake
For soldiers, these are not minor distinctions. “It’s not about the allowance,” one officer observed privately. “It’s about what it says about our place in the system.”
Allowances do not decide the outcome of battles, but they do affect morale — the quiet sense of fairness that sustains men and women in extreme hardship. When one group in uniform earns more for the same risk, it undermines cohesion and trust in the institution itself.
Other democracies have resolved this tension through uniform pay systems. The United States uses a single hardship and danger-pay framework across all services. The United Kingdom’s “X-Factor” ensures recognition of arduous conditions for every member of the military. India’s fragmentation between two ministries, with overlapping and sometimes contradictory notifications, has no equivalent elsewhere.
Parliamentary committees and Right to Information (RTI) disclosures have repeatedly exposed these disparities. Veterans’ associations have petitioned for years for reforms that would standardise eligibility lists, harmonise leave rules, and close the gaps in House Rent and RH entitlements.
The sums involved are small in fiscal terms. But the cost of eroded morale — of officers disillusioned by inequity, of young recruits questioning long-term service — is far greater.
Equal respect for equal risk
The solution is clear, and long overdue. The government must harmonise allowance structures, unify eligibility definitions, and ensure that soldiers and CAPFs serving side by side receive the same compensation and recognition. Bureaucratic turf battles between the Defence and Home ministries cannot be allowed to stand in the way.
This is not a contest between olive green and khaki. It is about the principle that two men in the same bunker, facing the same bullet, deserve equal respect from the nation they protect.
Parity in the RH Factor Allowance is not a fiscal adjustment — it is a test of India’s fairness, and of the value it places on those who serve at its frontiers.