·         AN OROP PROGRAMME TO COMPUTE THE EXACT AMOUNT REQUIRED, CORRECT TO THE RUPEE.

·         SO FAR, MYSTIQUE & FANCIED FIGURES FROM 6,000 CRORES TO 25,000 CRORES HAVE BEEN BANDIED AROUND.

·         NO ONE KNOWS EXACT FIGURE. THIS PROGRAMME CALCULATES IT CORRECT TO THE RUPEE, IN 15 SECONDS.

This article is quite long. No need to “study” it. Just sail along. I have given details (in layman simple understandable words) how the Programme works, so that at least A score of other Veterans, who know programming, can write it.

I took 3 hours to write the Programme. It analyses the Data of 3 million Veterans in 15 seconds. FAST ENOUGH?

Defence Minister has to get the Veterans’ Computable Data from the Pension Department. He has to also get the total quantum of already Paid Out Pension for the 20 months from 01 Jan 14 to 31 Aug 15. Veterans who have access to him can request him to get the Data. The Pension Department can give the Data File within in a couple of hours.

PLEASE READ ON PART 1, GENERALLY ON OROP AND PART 2 ON PENSION COMPUTATION

PART 1 - TRAVAILS OF OROP

A centrally running thread in all discussions between Veterans, Heads of the Armed Forces and various Departments of the Government (Ministries of Defence & Finance, Accounts Controllers etc) is that no one knows EXACTLY, the actual amounts involved, as the computations are supposed to be extremely complex. Accordingly, any one (including the Defence Minister), could produce his own fancied figure. The figures tossed around vary from Rs 4,000 crores to Rs 20,000 crores, though no one is precise about what these figures actually and precisely refer to.

A couple of months back, when I met my Good Friend Col Rajan, I suggested that the 1^st thing Veterans should arrange to arrive at monitored and mutually agreed EXACT figures relevant to the various floating proposals; like, for 3% increment, separately for 2011 & 2014 Zero dates, different quarterly stepped payment commencing dates from 01 Jan 14 to 01 Jul 15 etc. I told him that it would be a 2 weeks programme development job.

Col Rajan mentioned this to Gen Bahri and Gen Bahri called me and wanted to personally listen to it from the “horse’s mouth.” We talked for about half an hour. I assured him that if he could get me certain basic relevant data (I could give him the list of the data and those data would be readily available with the Pension Authorities), I could go to Delhi, sit in Kotah House and develop an INTERACTIVE USER FRIENDLY, QUERY INTERFACED PROGRAMME (to which one can ask ANY Question in plain English) within 2 weeks (may extend to 3 weeks), which would give the answers to not only ALL the already asked questions, but also to any other future logically framed questions, flowing from future proposals from the Government. I also suggested that he should directly approach the Defence Minister, who could get the needed Basic Data within a couple days, as all the needed data is available with the Pension Authorities in his Ministry, for all the about 3 million Pensioners.

The idea was that during any official / informal meeting, have a laptop on the table and whatever proposals are put across from either side of the table, compute the EXACT financial implication (both one time implementation and annually thereafter) of that offered / demanded proposal under discussion. At least, the fancy figures from flights of imagination would not interfere with the rest of the logic and rationale of the discussions.

I did not hear further from Gen Bahri.

GENESIS - Why I wrote the OROP Programme yesterday night.

Yesterday, at around 20:00, when I was ready to go to a function, I found that all my 3 cars had vanished; my daughter had taken one, my Col (Retd) AMC son had taken the 2^nd and the house guest had taken the 3^rd, along with the driver. On my 83^rd birthday, I had promised my late wife that I would not drive our 2 scooters any more. If she was around, I would have broken the promise, due to extreme exigency. However, since she is no more, I did not want to break my promise. So I changed my dress to a more comfortable one and wondered, what to do. A Scotch in hand, on the sofa, feet up the cushioned stool, AC on low, NGC on the TV, with cashew nuts to munch would have been in order. However, the liquor chest was locked and I did not know where the key was; after my wife passed away, it was in my daughter’s domain to keep the key. Suddenly, I got a burst of idea, that I should write a programme on PENSION CALCULATIONS. Hence, at 21:00, I sat down at my computer. (Added now: I finished it at about 02:00. Then went to bed. Got up this morning and at about 08:00 began writing this email - it has taken about 3 hours. 

OROP, AS DEFINED BY THE KOSHYARI COMMITTEE

The Parliamentary Koshyari Committee had found that “there is merit in the demand for One Rank One Pension (OROP) by Armed Forces Personnel” and strongly recommended that, “Government should implement OROP in the defence forces across the board at the earliest and further, that for future, the pay, allowances, pension, family pension etc should be determined by a separate commission, so that their peculiar terms are properly taken into account”.

The committee members were: Bhagat Singh Koshyari Chairman, Ram Vilas Paswan, Nandi Yellaiah, Rajeev Shukla, Avinash Pande, Balavant Apte, Rajeev, Veer Pal Singh Yadav, Paul Manoj Pandian and Rajaram, representing major parties of ADMK, BJP, CPM, INC, SP. The Committee submitted its report on 19 Dec 11. Since this Report was the anchor of Veteran’s stake, I decided to write an OROP Programme based on Koshyari Report.

Neelam Nath, “distinguished Secretary”, Department Ex-Servicemen WELFARE ILLFARE, who did not have the faintest idea of how much OROP would cost, deposed to the Koshyari Committee, opposing OROP, citing financial, administrative and legal reasons. The Secretary Department of Pensions and Pensioners’ ILLFARE, taking cue from the Department of Ex Servicemen, opposed the OROP, saying that if OROP was accepted for the Armed Forces, then there would be similar demands from the civilian pensioners and that earlier Pay Commissions had not supported OROP.

The responses from Ministry of Defence under AK Antony, Ministry of Finance under Pranab Mukherjee and Ministry of Personnel under Manmohan Singh, immediately and vehemently opposed grant of OROP; both orally and in writing. Soon thereafter, Secretary, Department Ex-servicemen ILLFARE, (Ministry of Defence), Secretary, Department of Expenditure, (Ministry of Finance) and Secretary Department of Pensions and Pensioners’ ILLFARE (Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions) on behalf of their respective ministries, parroted their Masters in opposing the implementation of the Koshyari Committee.

On 02 Jul 12 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, constituted a Committee under the Cabinet Secretary Ajit Kumar Seth, to look into pay and pension related issue of relevance to defence personnel and ESM. The Committee consisted of 6 other Secretaries;  (1) Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, (2) Defence Secretary, (3) Secretary, Department of Ex- Servicemen’s ILLFARE, (4) Secretary, Department of Expenditure, (5) Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training and (6) Secretary, Department of Revenue. There was no Service Chief in the Committee, despite letters from the Service Chiefs AK Antony, Defence Minister. 

Perhaps, that was the correct time for Admiral Nirmal Kumar Verma, Chief of Naval Staff & Chairman, Chiefs of the Staff Committee to have requested a personal one-to-one meeting with the Prime Minister (no presence of the Defence/Finance Ministers and the Defence/Finance Secretaries) to make a personal presentation to him. If the Prime Minister still did not agree to appointment of the 3 Service Chiefs to the Cabinet Committee, Admiral Verma could have considered offering his resignation, followed by “individual and not collective” resignations of Air Marshal Norman Anil Kumar Browne, Chief of Air Staff and General Bikram Singh, Chief of Army Staff.

THINK OVER; would ANY Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh or Narendra Modi) dare to constitute an important Cabinet Committee, with Cabinet Secretary, Railway Secretary, Finance Secretary etc, without membership of the Chairman of the Railway Board? All the Railway Personnel would go on an immediate Total Strike and bring the Railways to standstill.

The Ajit Singh Seth Cabinet Committee submitted its report quickly (I wonder whether it ever met and discussed) on 27 Aug 12. Its position on the OROP was no different from that of the Secretaries who had unanimously opposed Koshyari Report during early 2012, soon after its release.

The Veterans have, SO FAR, been peacefully representing and protesting (fully complying with its ethos), for 42 years, ever since 1973 (very soon after Bangladesh Operations), when the Government terminated the existing OROP for deciding Veterans’ pension, which had been in vogue for 26 years since independence, through an ex parte administrative order, without Parliament’s approval.

PART 2 - COMPUTATION OF OROP

Do Not spend too much time in slow reading. Just run through this Part 2. Conclusions are important. We can compute in a few seconds, correct to a Rupee, amount needed for OROP. 

OROP COMPUTATION

In the following portion of this Note, I am making some assumptions, based on my knowledge. I am subject to corrections from far more illustrious knowledgeable persons like Adm O’Leary, Gen Satbir Singh, Brig Vidyasagar, Col Rajan and many, many others. The additional welcome inputs and editing my assumptions will not make a significant change to my programme, as they would need only minor ARDs (Addition, Revision, Deletion) to the Data Base. My requirement is the Actual Basic Data.

What do we need to compute OROP, as per Koshyari Committee?

INPUT RANK TABLE 1

The Names of the Retiring Ranks of the 3 Services.

This is a Very Small Static TABLE 1; by computer standards, it is a Teeny Weeny Micro TABLE 1

I have compiled the following TABLE 1. Please suggest changes.

Of the 22 Ranks, perhaps, some like Serial 13, 14, 15 may be deleted as no Retiring Person of these Ranks would be eligible for Pension. Correct me and Advise me.

We do not have to request the Defence Minister to give us this TABLE 1.

As this TABLE 1 is loaded into the RAM (Memory) as an Indexed Matrix, it would make no difference to the running of the Programme, whether the TABLE 1 has 20 Rows or 200 Rows.

INPUT PENSION RATE TABLE 2

This is a Static TABLE 2.

This is also a Very Small Teeny Weeny Micro TABLE 2, of approximately 20 x 40 size.

Each Row will be for One Rank. The Number of Rows will be about 20.

Each Column will be for Specific Year of Service, on the Date of Retirement of the Veteran.

Like, 1^st Column will be for 1 Year of Service, 2^nd Column will be for 2 Years of Service and so on till the 40^th Column will be for 40 years of Service.

For example, the Data Cell at 6^th Row / 24^th Column is the Pension for a Veteran Col retiring on 01 Jan 14, after 24 Years of service.

Brig Vidyasagar can please locate this Table and email to me; he will have the figures at his finger tips.

For my programme, I have generated a reasonable set of figures, with all the 20 x 40 = 800 cells filled.

In a Real Figures TABLE 2, many Columns, like from 01 year to 10 years would be empty, as no Veteran with 10 or less years of Service would be eligible for Pension; in which case, the TABLE 2’s size will reduce from 20 x 40 to 20 x 30; it does not make the slightest difference to the Programme, as this TABLE 2 is also indexed and loaded to the  RAM.

INPUT PERSON TABLE 3A FOR COMPUTABLE DATA

This TABLE 3A is readily available with the Pension Authorities; PCDA ?

This TABLE 3A will have about 3 million Rows; one Row for EACH Veteran.

This TABLE 3A will have 11 Columns; one Column for Each One Piece of Data Field of that particular Veteran.

The Columns (I have put it here in Rows, for more convenient display) can be:

It may be noted that the smallest Pen Drive these days, of 4 GB = 4,000 MB is enough for 50 million Veterans; perhaps ALL Computable Data of ALL Veterans of ALL Armed Forces Personnel in our Geographical India, during the last 3,000 years since Chandragupta Maurya (300 BC) till now, can be stored in a 4 GB Pen Drive costing Rs 199 or less !!

The above 58 Characters of  Data Record for a Veteran would look something like:

BLACK is Column Number, read vertically. RED is the Data.

Blanks between Data are only for Visual Reading. In Computer all 58 Characters are in a Single String, without Intermediate Blanks.

0000000001 1 11 11111122 22222222 33333333 334444 44444 4 55555555 5

1234567890 1 23 45678901 23456789 01234567 890123 45678 9 01234567 8

000080219B N 06 19520407 19740308 20010430 270122 PER25 A 00000000 V

I created Dummy Data for exactly 3 million Veterans and generated TABLE 3A.

The Data Generation Programme generated TABLE 3A for 3 million Veterans, in 28 seconds.

The size of TABLE 3A Veterans’ Data File was EXACTLY (58 + 2 for CRLF = 60 per Record) x 3 million Bytes = 180 MB.

My DeskTop has 4 GB = 4,000 MB RAM and 180 MB of 3 million Veterans` Data takes only 4.5% of RAM Capacity.

INPUT PERSON TABLE 4 FOR Half Yearly Dearness Relief, from 01 Jan 14 to 31 Aug 15

This TABLE 4 has only 4 Rows and 2 Columns.

This TABLE 4 does not have to be loaded into the Computer.

It is enough to read from TABLE 2, the Pension (without Dearness Relief) for Jan 2014 and multiply it by 41.58 to get the TOTAL NEW PENSION for 20 months, from 01 Jan 14 to 31 Aug 15.

OROP PROGRAMME VERSION 1

I wrote the OROP Computation Programme. It took about 3 hours to write it and test it. It worked OK.

Since the Total Data of 3 million is so very small, I decided to work entirely in the RAM, as the RAM is 1,000 times faster than the Hard Disk.

The Programme did the following:

VERSATILITY OF OROP PROGRAMME VERSION 1

Change of Dates

Suppose the Government offers OROP with Base Year of 01 Jan 2011 and implementation from 01 Jan 2015.

All that one has to do is to change the figures in PENSION TABLE 2 to the figures as on 01 Jan 11 and change the Multiplication Factor from 41.58 to 17.16. Presto! Within 15 Seconds, the New PENSION & PERSON Output TABLES are ready.

Inclusion of 3%

I have not included the 3% increment, as I do not understand it. If someone explains it to me, I can edit my Programme to include it. It may take a couple of hours for me to understand and edit. Programme Running time will be the same; about 15 seconds (about ½ second extra).

This will enable us to asses the implications, if we let go the 3% increments.

In both of the above 2 Example Cases, we will know, correct to the Rupee, what we will lose, if we concede.

Rank vs Service Years Analyses

The 2 Output PENSION & PERSON TABLES contain a wealth of Condensed Data. For example, Questions like:

What is the %age distribution of the Veterans in each Rank, from Rank 01 to Rank 22, in Numbers & in Total Pension?

This query can zoom further into Each Cell of the 2 Tables for Each Year of Service for Each Rank.

Out of Total (say) Rs 100, how much goes to Each Officer Rank and how much goes to Each JCO and NCO Rank.

Once for all put to rest the complaints of the JCO and NCOs, that OROP favours Officers. The figures are quantified.

I don’t think the Pension Offices now have the slightest clue of the wealth of data with them, to help the Government to plan training Veterans for civilian life, assess correctly facilities to be provided across the country, at each place etc.

TABLE 3B

You would have noticed that TABLE Numbers 1 & 2 did not have a suffix, yet TABLE 3 had suffix of A. Why?

TABLE 3A has Computable Data and TABLE 3B has Non Computable Data, like names of Veteran & his spouse, address (with Pin Code), phone number, email  id, Bank name & branch, IFS Code etc, etc etc.

Using Delphi techniques, the entire TABLE 3B Data with the Pension Authorities can be cleaned up within 6 months. With correct Pin Codes, the colour coded detailed maps of Veterans in India can be drawn, with the map zooming from entire India into small areas, like Google maps do. At present, does ECHS know where his about 10 million clients are? TABLE 3B can give him detailed information. Does the department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare know where the Veterans are in India, to provide Skill development? The possibilities of harnessing the TABLE 3B Data for the benefits of Veterans are manifold.

A Question: Does not the Ex Servicemen’s Associations (recognised by the Government or not) have a right of access to the Pension Department’s Data Base? I think they have, as they work for the welfare of the Veterans. BSNL calls after 21:00 is free. If a meeting is to be held in (say) Meerut, an automated call up system can call Veterans within the town and a little distance around and give a recorded message and follow it up like “Press 1 if you are coming etc.”

OROP PROGRAMME VERSION 2

The Version 2 Programme will be Menu Driven and Interactive, so that you can ask it virtually ANY Question in Structured Plain English. It will be a versatile Assistance, to carry along, when going for discussions and meetings. Of course, lots of development work (2 weeks) has to be done; not an easy 3 hour task, as for Version 1.  

DATA FROM RBI

OROP Programme Version 1 gives the TOTAL New OROP Pension payable for the 20 months (or any period) from 01 Jan 14 to 31 Aug 15. What the Government is worried is the increment of the Pension, over the presently payable OLD pension. Where do we get it from?

Don’t go to the Pension Control Authorities. They will never be able to give the figures. Reserve Bank can give it.

Each Pension Distributing Bank has readily available, at its Central Pension Cell, the TOTAL single figure of the amount it had paid actually out EACH month, on the last but one working day of the month. For example, in this month of August, they will pay out on Fri, 28 Aug and compile the TOTAL figure on Sat, 29 Aug and submit the bill to Reserve Bank on Sat, 29 may itself and they will receive the amount on Mon, 31 Aug, so that their Balance Sheet will be healthy on the last working day of the month.

In turn, Reserve Bank has the EXACT figures paid out to EACH Pension Disbursing Bank, on the last working day of EACH Month. RBI has just give these 20 Totals of the 20 Months. One phone call from our Defence Minister to the concerned Officer in RBI will get him (there is nothing secret about this figure) the 20 monthly paid out figures.

The Total of these 20 Payout monthly figures from RBI has to be subtracted from Total of the New Pension calculated in our OROP Pension Table for 20 months and recorded in the bottom right hand corner cell. And, we get the actual elusive (FIRST time quantified) increase of Additional Funds needed by the Government for the 20 months of OROP, from 01 Jan 14 to 31 Aug 15.

So far, every one in the Government has playing (as per the mood at the time) with fancy figures, without doing any correct calculations.

ACTION REQUIRED

CONCLUSION

There is a halo or mystique or shroud around the New Pension burden. It is built up by the Pension Department and by the bureaucrats. It requires 3 hours to write the Programme and 15 seconds of to run it, to arrive at the CORRECT Figure, correct to the rupee, for the FIRST time.

Vasanth