In Army coaching Ground Zero, Agnipath turns business cold, heats up poll campaign

THE HOARDINGS put up by academies promising to help you get into the Armed Forces begin from 5 km away as one approaches Kuchaman city in Nagaur district. The city’s entrance gate has a welcome sign: ‘Shiksha ki Nagari Kuchaman (Education City Kuchaman)’.

Past those gates though, Kuchaman is almost a ghost town, its deserted coaching institutes and hostels a reflection of the dwindling charms of an Army job post the Agnipath scheme.

Located in west Rajasthan, Kuchaman, which falls in the Nagaur Lok Sabha constituency, started taking shape as a coaching hub for Army candidates sometime around 2009. Soon, students were trooping in from all over Rajasthan, as well as Haryana and western UP. At its height, over 2 lakh students were enrolled in the town’s “defence academies”, many of them staying in hostels.

Vinod Chaudhary, the founder of the Kuchaman Defence Academy, the oldest such in the city, says that at one time, “we had 1,500 students living in our hostels”. “We would give admissions on the basis of the students’ board marks.” Now, Chaudhary says, they are down to 150.

Chaudhary blames it on the change of the Army recruitment process with the Agnipath scheme, launched in June 2022. Under it, those not joining as commission officers are now recruited into the Armed Forces for a period of four years after a six-month training. At the end of the tenure, up to 25% of them continue, subject to merit and organisational requirements, while the others are relieved with a lump sum amount of around Rs 11.71 lakh, plus benefits.

As per figures provided by the Army, while two batches of 40,000 Agniveers have been deployed so far after completing their training, training for 20,000 more began in November 2023. In the Navy, three