Dangers Of 140 Character Wisdom On OROP

    The famous micro blogging website, and it need not be named here, does great service in this day and age of a hyper connected world. However, every once in a while, the downside, of a tiny ripple of a mere idea getting turned into a cliff sized wave of flawed interpretations, becomes more than a little apparent.

    I've just had yet another experience of this recently. While engaged in a conversation about the justification, or the lack of it, for applying the concept of OROP to civilian organizations, I tried to bring out my logic with an illustration of a hypothetical situation in which OROP would be called "AFTCPB", an acronym for "Armed Forces Truncated Career Pensionary Benefit", so as to make it unambiguously clear to the meanest intelligence that:

• It applied to armed forces personnel only.
• It was based on the shorter career spans of people in uniform in armed forces.

   The aim was to put forward the logic that since service conditions of civilian organisations did not include those particular attributes present within the armed forces, perhaps, OROP need to apply only to personnel of the armed forces who retire at much younger ages as compared to personnel of other government organizations, including the Central Armed Police Forces. 

    The 140 character nature of the post did not exactly facilitate holding forth on explaining in several paragraphs that calling OROP by another name to illustrate its "armed forces" specific application was merely a "What If" approach. In other words, "What if OROP was called AFTCPB? Would other civilian organizations be also able to say they needed it too, as TC (Truncated Careers) did not apply in their case"?

    This did not register with another person who insisted the civilian organizations, he incorrectly referred to them as "para military", would ask for AFTCPB as well. This was attempted to be clarified by yet another person who joined the conversation, a familiar participant in blog comment threads. The hash tag #OROP appears to be a great signalling device and never fails to attract the attention of the thousands affected. Here's a link to the conversation.

    There the matter would have ended, when notifications on my micro-blogging account alerted me that my "handle" had been mentioned in others' posts. I found the same issue of calling OROP something other than OROP was being discussed and someone else had in fact put forward a serious proposal that it actually be renamed and that his post be re-circulated, perhaps like one of those numerous online petitions that seek the support of other like minded persons on the web.

    As things often happen, it led to an exchange between participants suggesting this was an idea derived from what I had mentioned, about calling OROP as AFTCBP, albeit only to illustrate its applicability solely to the armed forces, and that if anything required re-circulation, it was my original post. Part of this subsequent exchange clearly demonstrates how stake holders can argue at cross purposes, steering the ship of logic off course, into uncharted waters.

      That is the last thing that is required. It would be far from constructive to even attempt to rename OROP. It merely needs to be understood by everyone that the justification for OROP applies only to the armed forces. If the justification is fully explained in documents implementing OROP, as it is most likely to be explained when and if the implementation takes place, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind OROP applies only to personnel of armed forces.

     If there are shortfalls or deficiencies in pensionary benefits of CAPF or civilian government organizations then a case for rectifying those has to be taken up separately and not because of implementation, when and if it happens, of OROP for personnel of armed forces.

       So, in the remote possibility of anyone at all having the "re-circulation" urge, perhaps consideration could be applied to using the "share button with the bird t" at the bottom of this blog post as a more constructive alternative to any 140 character bit of wisdom, mine or anyone else's, on what OROP should or should not be called.

       As I had mentioned previously, the ship of considering alternatives to OROP had sailed a long time ago. That seems to apply equally to the option of calling it something else.