India’s ECHS, meant to safeguard veterans’ healthcare, is faltering with hospital refusals, medicine shortages, and understaffed clinics leaving ex-servicemen in distress.
Veterans queue outside an ECHS polyclinic, highlighting the growing healthcare crisis in the scheme
The Ex-Servicemen Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS) was designed as a lifeline — a safety net ensuring that India’s veterans, after decades in uniform, would never be denied healthcare. Two decades later, that promise is fraying badly. Across the country, veterans line up outside overcrowded polyclinics, find pharmacies without medicines, and face refusals at empanelled hospitals that have stopped accepting ECHS patients due to unpaid dues.
This is not a fringe complaint. From Punjab to Tamil Nadu, reports of ECHS dysfunction have grown sharper between 2023 and 2025. Parliamentary committee observations echo what veterans say: underfunding, staff shortages, and poor governance have created a chronic crisis.
At its best, ECHS was supposed to mirror CGHS for civilian employees, with polyclinics, tie-ups with private hospitals, and a system of reimbursements. In practice, payments to empanelled hospitals are often delayed by months. Several hospitals have walked away from the scheme, citing unsustainable arrears. The result is that a veteran may hold a valid ECHS card but find no hospital willing to accept it. Medicines — which should be available at ECHS counters — are routinely out of stock, forcing veterans to buy from the open market and pursue reimbursement in a maze of paperwork.
The system’s weakest point is manpower. Many polyclinics operate with skeletal staff, leaving aged veterans and their families waiting hours just to be seen. In smaller towns, there may be one polyclinic serving several districts. For elderly pensioners, especially widows, navigating long queues and referrals is not just exhausting — it is demeaning.
Budget allocations have risen incrementally, but not enough to match demand. India’s veteran population is swelling, and with it, chronic illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer — conditions requiring consistent care. The gap between need and provision is widening.
The Defence Ministry has issued circulars promising to streamline payments and strengthen medicine supply chains. Yet on the ground, little has changed. Veterans’ associations continue to report shortages, and complaints about corruption in local procurement remain unaddressed.
The stakes are more than financial. Healthcare is dignity. A veteran who cannot secure treatment for his spouse or herself feels abandoned by the very state they defended. The erosion of trust in ECHS feeds into a wider disillusionment already visible in debates on pensions and disability policies.
Fixing the system is not rocket science. Payments to hospitals can and must be cleared within defined timelines, with penalties for delays. Medicine inventories should be digitally tracked and made transparent. Rural outreach clinics could ease pressure on urban polyclinics. State health systems could be tapped through tie-ups to share the load. Above all, grievance mechanisms must be responsive — a helpline that connects, not one that rings unanswered.
Veterans served India with the assurance that their basic needs would not be neglected once their service ended. Allowing ECHS to crumble is not just poor administration; it is a breach of that assurance. If speeches about honouring soldiers are to mean anything, ensuring timely healthcare must come first.
(Aritra Banerjee is a Defence, Foreign Affairs & Aerospace journalist. He has been covering ex-servicemen’s welfare, disability, and veterans’ issues since the beginning of his media career. He is also co-author of The Indian Navy @75: Reminiscing the Voyage.)
