INDUSTRY
Public Services
Forward-thinking government for citizen-first services
Highlights
- The Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA) partnered with TCS to revolutionize pension administration for defense personnel through the SPARSH program.
- By automating processes, reducing timelines, and improving transparency, SPARSH has transformed pension disbursement for over three million veterans.
- The system has significantly improved payment accuracy and timeliness, ensuring veterans receive their rightful benefits efficiently.
SPARSH: Touching lives
India’s Ministry of Defence oversees one of the world’s largest and most complex pension and personnel ecosystems.
For decades, India's defense pension system operated through manual, decentralized processes (1,500 banks, treasuries, and defense pension disbursing officers) that, while functional, called for improvement in speed, efficiency, and transparency.
The Controller General of Defence Accounts (CGDA), under the Ministry of Defence, partnered with TCS to successfully implement the SPARSH (System for Pension Administration Raksha) program, seamlessly replacing decentralized processes with a centralized, digital solution built on the TCS DigiGOV™ platform.
Then and now: From months to days
SPARSH has revolutionized pension administration for army, navy, air force, and defense civilian personnel.
The program has been designed to deliver timely, accurate, and transparent pension disbursement. SPARSH has reduced pension sanction timelines from 12–18 months to just 25 days, with the first pension payment now processed within two days of retirement—a milestone shift from earlier times when this could span months.
This transformation has resulted in:
- Faster and accurate payment processing and revisions: Right pension payments to over three million defense veterans are ensured at the right time. To date, over ₹ three trillion have been disbursed since October 2020. The One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme, which once took around six to eight months to implement for some 1.8 million pensioners, is now processed within just 15 days.
- Increased transparency: Pensioners can now track their payments, view entitlement details, and receive real-time notifications through the dedicated portal.
With transparency and stakeholder alignment at its core, SPARSH ensures that every veteran receives the right payment, at the right time, through the right channel—strengthening trust, compliance, and operational efficiency across India's defense pension ecosystem.
A unified ecosystem: Delivering value at speed and scale
The SPARSH platform delivers value across the defense pension ecosystem.
The program aligns the needs of pensioners, defense institutions, and policymakers within a unified digital framework.
For pensioners, it offers seamless self-service experience with real-time access to entitlements, status updates, and notifications, ensuring timely payments and reducing dependency on intermediaries. Defense establishments benefit from standardized pension workflows across the army, navy, air force, and civilian departments, enabling faster onboarding of retiring personnel and ensuring end-to-end compliance.
At a governance level, administrators and policymakers gain access to centralized dashboards that support evidence-based decision-making, performance tracking, and scalable program delivery. In unifying these diverse stakeholders under one digital roof, SPARSH enables a future-ready, transparent, and resilient pension infrastructure that upholds trust while delivering on intent.
Citizens first: The mark of true transformation
As SPARSH continues to evolve, it sets a new standard for digital transformation in public sector services.
It not only enhances the efficiency and accuracy of pension sanction and disbursement but also ensures that the nation's defense personnel are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.
SPARSH is a shining example of how technology can modernize legacy systems, reduce costs, and deliver faster, more reliable services, ensuring that India’s defense pensioners receive their entitlements accurately and on time.
