Economic Highlights
New Delhi, 5 July 2007
Looking for Better Pay Scales
TRICKY PROBLEM FOR GOVERNMENT
By Dr. Vinod Mehta
The Sixth Pay Commission
should be submitting its report in the next six to eight months. The Government employees are eagerly awaiting
the recommendations as they expect good pay scales. Some of the observations of
the Commission have given rise to this
expectation, especially the one which notes the widening gap in the emoluments
of employees in the private sector and their counterparts in the government
sector. A result of the 15 years of economic reforms. For instance, there is a
very wide disparity in the emoluments of senior persons working in nationalized
banks and those in the private banks. The result? Talented officers are leaving
nationalized banks to join private banks.
However, implementing higher pay scales may be a tricky job.
Prior to setting up the Commission,
the Government had consulted the State Governments on this issue. Almost all the State Governments have
indicated that they are willing to accept the recommendations of the Commission for higher pay scales provided the Centre
shares the burden of increased salaries.
It may be noted that the Fifth Pay Commission had upset the budgets of many State
Governments and till date the finances of many State Governments are in a very
precarious situation. Recall, while the Centre had accepted the recommendations
related to hiking the pay, it could not muster the political courage to
downsize the bureaucracy. As a consequence, the bureaucracy remains bloated and
the financial burden of the governments both at the Centre and the States goes
on increasing every six months.
The Expenditure Reforms Commission
too had made recommendations regarding the downsizing of the bureaucracy in a
phased manner over a period of ten years yet little is visible on the ground.
One of the important recommendations of the Fifth Pay
Commission was that the whole administration needed to be officer-oriented, and
public servants needed to convert from mere controllers and regulators to
catalysts, promoters and facilitators. To quote: “Their numbers need to be right
sized and an officer orientation brought about. The Government itself needs to
be restructured by closing down departments or amalgamating them, by
transferring subjects and institutions to the State Governments and Panchayati
Raj bodies, by converting departmental undertakings into public sector
undertakings…”
At another place it says: “Simultaneously the government
office needs to be reoriented. There has
to be de-layering in order to reduce levels and level-jumping in order to
reduce delays. Large unwieldy sections
have to give way to small business-like desks, the vast army of ministerial staff
may be casually replaced by Executive Assistants, with the group ‘D’ personnel
being trained as multi-skilled functionaries.
Automation and computerization would be brought in wholesale so as to
cut down paper work.”
Sadly, in the past 14 years not much has been done to
implement these recommendations. The expectations among the government staff is
that their salaries would be further raised without downsizing the
bureaucracy. But given the financial
position of the Centre and the States, there will be no escape from downsizing
the bureaucracy.
How will the Government do it? One has to wait and watch. As
a general observation one can say that the pay and allowances of Government
staff should be linked to the ability of the Government to pay. But the question is how do you define the
ability of the Government to pay when the Government itself is paying huge
amounts of hidden and open subsidies for political reasons?
When the Government can neither cut down superfluous
subsidies nor wasteful expenditure because of its archaic rules and regulations,
how would one convince the Government staff that it cannot bear the burden of
extra expenditure on account of enhanced pay and allowances? Any way the actual recommendations will be
known only after the report is submitted by the Commission.
The main task of the Pay Commission
will be to recommended pay-scales for the Central Government staff and
recommend an increase with a view to reducing the gap in the salaries in the
Government and those in the private sector. At the same time, the Commission also
owes it to the society that it can encourage people to go in for vocations
which serve the interest of society at large.
Moreover, the Commission’s
recommendations will also indicate what kind of personnel we need and the
importance of the personnel to economy as a whole. If one goes by the choice of the students
taking up graduate courses, one will find that there are hardly any takers for
science courses. Gone is the time when
taking up a science course was an honour.
Now young students prefer to take a course which fetch good salaries in
the market like commerce, economics and management etc. Students are not taking
up courses in science because the salaries are comparatively low and there is not
much scope for career advancement.
Think for a moment that if bright students are going for
commerce, economics and management and such like courses, will we have people
to do scientific research? Who will do
research on new molecules or develop new alloys? Who will look after our atomic
energy and our space programme?
Scientists are the back-bone of any country whether it is the USA, Russia, Korea or Japan. If we do not make scientific research
attractive enough in terms of good salaries bright young students will go for
courses like commerce, economics which may give them good salaries but will not
be an asset to the nation.
It is reported that the salaries of the scientists in Pakistan are higher than the salaries of the
scientists in India.
One would, therefore, like to draw attention of the Pay Commission to look into the salaries of the scientists
engaged in research and make them more attractive so that young students choose
research in science as a career over purely commercial careers. Countries like the USA,
Japan, Korea or even China are economic powers because
the technology they have in their country is based on the scientific research
of their scientists.
It is always the endeavor of the bureaucrats that salaries
of the Government employees whether that of scientists or any personnel engaged
in research are below the salaries of the joint secretaries to the Government
of India. Why should a scientist earn
less than a bureaucrat? Will the Sixth
Pay Commission be able to give different recommendations which gives prominence
to scientists in every field of scientific research?
The second category of employees which requires the
attention of the Pay Commission is that of school teachers. School teachers in every country are given
due respect by the society as they not only instill basic knowledge in the
minds of the young students but also mould their character. These students then
go on to become future scientists, bureaucrats, researchers and so on. There is
a misconception that school teachers work only for a half day. They also have to check the home work of each
and every student and prepare the lessons for the next day, which they normally
do at home. Thus, they are also working the whole time.
However, compared to the kind of work they do, the teachers
salaries are less than that of a Section Officer in the Government of India. The
average annual salary of a TGT and PGT is between Rs. one-and-a-half lakh to
Rs. two-and-a-half lakh as against Rs.4.5 lakhs earned by a school teacher in Thailand, Malaysia
or Turkey.
Salaries of the college teachers are comparatively much better. They are two to
three times more than those of the school teachers. It is, therefore, not surprising that a large
number of school teachers supplement their income by giving private tutions at
the cost of teaching in schools.
Some time back the Supreme Court had questioned the very low
pay-scales of school teachers. But the
Government has chosen to remain mum. It
would, therefore, be in the fitness
of things that the Sixth Pay Commission
recognizes the contribution of school teachers to society and looks into their
pay-scales and recommends reasonable scales for them. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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