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Looking for Better Pay Scales:TRICKY PROBLEM FOR GOVERNMENT, by Dr. Vinod Mehta, 5 July 2007 Print E-mail

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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