(This piece by me was first published in the March 2008 issue of the Tehelka magazine. I have reproduced it here on my blog with some additions.)
We Indians have always had something of a chequered relationship with our bureaucracy.An enduring legacy of our colonial past, the Great Indian Babudom has never really won over the people it administers. The term "sarkari" is now synonymous with being inefficient, bloated, opaque, corrupt and unaccountable.
So when Justice B.N. Srikrishna submitted the Sixth Pay Commission report to Finance Minister P.Chidambaram in March 2008 recommending a 40 per cent hike in the salaries of Central government employees, criticism came thick and fast. Seeing this as a ploy to garner the votes of 4.5 millon employees, critics point out that the bulk of salary increases recommended by the Pay Commission does not insist on any marked productivity improvement. Financial experts cited how the implementation of the Fifth Pay Commission's recommendations ravaged the finances of the central and state governments. Spending another 20,000 crore rupees on the babudom was therefore anathema for the Indian public who lap up everything modern India has to offer - efficient private banks, 24-hour customer-care for a range of services and prompt redressal mechanisms.
Who cares if inflation is at a 13-year high at over 12%, eating into the meagre salaries of government employees? Who cares if the starting basic salaries of college graduates are over 15,000 rupees a month, while that of public servants in service for over 20 years is a petty 8000 a month?How does it matter that, of the 4.5 million employed by the government, only 7 per cent are class I and II officers while 93 per cent consist of school teachers, peons, clerks and jawans? Who gives a damn, anyways!
Our attitude towards the civil services can best be exemplified by comparing our attitude towards the business sector. When a Lakshmi Mittal or a Kiran Mazumdar Shaw climb up the ladder of the Forbes wealth list, the mainstream media laps it up as a sign of India's growing prosperity. When a Mani Ratnam makes a Guru glorifying how the founder of India's largest private conglomerate, flouted every law in the rulebook on his way to success, he's celebrated as the man who challenged the license raj. So, at a time when money-making isn't seen as a bad thing and is almost a national obsession, why can't government employees get a "New Deal"? Or is it the nature of their work that prevents them from being paid market rates? After all, public service is not charity. For most employees, government jobs are a source of income and thus a livelihood issue. Devoid of any tangible performance-based incentives like regular promotions, which remain a tool of their political masters coupled with peanut salaries, our bureaucracy is prone to all the evil trappings, corruption being one of them.
And that is why the Sixth Pay Commission should be lauded. While hiking the pay, it has for the first time linked pay hikes to employee performance and has also advocated the abolition of gazetted holidays. The carrot and the stick approach may just go a long way in making the babudom deliver and make it more accountable. In the meantime, the Indian public might want to grab onto some other fad, other than being overly critical of the civil service.
We Indians have always had something of a chequered relationship with our bureaucracy.An enduring legacy of our colonial past, the Great Indian Babudom has never really won over the people it administers. The term "sarkari" is now synonymous with being inefficient, bloated, opaque, corrupt and unaccountable.
So when Justice B.N. Srikrishna submitted the Sixth Pay Commission report to Finance Minister P.Chidambaram in March 2008 recommending a 40 per cent hike in the salaries of Central government employees, criticism came thick and fast. Seeing this as a ploy to garner the votes of 4.5 millon employees, critics point out that the bulk of salary increases recommended by the Pay Commission does not insist on any marked productivity improvement. Financial experts cited how the implementation of the Fifth Pay Commission's recommendations ravaged the finances of the central and state governments. Spending another 20,000 crore rupees on the babudom was therefore anathema for the Indian public who lap up everything modern India has to offer - efficient private banks, 24-hour customer-care for a range of services and prompt redressal mechanisms.
Who cares if inflation is at a 13-year high at over 12%, eating into the meagre salaries of government employees? Who cares if the starting basic salaries of college graduates are over 15,000 rupees a month, while that of public servants in service for over 20 years is a petty 8000 a month?How does it matter that, of the 4.5 million employed by the government, only 7 per cent are class I and II officers while 93 per cent consist of school teachers, peons, clerks and jawans? Who gives a damn, anyways!
Our attitude towards the civil services can best be exemplified by comparing our attitude towards the business sector. When a Lakshmi Mittal or a Kiran Mazumdar Shaw climb up the ladder of the Forbes wealth list, the mainstream media laps it up as a sign of India's growing prosperity. When a Mani Ratnam makes a Guru glorifying how the founder of India's largest private conglomerate, flouted every law in the rulebook on his way to success, he's celebrated as the man who challenged the license raj. So, at a time when money-making isn't seen as a bad thing and is almost a national obsession, why can't government employees get a "New Deal"? Or is it the nature of their work that prevents them from being paid market rates? After all, public service is not charity. For most employees, government jobs are a source of income and thus a livelihood issue. Devoid of any tangible performance-based incentives like regular promotions, which remain a tool of their political masters coupled with peanut salaries, our bureaucracy is prone to all the evil trappings, corruption being one of them.
And that is why the Sixth Pay Commission should be lauded. While hiking the pay, it has for the first time linked pay hikes to employee performance and has also advocated the abolition of gazetted holidays. The carrot and the stick approach may just go a long way in making the babudom deliver and make it more accountable. In the meantime, the Indian public might want to grab onto some other fad, other than being overly critical of the civil service.
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