Born ostensibly to serve, they sit smugly in their national out offices and from there orchestrate the movements of their masters, until one day they assume their surrogate authority and wield it with great favor and little fear. Nowhere is this petty corps of PAs, secretaries and peons more startlingly active than in Delhi. The capital has often been called the city of clerks. They run it. They rule it, and only they can give tacit sanction for the temporary breaching of their hallowed ramparts. Anyone who has ever had the ill-fortune to visit a ministry or a Government office is given a practical, firsthand demonstration of the frustrating experience of tackling this insidious frontline whose stubbornness defies logic and good sense.
The Central Government is so overstaffed that a simile drawn from the insect world that of the bumble-bee, seems to fit it. The bumble-bee is an enigma as it is too heavy to fly and yet it flies. So is the Central Government which sort of governs though it might as well have crumbled under its own weight. The oodles of fat in Government offices are expected to push up the estimated pay, perks and travel allowances of Central Government employees.
Though there have been belated efforts to trim the flabbiness, these have been met with stiff resistance from the employees. Interestingly, the estimate of total Government employees varies within the Government itself. With general elections just months away, the government has hiked the salaries of its employees, including defence personnel with effect from January 1, 2006, liberally modifying the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission. .The bonanza is expected to add expenditure of the Central Government.
The minimum entry-level salary of a government employee has been increased to Rs 7,000 against Rs 6,660 recommended by the pay commission. The current hike would push up the total
emoluments of an employee at the lowest level beyond Rs 10,000 per month, including allowances. The additional burden on account of the pay hikes would further push up the fiscal deficit, which is widening due to increasing subsidies for fuel, fertilizers and food. The general concern is that it would also have an impact on inflation.
The additional payout, an improvement over the already-generous Sixth Pay Commission (SPC) recommendations, is estimated to raise the Centre’s annual wage bill by Rs 17,000 crore. It also puts paid to any chances of achieving the FRBM (Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management) targets for the year. Worse, it endangers Central and state government finances for the next few years and pushes the public debt to GDP ratio, already one of the highest in the world, even higher.
Meanwhile inflation is at a 16-year high of 12.44 per cent. In the circumstances it would have been more prudent to either defer the payment of arrears or at least refrain from paying in cash (the amount could be credited to employees provident fund accounts). Instead, in what is clearly an attempt to woo its employees before the elections, the government has opted to pay the entire arrears in cash, albeit in two installments over the current and the next fiscal. For the privileged minority Government employees, it’s an Independence Day bonanza like no other; but for the vast majority in the country, it is an ill wind that’s unlikely to blow any good.