Abolish the cadres for income parity

The Seventh Pay Commission has recommended 23.55 per cent hike in pay and allowances for Central government employees. Apart from that, the commission has made some radical recommendations to reform the bureaucracy. Besides doing away with the two-year edge to Indian Administrative Service officers (IAS officers get the senior administrative grade two years before officers of other services), it has also recommended appointing experts at the highest level. If accepted, these changes will bring about a revolutionary change.

However, the recommendation to hike salaries needs serious consideration. Every time the Pay Commission recommends increase in salaries, it argues that it is meant to improve efficiency and productivity. Should the hike be unilateral without any reference to the per capita income How far does the enhancement in salary improve efficiency But the last question first.

In his hierarchy of needs theory, Abraham Maslow talks about five kinds of needs: physiological (air, food, water, shelter and clothing), safety (personal security, financial security, good health, protection from accidents, etc), social (a sense of belonging and acceptance), esteem (self-esteem and respect) and self-actualisation (impetus to reach one’s full potential). Maslow said that these needs existed in a pyramid-like hierarchical order and propounded that lower-level needs must be satisfied before the higher-level needs.

These needs are divided into two categories: deficiency needs (physiological and safety) and growth needs (social, self-esteem and self-actualisation). If deficiency needs remain unsatisfied, one will not do anything for their development. The basic proposition is that our needs are in a state of flux; as one need is fulfilled, we crave another. So, will the hike someone received three years ago motivate them for the next 10 years No. Maslow’s theory of motivation suggests that management must continually adapt to employees’ changing needs.

So far as the second question is concerned, right from the beginning, it has been taken to mean status and security without accountability. Since the British came to rule India, they introduced a flabby administration with huge salary and perks in which doing a job was a luxury. In fact, the salary structure of British officials was mind-boggling. The Regulating Act of 1773, the first essay in Constitution-making for India which symbolised the new concept of partnership between the Crown of England and the East India Company, created a supreme council in Bengal which consisted of governor-general and four councillors.

The salaries fixed for them were unbelievable; the governor-general got £25,000 per year, while the councillors were paid £10,000 each. No wonder Mahatma Gandhi in a letter to Viceroy Lord Irwin, dated March 2, 1930, wrote that he held British rule to be a curse which had impoverished the dumb millions by a system of progressive exploitation and by a ruinously expensive military and civil administration. Then he wrote about the inequality in income: “Take your own salary. It is over Rs 21,000 per month, besides many other indirect additions.

The British Prime Minister gets £5,000 per year, i.e. over Rs 5,400 per month at the present rate of exchange. You are getting Rs 700 per day against India’s average income of less than two annas per day. The Prime Minister gets Rs180 per day against Great Britain’s average income of Rs 2 per day. Thus you are getting much over 5,000 times India’s average income. The British Prime Minister is getting only 90 times.”

Even after Independence, expenditure on the establishment remained huge. This is where the common man suffers. How can we justify this hefty hike in salaries of government employees when anyone earning Rs 32 per day in city is not considered poor

The government must endeavour to reduce disparity and raise per capita income for inclusive growth. Per capita income is misleading when the disparity is so horrendous.

The Seventh Pay Commission has recommended performance-related pay based on quality results framework documents and reformed annual performance appraisal reports, but with corruption ruling the roost even this will be a victim of nepotism and favouritism.

True, performance should be rewarded, but the forces of nepotism will not allow objective assessment. Flattery outweighs merit.

In a cadre-based system, merit will not be rewarded. In every office, officers of dominant cadres corner all amenities due to others. Cadres are castes in a new garb and cadreism is more rabid than casteism. The government should think of abolishing the cadres in toto. The commission is silent on the neglect of many groups in the government whose members do not get a single promotion in their entire career.

The Fifth Pay Commission recommended casualisation of class III and class IV employees, and that happened to a great extent. The Sixth Pay Commission talked of bringing in professionals and experts at higher levels on contract.

But it never happened as babus would not allow it. TV news correspondents were appointed by Doordarshan in 1988 in senior class I and class I scales directly through open competition on the recommendation of P.C. Joshi Committee to professionalise DD news bulletins. Most of them left in frustration in a few years and those who remained are stagnating without a single promotion.

They won the battle for timely promotion from Central Administrative Tribunal, but the government went in appeal to the high court which upheld the CAT judgment. Now the government has moved the Supreme Court without the permission of the law ministry. The design is to prolong the case so long that all of them retire.

Experts have to suffer humiliation at the hands of babus who they are supposed to substitute, and are forced to stagnate. In such circumstances, the recommendation draft for experts at the highest level may never see the light of day.

The writer is a senior TV journalist, author and columnist