The Hindu Business Line : Not another Pay Commission, please!

THE Central and State Governments' finances were utterly ravaged by the implementation of the recommendations of the Fifth Central Pay Commission (1997), and the country is yet to recover from the consequences. Compared to the pitiful plight of the hundreds of millions of landless labourers, those painfully eking out their livelihood in the unorganised sector and others below the poverty line, the bounties resulting from the jacking up of the pay scales, allowances and concessions to all categories of employees, including pensioners, could only be described as overly generous.

However, the Commission subjected the acceptance of its bonanzas to three important conditions. One, the Government should devise and enforce stringent yardsticks to determine the output of each grade of employees, and weed out those who, even after being given repeated chances, fail to measure up to it. This would have put paid to the rampant shirking of work that, in the eyes of the people, characterises government offices.

Next, the Government should evolve a set of criteria with which to assess the justification for creating new posts and periodically satisfy itself about retaining or abolishing them. Incidentally, both these measures — pinning employees down to specific performance as per standards prescribed and making creation and continuance of posts contingent upon strictly justifiable need as per quantified parameters — were existent not only during the British rule but well into the early years of Independence. The third was that the nearly 2,24,000 jobs that it had considered to be redundant should be abolished in phases over a specified number of years. Subsequently, the Expenditure Reforms Commission too had identified a number of jobs that it felt were unnecessary.

The Government allowed itself to be pressured into ignoring these salutary recommendations aimed at better and more people-friendly governance, and carrying out only the monetary benefits part. The State Governments also adopted the recommendations for its own employees, going bankrupt in the bargain.

There should be no thought of appointing a new Pay Commission unless the conditionalities of the Fifth are complied with and the financial health of both the Central and State Governments is fully restored.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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