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The UGC Pay Review Committee’s recommendation is significant on two counts: one, it recognises teachers’ contribution to the country’s future and, second, the revised pay scale is not related to IAS cadre salary. It has been a pernicious system in the country that pay-scales of different services under the Central and State Governments, public sector undertakings, Defence, etc., are all in some way linked to IAS salaries, and are usually some notches below it.

Thus the scientist, doctor, engineer, high court judge, bank chairman, army commander or any professional serving in the government and related organisations, is placed in status/protocol, at best, on par with the IAS cadre, but most often below it.

The IAS cadre has through successive Pay Commissions consolidated its status in the hierarchy of government employees. Its stranglehold on setting the order of parity provoked even the most disciplined Defence chiefs to openly defy the Cabinet Order on revised pay scale. The Government should, in future, set up separate pay commissions for groups of services and set parameters for recommendations.

P. V. Maiya Bangalore

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