What central government employees can expect from the 7th Pay Commission
Sounds
odd, but the highest paid Indian bureaucrat till 1959 was the railway
board chairman and not the cabinet secretary. The top rail bureaucrat,
who was earlier called chief commissioner of railways, drew a basic
salary of Rs 3,250 per month, a smart 8.3% more than that of the cabinet
secretary, the senior-most bureaucrat in India. But as the fortunes of
Indian Railways dwindled over the years — its market share in freight
movement has shrunk from 90% in 1950 to 30% now — the clout of the rail
bosses and their corresponding rank and pay have also slipped.
Today,
the railway board chairman and eight other top rail babus receive a
salary equivalent to a government of India secretary, a scale which as
many as 230 Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and 40 Indian Police
Service (IPS) officers also draw. For good measure, the cabinet
secretary now not only draws a higher salary than the railway board
chairman, his superior rank comes with better perks including a bungalow
at Prithviraj Road located in the heart of Lutyens' Delhi.
Meanwhile,
the Indian Revenue Service (IRS), a 5,541 officers-strong cadre
responsible for collecting direct taxes in India, now claims that IRS
should get better pay and perks than IAS. The entry-level salary for all
Group A Central services is the same now, but thanks to two more
increments and faster promotions, IAS maintains an edge over others. The
basis for this claim? "Today, IRS — not IAS — is the revenue collector
for the government. So, it's logical that that the edge given to IAS
should be given to us," says Jayant Misra, Income-Tax commissioner and
general secretary of IRS Association. In a 58-page-long memorandum to
the 7th Central Pay Commission (CPC), which is now examining a pay hike
for Central government employees, the IRS Association argued that the
primary reason for higher pay to the Indian Civil Service (ICS) of the
British era and its successor service, IAS, was that they were revenue
collectors. But now, the dynamics have changed, they claim.
IRS
has argued that the net direct tax collection has grown 9.35 times
between 2000-01 and 2013-14, an impressive piece of statistics in the
backdrop of only 5.4 times expansion of GDP during the corresponding
period. Also, the cost of revenue collection in India is one of the
lowest in the world, which according to IRS officers is yet another
reason for demanding a good deal from the CPC. For every Rs 100 they
collect, the tax department spends merely 57 paisa. In percentage terms,
the cost of revenue collection in India is one of the lowest in the
world, which according to IRS officers is yet another reason for
demanding a good deal from the CPC. For every Rs 100 they collect, the
tax department spends merely 57 paisa. In percentage terms, the cost of
revenue collection in India is 0.57% as against 1.58% in Japan, 1.35% in
France, 1.17% in Canada and 1.05% in Australia.
Welcome
to the behind-the-scenes manoeuvring before the Big Sarkari Pay Hike.
With a new pay scale for 36 lakh Central government employees, and also
pensioners, likely to come into effect from January 1, 2016, the
officers and non-gazetted staff of various services have been lobbying
hard to get a good deal from the 7th CPC. Unlike in the private sector,
the pay hike in government is a once-in-10-years-affair, making every
CPC, right from the first that submitted its report in 1947, a hugely
powerful agency. No doubt, government employees have to undergo an
annual appraisal process called Annual Performance Appraisal Report
(APAR), but that exercise is important only for promotion, and not for
any pay hike. Government employees do get a regular hike in dearness
allowance, a measure meant for offsetting inflationary pressure on their
earnings, but at the end of the day it is the CPC that fixes the
bureaucrats' pay for 10 long years.
That's precisely why
officers and staff of every service can't afford to ignore the CPC.
Constituted in February 2014 under the chairmanship of retired Supreme
Court judge Ashok Kumar Mathur, the 7th CPC has an economist and two
bureaucrats as its members. Most of the employees' associations have
already had at least one round of talks with the Commission. And some
are waiting for Round II.
The Ripple Effects
A
cursory glance at the memorandum submitted by IPS Central Association
on behalf of Indian Police Service (IPS) will throw light on the
importance attached to a pay commission. The 137-page memorandum, a copy
of which was reviewed by ET Magazine, is well designed and comparable
to any standard report prepared by a global consultancy firm. PV Rama
Sastry, an Inspector General of Police at National Investigation Agency
(NIA) and secretary of IPS Central Association says the memorandum is
the result of intense in-house research, factoring in the macro
environment of growth, development, equity and justice vis-a-vis the
role of a police officer. Though Sastry is the spokesperson of 4,720 IPS
officers, the memorandum prepared by his team encompasses the role and
needs of 30 lakh police personnel across India out of which 10 lakh come
under the gamut of the pay commission. As the CPC recommendations are
often accepted by the state governments as well, the remaining 20 lakh
police personnel too may eventually benefit.
The IPS
memorandum has quoted a number of reports to suggest that the tough life
of a cop justifies the demand for a fatter hike. For example, it has
quoted articles published in two journals — Global Journal of Medicine
and Public Health and International Journal of Pharma and Bio-Sciences —
to conclude that one of two cops in India suffers from sleep
disturbances and anxiety whereas chances of cardiovascular problems
increase by 38% after a person joins as a police officer. Among other
demands (see What it Expects), IPS wants better life and health
insurance cover, an overtime allowance and also a new perk called
allowance for "un-social" hours (for duty between 8 pm and 6 am).
Railway
officers too cite round-the-clock work demands as a reason for better
salary. "A railway officer may be called to join duty any time during
the night. The pressure always remains as it's a 24x7 work," says RR
Prasad, an Indian Railway Personnel Service officer and secretary
general of Federation of Railways Officers' Association. The Indian
Railways is a gigantic organisation with over 13 lakh employees, 16,000
of whom are officers. Both the officers and staff associations have made
their representations to the 7th CPC. The officers want non-gazetted
staff to get their dues but they demand the proportion of the pay of the
lowest and the highestpaid employee should increase from current 1:12
to 1:18
To be sure, a formula towards pay parity has been
the hallmark of the last few pay commissions. A government entry-level
peon now gets a monthly pay of Rs 14,000, if dearness allowance is
factored in. Similarly, a mid-level government driver's monthly salary,
including allowances, is Rs 30,000, at least two times that of his
counterpart in a private sector company. And that's why the salary gap
between the lowest and highest paid government servant has drastically
decreased over the last three decades.
The pay commissions
have also reduced the disparity among the officers of various services.
Till the late 1980s, an IAS officer used to receive a salary that's 25%
higher than that of a Group A service officer. Today, the pay for all
officers, at least at the entry level, is same. But IAS and Indian
Foreign Service (IFS) officers still maintain an edge over others as
their empanelment process (a step to get higher posts) is much faster.
Balancing Act
An
IPS officer can become a joint secretary to government of India only
two years after an IAS of the same batch can reach that level.
Similarly, there has been a nine-yearlong gap in joint secretary
empanelment between IAS and IRS, something many services claim is a
continuation of the British legacy. Today, IAS officers at the level of
deputy secretary and director at the Centre constitute about only 13% of
the total officers. But as the hierarchy goes up, the percentage of IAS
vis-a-vis others also rises. For example, 75% joint secretaries to
government of India belong to IAS and IFS, and the percentage of IAS and
IFS goes further up to 95 in case of government of India secretaries.
"The
edge that the IAS has must continue. Why will a person join the IAS
after quitting a job in HSBC Bank if that edge is missing? IAS officers
have work experiences at Tehsil, sub-divisions, district, state and
Central government levels. We interact with the political executives at
all levels. IAS should remain a premium service," says Sanjay R
Bhoosreddy, a joint-secretary-ranked officer and secretary to IAS
(Central) Association.
On its part, the Indian Economic Service
(IES) which has a cadre strength of 511 officers, represented in 55
Central government departments, has demanded parity in pay, perks and
promotions of all services, including IAS, so that the "officers deliver
what they have been employed for rather than fret over their pay and
promotion prospects".
The question is how far the 7th CPC will go
in changing the pay and associated service conditions like empanelment
and promotions. IAS officers have pulled out a 1991 Supreme Court
judgement (Mohan Kumar Singhania and Others vs Union of India and
Others) where it was said that other services should not approach the
pay commissions and attempt to change the rules of career progressions
and push for a case for parity with the premier service. But other
services are continuing their demand for pay parity and also for the
creation of more departments where the IAS can't dictate. At present,
only three major ministries — railways, external affairs and post — are
not headed by IAS but run by their own cadres. Now, IPS wants a new
department of internal security headed by a cop and IRS wants a separate
direct tax department headed by a taxman.
Will the 7th CPC venture into such nuances? Or
will it, like the past few pay commissions have, adopt a simple formula
of Multiplier 3 under which the basic salary is hiked by three times or
more depending on the economic health of the nation. If that is the
case, it won't be too hazardous to make a prediction: A secretary to
government of India will get a basic monthly salary (excluding DA) of Rs
2.4 lakh (current basic salary multiplied by three) and the cabinet
secretary Rs 2.7 lakh from January 1, 2016. And, yes, perks, DA and
other allowances will be extra.
Source:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
