India tries again to cut red
tape By Indrajit Basu
KOLKATA - The iconic first prime minister
of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, once famously said that
if a country paid "peanuts" to its ministers and
civil servants, all it would get would be
"monkeys".
This is why, perhaps, that
Singapore, a growing country small in size and
with limited resources, has made sure its
administration is among the highest-paid in the
world.
The important message, however,
seems to have been lost on India. Although the
country has embarked for years on aggressive
reforms in many sectors, administrative reforms
and salary hikes have always been a touchy and
divisive issue. Quite a few attempts at reform
have been made over the past five decades, but due
to lack of political will and the country's
massive civil
service - which
represents an equally enormous voting block - all
efforts have been futile.
But now, having
initiated most of the country's required economic
reforms over past 17 years, it appears that India
may be turning its focus on the long-awaited
administrative reforms.
Over the past two
months, two specially constituted government
bodies - the Pay Commission and the Administrative
Reforms Commission - have suggested a slew of
reform measures that could have a far-reaching
impact on the structure and functioning of the
Indian Civil or Administrative Services. The Pay
Commission is an administrative mechanism set up
in 1956 to guide the salaries and functioning of
government employees. The (Second) Administrative
Reforms Commission was formed in 2005 to prepare a
detailed blueprint for revamping the public
administration system.
The new Pay
Commission report - called the 6th Pay Commission
Report - released last month was sensational.
Realizing that one of the anomalies in country's
scorching economic growth is the fact that Indian
government employees are paid - well, not exactly
in "peanuts" - but nowhere near the salaries in
the private sectors, it suggested a sharp 28%
across-the-board increase in salaries. This
unheard-of hike, along with perquisites, would
almost treble earnings at certain levels.
Considering that salaries in the
flourishing private sector have been rising an
average of 15% per year for the past five years,
this rise may still pale in comparison. But for
the 4.5 million employees of the government, it
was a welcome hike. In the 11 years since the last
raise was suggested by the commission, India's
real per capita income has more than doubled -
whereas government salaries have only been raised
in line with inflation.
But the
highest-ever salary hike recommended by the 6th
Pay Commission is only a part of the story. More
importantly, this commission, for the first time,
has given a clear mandate to improve service
delivery and introduce accountability in civil
service. This is quite a departure from the five
earlier Pay Commissions which were virtually
indistinguishable in the sense that they simply
tweaked the levels of bureaucracy.
For
instance, the 6th Pay Commission initiated a
performance-based incentive scheme that (for the
first time again) will introduce a variable pay
component into the salary of government employees.
Moreover, bucking the trend of uniform pay and
doing away with the de rigueur system of bonus
payments, honorariums and overtime allowance, the
commission has suggested an extra percentage point
higher increment for "high" performers, who would
be judged on improved delivery by an independent
agency.
The commission has also instituted
the hitherto unthinkable concepts of contractual
employment and short-term appointments in
government service. In another departure from
existing practice, government employees have been
allowed the option to quit their existing jobs
(without permission) for private sector jobs or to
rejoin the government on a contract basis.
"The [6th Pay] Commission has done a
meticulous job of rationalizing relativities of
salaries," said S Venkitaramanan, a former Indian
Administrative Service (IAS) officer and former
governor of the Reserve Bank of India who is now a
commentator on administrative reforms.
If
all this sounds radical, the Administrative
Reforms Commission (ARC) has gone a step further.
The ARC has suggested that targets of each
department be fixed and work expectations from
each civil servant be spelt out in a written
agreement. Also, a performance record will be made
public in order to provide "complete transparency
in what each individual bureaucrat has agreed to
achieve during a particular time period". If a
civil servant fails to deliver, the government is
given the right to issue a pink slip to make way
for new employees.
"Hardly any civil
servant gets thrown out on grounds of incompetence
and failure to deliver," said the ARC report. "It
is necessary that all civil servants should
undergo a rigorous assessment of performance at
least once in their career - at the 20-year
service mark. On the basis of such assessment, the
civil servants who have not performed must be
retired compulsorily using provisions which
already exist but are not adequately used."
Although many changes have taken place in the
Indian Civil Service since it was introduced under
the British by governor general Lord Cornwallis
during his tenure between 1786 and 1793, the
colonial legacy continues as India's bureaucracy
remains within what critics call "the steel frame
instituted back in the colonial days".
According to expert V Sundaram, even after
independence from the British in 1947, India's
bureaucracy "degenerated into a system in which
everything is delayed by inflexible rules of
inaction and indifference with total commitment to
neutral performance or perpetuation of status quo
or both".
According to the Hyderabad-based
Center for Good Governance (CGG), since
independence subsequent governments have increased
the number of their ministries, departments and
officials, mostly for "political considerations to
accommodate more and more intra-party groups by
offering more ministerial positions".
Along the way, various governments have
also created posts for senior civil servants,
along with other jobs at other levels that
enlarged the patronage capabilities of a number of
political and bureaucratic leaders.
"However, this expansion has not been
offset by a concomitant shedding of lower priority
responsibilities or other attempts to eliminate
redundancy," claimed the CGG, and consequently,
"vested interest groups were also created that
have blocked all efforts at reform and
rationalization".
For instance, the first
ARC, then called the National Commission, was
formed in 1960 and was dissolved nine years later
after it was considered redundant. Meanwhile, over
the years five Pay Commissions were set up to
reform the country's administrative structure. But
critics contend that none were able to make even
minor alterations because the massive voting block
represented by the millions of Central Government
employees and millions more state government
employees were - and still are - too significant
to be ignored.
"Politicians treat
bureaucrats like a large, collective votebank whom
they dare not displease," said Aroon Purie,
editor-in-chief of the news magazine India Today.
Until now, India never really took up
administrative reforms seriously, said Sundaram.
Even now, after encouraging suggestions,
it remains to be seen if the latest round of
recommendations will be implemented. There are a
still no assurances,at least not just yet. But the
will to reform appears to be stronger than ever in
the corridors of power.
Commenting on the
6th Pay Commission report, Prime Minster Manmohan
Singh admitted "The time has now come" for civil
service reforms, and his government is "preparing
for it". And notably, the communist leaders and
trade unions - that support the current
Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and have
been demanding such commissions for over two years
- are willing to play ball, too.
Indrajit Basu is a Kolkata-based
journalist.
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