How Do We Tame The Overlords?

Many of the issues agitating large groups in India can be traced to the absurdly plum pay and perquisites offered to government employees (GE) and the ridiculous levels of protection granted to them against non-performance and malpractices.  To make the picture complete you must also firmly keep in mind that GE do not view themselves as public servants but as overlords to whom the public must pay obeisances and who collect personal fees for every service that they are supposed to render as part of their duty.  IAS are an outstanding and dramatic sample of this rotten GE class.

This group (GEs) provoke two kinds of reaction amongst the non-GE public.  One is that of intense anger and the other an intense desire to become one of them.  The massive support that Anna received for his Jan Lokpal movement is a manifestation of the first reaction.  The current competitive backwardness (CB) for landing a government job is a manifestation of the second reaction: the current agitation in Gujarat brings out the gravity of the situation.

Another example of the second reaction is current agitation by army men.  Our defense veterans are very upset about the delay in One Rank One Pension (OROP.)  Another group to which I belong, namely, bankers, also wanted this.  They call it pension updation.  However I understand that this group has lowered its already weak voice after its treacherous leaders signed an agreement which lowered the pensions while granting a meager increase in salaries.

What is hurting these groups is that OROP has been granted to the mammoth non-performing and parasitic bureaucracy long back. (And if bureaucracy has it, I presume that politicians must be having it too.)  It hurts the pride of a soldier to think that a group of rotten pen-pushers and obstacle creators has it while it is denied to those who lay down their lives as part of their duty to the country!

Here are some suggestions that may partly remedy the situation:

1. A salary that is 20 times the current poverty line should be the ceiling for salaries paid to government servants at any level.
2. Salaries of PSUs should be decided on the basis of their capacity to pay and have no relation to those of government servants.
3. Government servants must compulsorily avail of government run services in every sector where it is available, the foremost being education and health.
4. If the budgetary deficit is not zero or below the agreed limit, no increases in staff expenses on any count should be admissible.
5. Top positions in each ministry must be filled only through lateral recruitment of those who have qualification and expertise in the area.  Such lateral recruits may be offered market based salaries to draw in the right talent.
6. Citizen's charter and Lokpal must be set up immediately and have offices down to district level.
7. The need to obtain government permissions for prosecuting government servants must be done away with.
8. Punishment for corruption as also inefficiency must be exemplary.

Additions and reactions to these suggestions are welcome.
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हार्दिक शुभकामनाओं सहित:

सर्वोत्तम सरकारी नौकरी, हम को हो गया ज्ञान,
बन पिछड़ा हड़पो इसे, इसमें ही कल्याण.

A discount coupon consigned to the dustbin!

Recently my credit card company was kind enough to send me two vouchers for Rs.500/= each to be redeemed at a Wills Lifestyle store.  As jeans and t-shirt has become the standard dress code for me post retirement, I thought of getting myself a full sleeves T for the winters.  I visited the Wills Lifestyle section in a West Side shop.  There I learnt that I had to go to a full fledged Wills store to redeem the coupons.  And then while reading the terms and conditions again I further realized that the two coupons could not be clubbed together.  That meant that I had to purchase two separate items from a Wills store.  I regretted having parked my vehicle in the paid parking for such a brief transactions and drove to the Wills store in a Mall further down the road.

Wills did not have the kind of T that I was interested in.  And amongst what they had, the least expensive one was priced at around Rs.2000/=!! It looked like a pretty bad bargain even after discounting the coupon value.  I decided to take a look at the shirts.  I knew that Wills Lifestyle is an expensive store but was hardly prepared for what I stumbled upon.  It was a stack of shirts each priced at Rs.5,495/=!!!!!  Yes, you got it right: Rupees Five Thousand Four Hundred Ninety Five for a single shirt!  I told the salesman that this was a discovery that I was going to share with all my friends even if they already knew it.  He showed me some "affordable" shirts priced at around Rs.2000/=;  but my mind was already made.  I threw the coupons in the nearest dustbin and proceeded to Spencers' where I got exactly what I had in mind for a price in three digits.

I am wondering how far below the "Wills" poverty line do I lie?