People's Democracy

SLAVES as they are of the IMF-World Bank-WTO trio, of the multinationals (MNCs) and the indigenous monopoly capital, the union government is actively considering an official proposal for virtually killing the entire public services of the country.

Earlier the government of India had appointed the infamous Geethakrishnan commission to reduce government expenditure by drastically downsizing the administration. This means mercilessly throwing out a number of employees by way of the so-called "voluntary" retirement scheme (VRS), direct retrenchment, drastic reduction of retirement age, etc.

Meanwhile, the prime minister has announced a drastic cut in the number of employees. To give that destructive motive a concrete shape, the department of administrative reforms and public grievances in the ministry of personnel, public grievance and pensions, government of India, has submitted "written recommendations" that virtually mean totally destroying the central and state government services with unthinkably preposterous and mad proposals. These recommendations were made through a DO No. K-11022/27/2000-P, dated January 29, 2001, and addressed to the department of expenditure.

It will be seen that some of the proposals are simply indicative of the lunatic way of thinking of the government. For example, at one place, it has been proposed to reduce the retirement age to 52. At another place, 45, instead of present 18, has been proposed as the minimum age for recruitment in government service for Group C & D employees. This means that the Class IV and class III employees will get the right of a government service for 7 years only.

These recommendations also propose no dearness allowance for the next five years and no pay commission in future. That means no pay revision and total stagnation in pay and allowances despite continuous rise in prices.

There are also other crazy proposals in the full text of the "written recommendations."

These "recommendations" thus amount to declaring an open war against the employees of the central, state, defence and railway sectors.

Meeting at New Delhi on March 25, in this alarming background, representatives of the All India State Government Employees Federation, Central Government Employees Confederation and All India Defence Employees Federation vowed to defeat this mad game of the union government. With a view to forging widest possible unity among employees of the government sector, they have called for a national convention of the representatives of trade unions working in these sectors at Delhi on May 27. The convention will chalk out militant programmes of united action to resist and defeat these destructive steps of the government of India.

Full text of the ministry’s said DO and the accompanying "written recommendations" for destroying public services is being published alongside.

Downsizing The Government

THE prime minister has recently announced that he would reduce government staff by 10 per cent in four years, and effect economy in government expenditure. Such measures should first start from the top civil service, such as the IAS, so that these are then followed by other cadres. One has to reduce not only posts of joint secretaries and above, but also reduce the number of officers who are claiming to occupy these posts. Some initiative has been taken to reduce the number of posts, but it leads to stagnation and is therefore resisted by the system. Therefore one should also consider the following measures to reduce the number of officers who are in the queue to join senior posts:

• Increase the period an officer can be out of the system from 5 to 7 years, without losing his seniority; and even beyond 7 years he should be allowed to keep his lien but lose seniority.
• Encourage officers to join voluntary organisations of repute, educational and research institutes during mid-career.
• For new recruits to government service it should be a compulsory condition in their rules of recruitment that they would be asked to take leave without pay for 5 years at a stretch (except for certain exempted services such as doctors and armed forces) after they have put in 10 years of service.
• Retire 25 per cent to 50 per cent of the officers at the age of 52 to 55, as it is done in the army.
• Those government servants who have only 4 years left for retirement should be give a choice of taking retirement on full salary or retain the government house for the remaining period of their service, provided their post or equivalent post in the cadre is abolished. This will be cheapest means of introducing VRS in government.
• Avoid post-retirement jobs to the civil servants as also to the judiciary. If the talent of any particular individual need to be used even after his retirement, it can be on a short-term consultancy basis to meet a specific time-bound requirement at the end of which the contract should be terminated. In any case no officer above the age of 60 should get government housing. By throwing open the jobs in the organisation like Administrative Tribunals, Commissions of Inquiry, Pay Commission, Vigilance Commission and the other regulatory authorities, etc, to the serving civil servants as against the retired, the prevalent congestion at the top levels of the civil service can also be substantially reduced.
• Merge the field departments with the secretariat departments at appropriate levels and by following the pattern prescribed in the army of decision making through the single file system. This can be done even now, as this will result in substantial reduction especially in the category of group C employees.
• The government of India must take a lead in reducing its staff, especially in ministries dealing with state subjects, and transfer most of the CSS to the state. In the ministries, there should be control on initial recruitment and most vacancies caused by retirement should remain unfilled and the posts abolished.

Some other unconventional suggestions to reduce government expenditure are:

• No DA increase for the next five years.
• 50 per cent of GPF to be put in a separate account from which no withdrawals are permitted.
• Shift to contributory pension scheme.
• Increase rent of government hosues to a minimum of 20 per cent of salary; it is as low as 2 per cent for certain category of government servants.
• Pass a law that, three years from now, not more than 50 per cent of revenues can be spent on establishment (both plan and non-plan) by those state governments which borrow from the government of India, or have to obtain the government of India’s permission before borrowing.
• For Group C and D posts; increase the minimum age of recruitment to 45.
• Reduce government vehicles and pay a higher allowance to officers, say Rs 5000 per month, to travel in their personal cars.
• Government vehicles should be sold on depreciated value to those drivers who voluntarily decide to take retirement, and the amount should be adjusted against their pensions.

AND NO PAY COMMISSION IN FUTURE.