Five Pay Commissions and 50 years later, there are two clear lessons. The wage gulf between government officers and their counterparts in the private sector has swelled, and, this follows from the first, few of the former are proud of their status in the current scheme of things economic in India. The average graduate from one of the top 20 management institutes in the country starts with a salary of at least Rs 6 lakh per annum; a government recruit to an officer grade job of the Centre or state gets only Rs 1.5 lakh. The difference is stark. The implications to governance efficiency of such poorly paid civil servants should be obvious. At this juncture, it is important to make a distinction in the salary package of executives, who make decisions in the government, and their support staff. Since salary awards are based on a please-all principle, to reduce the political cost of the Pay Commission award for the government, every Commission has followed the path of equivalent compensation. This has only produced an army of overpaid support staff, a phenomenon that has created an unhealthy rush among poorly-educated, low-income groups to stake their all to join sarkari naukris.
A subplot of this story is the rapid rise in disaffection among uniformed employees. The defence ministry has given figures to Parliament of the large number of pilots it has lost to the private sector, even as it has tried novel methods, including a bar on seeking such jobs, to retain people. The perceived differential has created a very tricky situation that needs to be reviewed fast. There was a stir among the armed forces personnel after the award of the Fifth Pay Commission too, and things could be similar now, unless these issues are sorted out. In short, the Sixth Pay Commission?s announcements need not necessarily relate to the size of the payout; obviously the finance ministry will be keen to keep the load to a minimum. For the Fifth Pay Commission, the government had expanded the terms of reference to include the subject of governance reform. There was also the Expenditure Reforms Commission. That agenda was included in the brief given to this Pay Commission. But if this is an election year, or even the year before an election year, we may not see much by way of systemic change.
