Times of India says, Link government employees’ pay to performance

The Sixth Pay Commission headed by Justice B N Srikrishna has submitted its recommendations to the finance minister. The proposals, now officially revealed, confirm earlier newspaper reports that central government staff along with their counterparts in defence and paramilitary forces could get hikes of up to 52 per cent in salaries. There is indeed a genuine case to increase salaries of government employees, but this has to be linked to better performance and their playing genuinely productive roles. The present hike, however, is across the board and there doesn’t seem to be any realistic link to performance.
Steps need to be taken so that the enormous funds spent on the government’s wage bill are utilised efficiently. It is unfortunate that political parties in power use the pay commission as a tool to placate the massive vote bank among the babus. They dole out the pecuniary benefits alone without carrying out the administrative reforms suggested by successive commissions for increasing efficiency.

The pay hike will bring about massive strain on the exchequer. With the implementation of the fifth pay commission’s recommendations, the central government’s wage bill shot up by nearly 99 per cent. The present recommendations, when implemented, are expected to cause an additional annual encumbrance of Rs 20,000 crore.
Higher salaries should, as a natural corollary, bring about more efficiency. The government must learn from the private sector, which is far more efficient because its salaries, perks and promotions are linked to productivity. Market salaries will help to attract talent to the government in competition with the private sector. The government’s aim must be to become a lean organisation. A truly efficient bureaucracy will require less people. Many of the positions in our bureaucracy do not exist in advanced societies. A lot of work done currently by babus can be outsourced to private firms. The government should reduce the number of clerks, secretaries and peons and downsize itself.
While it may be that because their salaries are out of sync with the market that there is a high propensity for corruption among the babus, hiking their salaries alone won’t work. They should be made more accountable. The private sector is less corrupt because it has more accountability. The salary hike should be approved only after taking steps to improve organisational competence. If not, the pay hike will be another affliction on the economy, which is already slowing down.