Two days before budget, tax officers face off with the govt

Similar disquiet brewing in the railway and finance ministries

It is pretty difficult to recall when any group of top officers of the central government came to office sporting black bands. Its even more impossible to recall any episode where service issues made officers don those bands. 

On Monday, officers of the Indian Revenue Service Association (Customs and Central Excise) made a smart choice in terms of date to show their displeasure. It is just 48 hours to the Budget and this is the time when the ministry is stretched to the maximum, so there is room to make your point. It is a demonstration of the deep fissures that have broken out in the administrative framework at the centre that a step that only junior officers and support staff could conceive have found traction at such senior levels. 

The displeasure is more than just one involving the launch of Goods and Services Tax. It is about the internecine sniping at each other among the cadres of government officers as a follow through of large changes in administrative roles happening at the central government.

Incidentally, in the current dispute the IRS officers are protesting against alleged usurpation of their turf against the state sales tax commissioners. The latter are drawn from the Indian Administrative Service. Between them, the IAS and IRS (including both direct and indirect tax) form the largest component of top government officers at the centre and at the states. 

There is a similar disquiet, again about change of roles in the railway ministry and the finance ministry. As a separate railway budget has been abolished by the union cabinet, the role of several railway services, particularly that of Indian Railway Accounts Service has got clipped. 

Differences in perceived rank and pay among the central services including IRS and IRAS compared with the IAS has always been a sore point. Among the secretary level appointments at the central government, the percentage of non-IAS officers posted is thin. In 2016, the government for the first time posted 14 non-IAS officers to joint secretary level posts. Joint secretaries are heads of the functional departments of most government ministries and rank only after the secretary in terms of importance. In terms of annual vacancies, these numbers are still small, though. The government appoints about 90 officers to the rank of joint secretary each year.

Last year, there was a furore when the Seventh Pay Commission in a split verdict, suggested removing some of these anomalies by letting the non-IAS officers get more traction in administration. But Sanjay Bhoosreddy, secretary of the IAS Officers Association, claimed this is impractical. "Can you envisage a situation in any mature democracy where the policy is made and administered by the same group of men? Can the police force be responsible for running law and order and also decide the law?” Countering him Anup Srivastava, president of IRS (indirect tax) Officers Association says GST roll out can be successful only "when execution is in the hand of specialists and experts and not in the hands of generalists"( read IAS). 

The latter claim much of the expected trouble in administering service tax post GST implementation could have been anticipated if they had been allowed a larger say role in the decision making body, the GST Council, instead of the IAS officers. This is the same grouse that direct tax officers made last year in collection of tax arrears when finance minister Arun Jaitley publicly ticked them off. Concerns on the same line are brewing in the railway ministry too. 

As it is, the number of officers posted to the various ministries is awfully small. A study by the Seventh Pay Commission shows there are only 30,000 officers across all ministries in India. Adding those posted in the field offices like the tax departments, environment and other such units will still keep their numbers short of 100,000. Differences among them is hardly something that the administrative challenges that beset Indian economy can afford.

Twitter: @subhomoyb