Too few babus?

The government faces a staff shortage, a news report says. Most people might find it difficult to believe that, given how the total staff strength has been growing almost every year""instead of coming down by 3 per cent annually, as the last Pay Commission had postulated a decade ago. However, square pegs don't fit into round holes, and the solution that was worked out as the path of least resistance (freeze recruitment at the lower levels and reduce it at the higher levels) has now run into the inevitable problem of a mismatch between demand and supply""not in absolute numbers but in the kind of people required.

People who have been rendered redundant by deregulation and de-licensing, or whose work can be done with reduced staff strength through computerisation and/or a change of work processes (long overdue in its own right as a required reform measure), remain on the government's rolls while positions that need to be filled for the system's overall effectiveness don't find suitable candidates because of the slowdown in recruitment. And so it is that the department of personnel has written to state governments, asking them to send mid-level administrative service officers (of the rank of director and deputy secretary) to the Centre on deputation. The states in turn are reluctant to oblige because this is the crucial operational level in the states and districts, and the squeeze on recruitment into the administrative service that was put into place some years ago, has now created a shortage that cannot easily be addressed because lateral entry into government service is virtually unknown.

The short point about the government's employees is that there are too many people in the supporting staff function (clerical or menial), and too few officers who take the decisions. The total cost of the officer cadre (at what are called Classes I and II), in relation to the government's total bill for salaries, is small. It is also true that those at the lower levels are usually paid more than market price, while in the upper echelons the salary and perquisites desperately need improvement because the market has moved ahead. To pay too much for dispensable staff and too little for those who are important to the system is the worst kind of human resource situation to be in, but that is exactly the mess in which the government has landed itself.

It is futile to expect this government to address the problem of surplus staff, given the certain rupture that it will cause with its Left allies. Nor is it possible to create mid-level officers overnight. However, this should not mean that no solution is possible. A ruthless categorisation of government jobs into four or five categories, ranging from vital to redundant, should make it possible to shut down entire offices that serve no useful purpose today (the Geethakrishnan committee had made a long list, on which no action has been taken), and to re-assign the people rendered redundant to the jobs that are vital or important. Those for whom immediate slots cannot be found can be put into the surplus pool. Since no one will be thrown out of work, the Left need not object. And the functioning of the government might well improve a notch.