Articles
Swelling the Ranks of Government Servants
Dt: 28/9/23
Swelling the Ranks of Government Servants
Dr T H Chowdary*
Prime Minister, Sri Narendra Modiji has ceremoniously handed over appointment letters to 51,000 persons selected for service in several departments / ministries of the Union government on 25/9/23. Earlier, the same type of ceremony was followed to hand over 70,000 appointment letters . With these two instances 121,000 persons are added to the Central Government . At a minimum of Rs. 30,000 per person per month, these 121,000 employees will constitute a burden of Rs. 435 cr per year. Already the pension payments for the Central Government servants exceed the payment to employees who are still in service.
2. Government servants do not create wealth. They are consumers of the wealth created by citizens whether engaged in agriculture or industry or services. Government servants are to regulate and facilitate the productive forces in the nation. It is the common experience of millions of persons every day that government servants especially in the lower ranks are least helpful and mostly lording over ordinary citizens when they come to government offices for some service.
3. Digitalization / use of computers is rightly expected to reduce the requirement of persons and also speed up service delivery . At considerable cost most government offices are using information technology (I.T) and therefore are more efficient than before . Banking transactions are an example . These days we find many bank offices with sparse physical presence of persons, evidence of the benefits of computerization in the banking sector.
4. It is true that there is lot of unemployment including among the degreed persons. This is because of our ever increasing population and the increasing educated or rather degreed , certified but not enough qualified persons. There is all-round clamour from political parties about unemployment and the failure of all governments in creating required employment opportunities. Swelling government ranks to absorb the unemployed is not a wise and economical move. It is really surprising and regrettable that so enlightened a government presided by so knowledgeable person like Sri Narendra Modi is resorting to swelling the government with employees whose contribution to the creation of national wealth is problematic.
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