Pay as you punish

As Julio Ribeiro argues on our op-ed page today, Maharashtra’s DGP, P.S. Pasricha, would seem to have crossed the line that divides professional credibility and strong doubts about a serving officer’s conduct. Ribeiro, a fine policeman, advises Maharashtra’s top cop to do the right thing — quit and don’t use an inquiry report as a fig leaf. We are doubtful whether Ribeiro’s wise words would find much acceptance among too many senior officers. Like the politicians they complain about, our senior policemen, and seniors from other services, do not like the idea of honourable exits. Service officers don’t realise that sharing this limpet-like characteristic with political masters makes them that much more vulnerable to political manipulation. Surely, if service ethos were such that seniors at least would volunteer to step down at the suggestion of impropriety, politicians would have been wary of using officers in games of political ping pong.

There’s another aspect to such cases of pecuniary impropriety, though. One that tends to get lost in simplistic notions about reward, performance and integrity. It cannot be the case that while India’s private sector breaks Asian records in salary levels and hikes, India’s public sector has compensation levels frozen in socialist time. Of course, better and market-related salaries for all government services at all levels won’t magically make corruption disappear. But definitely there will be a far better incentive for maintaining good conduct. We tend to get angry about beat constables demanding money. We don’t think how much a beat constable is paid. A senior police officer working in a megapolis like Mumbai takes home a salary that, even after monetising his non-cash benefits, would make IIM pass-out graduates wince in disbelief. Till we pay our public servants salaries that reflect current economic realities, our righteous indignation about graft will always have a wrong note to it.

So imagine: if Pasricha was paid a salary that compared just about reasonably with corporate compensation levels, how much stronger a public call for his resignation would have been. Pasricha, as Ribeiro argues, has a lot to explain and so have many senior cops caught in similar situations. But the general attitude to public sector pay-performance needs some explaining, too.