If you have read this column more than twice, you know that I have deep contempt for Indian bureaucrats. I blame them for everything that has gone wrong with governance in India. I believe that the day our civil servants understand the importance of cutting red tape and speeding up procedures India will become a different country. To give you just one example. The thousands and thousands of crore rupees that we waste on delayed infrastructure projects could finance all the extra schools and hospitals we need. And, if infrastructure got built at modern speed, we would not have roads, railway stations and airports that make us look like a sad little failed country. Every delay costs taxpayers crores of rupees and nearly every delay can be blamed on the bureaucracy.Having said this it might surprise you to know that my problem with the pay rise recommended by the Sixth Pay Commission for our 4.5 million central government employees is that it does not go far enough. It is ludicrous that a senior secretary in the Government of India earns less than Rs 60,000 a month today and now hopes to earn Rs 80,000. You understand how ludicrous, if you keep in mind that if said senior secretary tried to get a job in the private sector he could be bringing home a pay packet of Rs 20 lakh a month if not more. The disparity is unacceptable. We should be paying not just our senior officials more but army officers much, much more. Army officers earn so little that nobody wants to join the army any more except when other job opportunities fail. The army chief admits without hesitation that the army is short of more than 11,000 officers. So the Sixth Pay Commission is already obsolete and we might need a seventh soon.We should have no objections to much higher salaries for our officials but we need to object strenuously to the perquisites they enjoy. Of these the one that I think of as a criminal waste of taxpayers money is government housing. It is beyond absurd that nearly the whole of Lutyens’ Delhi is occupied by officials, ministers and MPs. Land in this area sells for more than Rs 100 crores an acre and a large ministerial bungalow usually sits on between three and five acres. You do the math. This is land which if commercially exploited could pay for the citizens of Delhi to get better roads, parks, schools, hospitals and all the other amenities they seriously lack.The only other city I know as well as Delhi is Mumbai and here the situation is worse. On Nariman Point, where a small apartment recently sold for nearly Rs 40 crore, government houses sprawl across an entire street. Does this make sense? Can we afford these perks any more?In bad old socialist times, when we thought of the Soviet Union and Maoist China as shining beacons to follow, we kept salaries low and made up by housing our officials in splendour. We also provided them with things ordinary Indians could not easily obtain. Telephones and gas connections were much sought after luxuries in socialist times so we not only made sure officials had them but that they had a quota they could distribute to friends and family. These powers of patronage have mercifully been curtailed but there is no attempt at getting our officials and elected representatives to understand that housing is a perk that is not handed out in democratic, free countries.Other than the president and the prime minister we should not be obliged to house anyone. Everyone else must live as we do.One of the reasons why we have officials who are unsympathetic to the travails of ordinary citizens is because they do not have to go through the nightmare of finding affordable accommodation in cities like Delhi and Mumbai. If they did they would understand what real life is like in this country that they like to boast of as the world’s next economic superpower.They would see the open drains, the uncollected garbage, the state of public amenities and they would quickly discover what a long way we have to go before we become an economic superpower.So please let us pay them salaries that have parity with the private sector but on the condition that they agree to give up government accommodation. And, on the condition that, as in the private sector, they agree to lose their jobs if they do not perform. For those who deliberately delay major projects we need to do more. They must be made to pay for the delays they cause through the rigmarole of red tape in which they have clothed the simplest procedures.
