Sixth Pay Commission Economics

The limits of what Politicians can do, can the IAS deliver?

You have no doubt heard the well known dictum of Karl Clausewitz, the great Prussian strategist, that war is an extension of Politics by other means. As often as not, it is Politics by other means and the looming debate whether the Sixth Pay Commission will derail the economy! The debate seems to be more about Politics and Public Relations rather than economics.

National Economic stimulus, as one perceives is more about tax cuts or increased Government spending designed to accelerate and spur economic growth in agriculture, industry, infrastructure and job creation.

Will the bureaucratic pulls for increased salaries set back our economic growth? The pragmatic approach is to offset inflation and give real wages to all government employees and weigh/ reign in performance based pay. We must have in place a Performance Evaluation for the top echelon of our bureaucracy and pay salaries truly related to performance not on seniority basis. Downsizing and efficiency must be the vanguard principles of prudent economics.

Defence Statistics roughly
defence budget of Rs. 96,000 crores
salaries 25,000 crores
pension 14,000 crores (not included in the defence budget)
cost of a soldier (salary, training costs) Rs 20,000 a month
jawans on combat role 20 percent
two ESM (drawing pension) for every serving soldier

The Sixth Pay Commission can certainly do a lot for the Armed Forces. A decent hike in salary and pension (one rank one pension) with a lot of perks for Field Tenures. For Ex- Servicemen the need of the hour is professionally managed, fully functional pro- active Zilla, Rajya and Kendriya Sainik Boards which are truly dedicated to address the problems of ESM.