The Seventh Pay Commission has handed a financial bonanza to Central government employees and sent a strong message to dismantle the present hierarchy that is heavily loaded on the side of seniority over performance.
Civil servants today need to be focused on outcomes, not processes, and have to be more accountable for delivery. They have to be agents of change and to this end need to be more agile, more technically savvy and to be able to ensure the economic and public service reforms that are essential.
A peon’s starting salary has gone up by 2.54 times to Rs 18,000 per month and topmost bureaucrat, the cabinet secretary would now draw Rs 2.5 lakh per month plus other perks costing a total of Rs 1,02,000 crore to the exchequer. But there are reasons for the most coveted of the All India Services, officers from Indian Administrative Services (IAS) to read the report carefully because it recommends a tectonic shift in the way the higher bureaucracy functioned.
Dismantling of superiority in the officialdom has form long been demand of officers drawn from non-IAS officers. The pay panel though does not say that in as many words but talks about need for a model shift.
