Peculiar work culture in India

By Joginder Singh, IPS (Retd.)

It is curious, at times, how the Government functions. First, it creates an agency to perform some specific functions and then indulges in litigation with its own creation. A few years ago the Central Government first formed the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority and then soon after challenged its order in the court.

And even stranger is how the State agencies have been fighting the regulator. In the first place, if the Government at that time felt that there was no need to have an agency like the TRAI, it should not have set it up with all the fanfare. There are a lot of agencies doing the same job and the result is a fractured authority. Instead of doing their respective jobs, the authorities are engaging themselves in skirmishes and wasting public money. Neither the TRAI nor MTNL nor the Department of Telecommunications stand to benefit from the disputes. The lawyers engaged are to be paid either from the Government treasury or the corporation kitty or from Government grants.

The loser here is the common man. Seemingly there is no end to his woes from several departments and corporations. Accordingly a report of the Reserve Bank, bad loans, euphemistically called Non-Performing Assets or Non-Paying Accounts amounted to crores of rupees. The Government and the Reserve Bank of India from time to time express anguish and concern. At times, they set up a committee or a commission to look into the problem. No Government, to avoid any flare-up or a staff strike problem, has shown any will to bell the cat. Huge expenditure is incurred on such committees and commissions. This only adds to the financial woes of the country, as no action is ever taken on such reports.

Work holism and working for 12 to 14 hours a day is the norm in successful private companies, as against the Government, where after every one-and-half days of work, there is a holiday. In fact, in many private companies, permission is required for leaving at the prescribed office hours or for not coming on holidays. There is a fierce competition among the employees to make it to the top. It is the performance, and not paying homage, which matters in private sector.

In the Government, on the other hand, there is no penalty for not completing a project within the deadlines. No Government official, with a few exceptions, feels the compulsion to put in extra hours of work. Neither are there any rewards for finishing the job on scheduled time nor any punishment for doing it after the prescribed time. In a nutshell, in the Government sector, there is no such thing as a priority.

When I was heading a Government organisation, I noticed that most employees would come half-an-hour late and leave half-an-hour early. This was apart from the extended tea and lunch breaks, lasting another two hours. I inquired as to why the prescribed office timings were not being observed and I was told that either their train or that bus was late. The same hurry was shown in departing from the office. I then ordered that if a person cannot work for the prescribed hours due to the delayed arrival of public transport, I would give him or her the option to stay late and compensate for the Government work. It was something not done in Government offices. I said that failure to reach in time would entail deduction of a half-day's casual leave. When somebody pleaded the reason of sickness in the family for coming late or going early, I put an end to that by saying that Government was not a Pinjrapole and the refuge of shirkers. The Government annually gives each employee thirty days earned leaves on full salary, 20 days commuted leave for medical reasons, fifteen days of restricted holidays of his choice, apart from 104 holidays in the form of Saturdays and Sundays.

There was also a brotherhood culture in informing the next senior officer that an employees would be late and the delay could be from one hour to half a days. I even put an end to it by saying that Government rules do not permit any such informal understanding and none would be permitted. It did not make me exactly a popular person. I made it clear to the staff working under me that I was not in the race of winning a popularity contest. I was there to perform a job and make others do their work for which they were paid.

The Government has chewed more than it can digest. The culture of getting and not giving has seeped into the public sector also. In some PSUs, engaged in the business of oil exploration, there is a fifteen days month, i.e. after fifteen days of work, there are fifteen days of holiday. Even if a Government corporation is making losses, it continues to subsidies health, education, clubs, entertainment facilities, and special facilities for marriages or leave travel concession. Such organisations are sure that the Government of the day, to keep its vote bank intact, would dip into its kitty and keep on spending on them, whether they work or not. There is a classic case of a Central Government corporation engaged in cycle manufacture. Its handful of employees is getting salaries and other benefits without having produced a single bicycle in the last couple of years.

Politicisation in the implementation of any schemes or weeding away the dead wood is the hurdle. Downsizing the administration and cutting unproductive expenditure has been the favourite themes of all post-independence Governments. Many groups and parties for their own survival resist this. Government, while accepting the recommendations of the Fifth Pay Commission for attractive pay scales for its employees pushed under the carpet the core recommendation of cutting Government staff by 3 per cent very year, leading to a 30 per cent reduction over a ten years period. In a democratic set up, dissenting voices are natural. Notwithstanding the fact that there are equally strong trade unions in Europe and America, it has not retarded their development or kept them away from following policies, which benefit the organisations, the Governments and their society.

What we need in our country is de-bureaucratisation, breaking the nexuses between the dishonest bureaucrats and dishonest politicians as well as increasing efficiency in all walks of life. It is the efficiency, which is going to increase the size of the wealth available. If we can succeed in increasing the size of the cake, we can distribute wealth and contentment instead of poverty. There has to be a political consensus, whether the Government should be doing things like running hotels, sick factories with terminally sick machinery, giving subsidies on fancy schemes, or funding sick industries and banks with good money after they have lost crores of public funds.

We secured political freedom more than five decades ago. But the real struggle for economic freedom, which will take care of the basic needs of housing, food and gainful employment is still to be won. Will the leaders show and lead the country to the second freedom movement to rid the country of poverty, diseases, and illiteracy? CNF

Food for work: Rozgar Badhao new mantra

By Arvinder Kaur

With 'Razgar Badhao' (increase jobs) as the new buzzword, the UPA Government is all set to launch an extensive food for work programme in 150 backward districts of the country as the first step towards a national employment guarantee.

The goal of this programme is to provide 100 days employment to all able-bodied rural persons. The preparatory work for this programme is over and once the approval process is completed, the Government intends to launch it within the next few weeks.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced this last week and said the programme is to be converted into a National Rural Employment Guarantee programme based on a National Employment Guarantee Act. A Draft bill on this subject has already been prepared by the National Advisory Council and is currently under examination.

According to ILO, India ranks 94th out of 96 countries on provision of income security. In contrast, Pakistan is ranked 81, Bangladesh 79 while Sri Lanka is ranked 56. The only two countries, which have performed, worse than India in terms of income security are Congo and Sierra Leone.

In order to achieve the objective of having job intensive growth, attention will have to be paid to agro-processing, rural industries and the informal sectors. Employment should be generated for unskilled and semi-skilled labour through massive investment in the infrastructure sector, say experts.

For improving incomes and also productivity and quality, there is need to upgrade very substantially the skill levels of workers across all sectors. This requires better training facilities. Of a labour force of 397 million, almost 67 per cent is either illiterate or semi-literate.

Significantly, only five per cent of workers in the age group of 20-24 years have vocational skills. Even amongst the educated unemployed, few have vocational skills.

Over the past decade, the question of food security has come into sharp focus. Vast famine affected areas juxtaposed against bursting granaries, the WTO's attack on agriculture and farmers, the spotlight on starvation deaths - all made a case for the recognition of right to food.

The NDA Government in September, 2001 announced that a Rs. 10,000 - crore food-for-work programme would be launched in the country.

In November, 2001, the Supreme Court passed an interim order providing for the conversion of eight food security schemes into entitlement (rights) of the poor.

In March 2002, the apex court asked all the states and union territories to respond to an application seeking the framing of wage employment schemes, ensuring the right to work to adults in rural areas. In May that year, the court agreed on a system of monitoring for these schemes.

However, food security is not just an issue in rural India. According to the 'Food Insecurity Atlas of Urban India" by M S Swaminathan Trust, the urban population of Madhya Pradesh is the most food insecure in India.

Madhya Pradesh is not highly urbanised yet fails dismally in almost half of the urban food security indicators. The State is also an example of the fact that average calorie consumption alone is not a complete indicator of food insecurity.

Along with Madhya Pradesh, the urban populations of Orissa and Pondicherry are classified as "extremely food insecure". Urban Uttar Pradesh and Bihar remain close behind these States and are categorised as "severely food insecure". The urban populations in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi are the most "Food secure", with urban Himachal Pradesh leading this category.

One surprising finding of the report is that urban Kerala is not considered to be food secure. Although Kerala is the most advanced State in the country in terms of human development and all basic social indicators, the urban population in Kerala falls in the same category in the unweighted map as the urban population in Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Assam and Punjab.

Livelihood access is vital in achieving urban food security. Large sections of lower income groups depend on casual employment or are self-employed in petty businesses and these types of employment are usually accompanied by uncertain incomes.

For the country as a whole, more than 14 per cent of the urban population is dependent on casual labour as a means of livelihood. For the lowest 10 per cent of the urban population in India, 37.49 per cent are engaged in casual labour and 41.34 per cent are self-employed, suggesting that a vast majority of the urban poor are vulnerable to uncertain incomes and, hence, vulnerable to undernourishment.

The study points out that unemployment is on the rise in urban India and that current daily status unemployment is as high as 9.5 per cent for lower expenditure classes. This has implications for food-for-work programmes.

Higher unemployment rates are indicative of lower calorie intakes among the bottom 10 per cent and employment status can be used to identify target groups for food-for-work programmes. The effect of inadequate employment opportunities is compounded by low literacy levels and for the country as a whole, 27.7 per cent of the urban population is illiterate.

All these factors reinforce the need to implement food-for-work programmes for urban casual labour.

(PTI Feature)