How much of manpower is required for conducting of smooth working in a department, not at random basis and never in an arbitrary manner, should be the policy employed by the UT Government supported with a proper planning. That all, however, should be based on certain given factors. These factors are the average workload in a department , net working hours of employees , output expected , projections and targets of output or production of goods and offering of services as the case may be and the like. A simple and thumb rule of ”how much for as much” , conservatively speaking , must be the guiding principle where ”how much” denotes the units of output and ”as much” denotes the salaries and wages paid , of course, for a fixed unit of time. Proper and flawless planning of utilization of human resources should be guided by and based additionally on using input -output techniques for best results. That also will surely take care of the mismatch in allocating of manpower in different departments, institutions and offices of the UT Government or in other words, no organisation or department should be allowed to be over-staffed and conversely, none starved of the requisite number of personnel or be understaffed. In Jammu and Kashmir , the problem is that most of the departments are not only feared to be, but in fact are, over-staffed while a few departments are undoubtedly reeling under staff shortage.
Since the element of supervision and close monitoring of how much work done as against how much reasonably could be expected within given time, is inversely related to how many personnel are required in a department for smooth functioning, it becomes increasingly important to make a prior detailed planning keeping all influencing factors in view regarding indenting for and subsequent posting of employees in a department. Had bifurcation of the erstwhile state into two Union Territories not taken place, perhaps, manpower audit would have not been decided to be conducted and when a sort of sample audit on broad parameters and not on strict lines was conducted in just 10 UT departments , as many as 400 employees were found absolutely not necessary but quite surplus or in other words, not required at all. Could not it be calculated in terms of pressure on , if not absolute drain of cost, by multiplying the number of surplus employees by the months or years as the case would be in individual departments? Is , therefore, rationalisation not necessary , wherever deemed imperative , in Jammu and Kashmir UT departments to improve the bottom line, cut on costs and increase (or save) revenue or in other words, be calculable in approach, especially in respect of field offices ?
Approaches and procedures need periodic reviewing in respect of manpower deployment to be in tune with or as near as possible to modern, analytical , reformative and workable tools , of course, endeavouring to achieve more with minimum cost inputs . The decision of the UT Government is, therefore, in tune with aspiring for a balanced and strict planned approach towards causing all remaining departments to be audited for an effective human resources management by outsourcing such audits . Needless to add, such agencies must be fully professional and quite experienced in conducting such audits. Not only shall such audits reveal lacunae in the prevailing obsolete system where , we are afraid, deployment and posting are taking place for reasons mostly extraneous to the actual needs in majority of departments including in educational institutions where number of students is less than the number of faculty members / other staff in many cases but audit reports shall reveal the extent of loopholes in the dictum of ”paying only for working” or conversely ”no work no pay”.
These issues may look somewhat technical and more reformist hence may not find favour also in contrast with the general perceptions about three things- to begin with, about the dictum of better utilization of human resources, in addition to it, the effective human resources policies and furthermore, the cost effectiveness as the same is met with from public funds. Make e- office , on-line and other modes of information technology popularly implemented in all the departments , offices and institutions, results will show how many employees had virtually no work to do but were getting salaries and perks regularly and possibly a few departments would reveal that they really needed a few extra hands. Prudential approach , scientific and need based planning and cost effectiveness coupled with provisions for supervision and monitoring must be the comprehensive structure of human resources utilization in Jammu and Kashmir.
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