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Journalism of Courage
The stars are certainly propitious. Their curious conjunction has conspired to give babudom its second long break from work in a year. In April, it was the secular threesome of Bakr-Id, Mahavir Jayanti and Good Friday, strung to the weekend, that provided a fortuitous week off for these overworked public minions. Now with Maha Ashtami, Dussehra and Gandhi Jayanti coming together, followed conveniently enough by a Saturday and Sunday, it’s vacation time once again.
As if this wasn’t enough, the BJP government is now toying with the idea of declaring the restricted holiday of Valmiki Jayanti a general one. Such competitive decreeing of holidays by various governments over the years has been dictated by the most cynical electoral considerations. What the country’s leaders don’t seem to realise is that having more time off is not exactly the hallmark of an accountable and efficient government. In fact, frequent breaks of this kind, apart from being terribly expensive, characterise governance at its most flabbyand indifferent.
A look at the bureaucratic calendar is revealing. Indian babus get more paid holidays annually than their counterparts in most other nations of the world. For a year’s salary, they work for about a third of a year. Since they work a five-day week, they get 104 weekend holidays annually. Apart from this, there are 44 general and restricted holidays that they are routinely entitled to, including religious occasions like Diwali and secular commemorations like Republic Day and Independence Day.
Besides this, they are given 36 paid holidays, apart from eight days of casual leave that come their way every year. And all this is quite apart from their entitlements to sick leave, maternity leave and half-pay leave.
Leisure, recreational and religious activity are recognised aspects of a civilised existence and it is only right that officialdom gets a well-deserved break from pushing files. But when government holidays result in a continuous and costly disruption of public administration, whentheir salutary effect on the lives of individuals becomes a violation of the collective right of the citizens of this country to a modicum of government efficiency, then it is certainly time to review the situation.
People with vision have always felt that there is so much to do, and so little time to do it in. The same must hold true for administrative structures, but somehow the system in this country remains immune to such feelings of urgency and commitment. Perhaps, the next Pay Commission must devote some thought and energy to the issue. Of course, it can always be argued that since government servants do so little work in the first place, their total cessation of such activity can make no great difference to the nation. It’s as Groucho Marx once famously observed as he bent over a prone figure in one of his classic films: “Either this man is dead, or my watch has stopped.” Babudom’s watch seems to have stopped ticking years ago.
