The apologetic tone of the banner headline of the Sunday Indian Express (August 25), ‘Sorry to spoil your Sunday’, was hardly justified. As if the headlines on other days are not spoiling every single day of our lives! In any case, the IE continued to spoil the following days by underlining the plight of the Bihar state employees. It would appear that the serial could continue for many long years. The IE has hit the bull’s eye recently on the matter of allocation of petrol pumps, as also the allotment of valuable plots of land in Delhi to the Sangh Parivar. It would appear that it is trying to create another sensation by writing about the plight of the Bihar state employees at a time when Laloo Prasad Yadav and his family are on rampage. Yet government employees as a body hardly invoke any sympathy these days. Over the last half a century of socialism, they have secured for themselves a large number of benefits, to such an extent that they have become the third pillar of power, along with the politician and the industrialist. The implementation of the Fifth Pay Commission’s recommendations ruined the fisc of the Central and state governments so badly, that state employees are treated more as incompetent parasites than as objects of sympathy. The IE is a significant opinion maker. It did succeed in creating a wave of sympathy with their sob-story of government employees as a class. Public memory is notoriously short. Nobody keeps track of even major happenings in influential newspapers for more than a month. I succeeded in digging out from my files a report in an economic daily, entitled ‘Babus in Laloo land’. The item started by expressing wonder over a large number of Bihar state employees sticking with their jobs even though they have not been paid for as long as ten years. The Bihar State Finance have been in such a mess for years that its 1.5 lakh employees have not received a salary for the past five years. Still these babus continue to be on government rolls and recruitment to even clerical positions carry a heavy price and demand high level contacts. The writer of this report, curious about this phenomenon, attempted some guesses about the possible explanations. Could it be that they have alternate sources of income to meet their worldly requirements? Do they trust the government’s promise to pay them salaries sometime? Or are the salaries so lucrative that they think it worthwhile borrowing to meet their daily needs for as long as 10 years? The more logical conclusion seems to be that they have alternate jobs to earn their living although, on paper, they are employed by the state government or that the indirect returns from their government jobs are so high that they try hard to get these jobs. These indirect benefits include not only the palm greasing money they earn but also their share in the political kickbacks for which Bihar was, even in 1997, quite notorious. Of course, we should sympathise with those who have suffered grievously as a result of the situation in Bihar. But that should not create an upsurge of misplaced sympathy for government employees as a class, since they have done precious little to commend themselves. (The writer is the founder, Shetkari Sanghatana)
