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A house for Mr Official: Indian Express
New Delhi, June 25: Nearly two decades after the country started to open up the licence-permit raj and take tentative steps to reward productivity, we do not seem to have imbibed the central principle of incentives and disincentives related to productivity. To this day, the heads of thousands of organisations in the public sector are still bound by bureaucratic technicalities circumscribed by so-many square feet of accommodation for their residence!
New Delhi, June 25: Nearly two decades after the country started to open up the licence-permit raj and take tentative steps to reward productivity, we do not seem to have imbibed the central principle of incentives and disincentives related to productivity. To this day, the heads of thousands of organisations in the public sector are still bound by bureaucratic technicalities circumscribed by so-many square feet of accommodation for their residence!
The incentive to bypass such rules is apparent. Perquisites are acknowledged the world over as legitimate part of the compensation package that an individual gets for his or her performance, whether in government service or in the private sector. They may come in the shape of cash allowance or clothed and “authorised” in kind. The case of the expenditure on the new residence for the chairman and managing director of GAIL, reported in this newspaper, throws up important issues. It is possible to take a view that the head of an organisation like GAIL would perhaps have been entitled to spend even more than what was spent on the house purchased and renovated for him, if it had happened to be a private enterprise.
But a degree of balance must also be maintained in deciding these perks. It is necessary to remember that there is a public cost involved in providing facilities and perquisites, whether they are in kind or cash. And the most efficient way of coming to a rational judgement about them would be to translate such entitlements into their cash value.
It is also true that the compensation package of pay and perks in government service would normally be significantly lower than an equivalent job in the private sector. And our public sector undertakings, especially those that have a commercial role rather than a purely strategic or social purpose, perhaps fall somewhere in the middle.
What this implies is that there is a need to evolve more rational criteria for assessing the perks and entitlements of public servants. Interestingly, the British Royal Air Force had at one time given up the system of providing free accommodation to its people in favour of a regular cash allowance so that they were free to hire even government accommodation according to their needs.
The incentive to bypass such rules is apparent. Perquisites are acknowledged the world over as legitimate part of the compensation package that an individual gets for his or her performance, whether in government service or in the private sector. They may come in the shape of cash allowance or clothed and “authorised” in kind. The case of the expenditure on the new residence for the chairman and managing director of GAIL, reported in this newspaper, throws up important issues. It is possible to take a view that the head of an organisation like GAIL would perhaps have been entitled to spend even more than what was spent on the house purchased and renovated for him, if it had happened to be a private enterprise.
But a degree of balance must also be maintained in deciding these perks. It is necessary to remember that there is a public cost involved in providing facilities and perquisites, whether they are in kind or cash. And the most efficient way of coming to a rational judgement about them would be to translate such entitlements into their cash value.
It is also true that the compensation package of pay and perks in government service would normally be significantly lower than an equivalent job in the private sector. And our public sector undertakings, especially those that have a commercial role rather than a purely strategic or social purpose, perhaps fall somewhere in the middle.
What this implies is that there is a need to evolve more rational criteria for assessing the perks and entitlements of public servants. Interestingly, the British Royal Air Force had at one time given up the system of providing free accommodation to its people in favour of a regular cash allowance so that they were free to hire even government accommodation according to their needs.