Unenthusiastic Bureaucracy

Bikash Choudhury

Generally people complain about inefficiency and ineffective bureaucracy all the time. But, we apparently do not take time off to think why it is so. I had once put on my thinking cap suggested by Debono; and, came to the conclusion that, apart from lack of enthusiasm and challenge in the job content of a bureaucrat; the mind set of a large section of people-once you get a govt. job then you have earned a passport to income for life without commensurate work. Now, after sixth pay commission pay revision Babus in govt earn a hell lot of money in comparison to private sector if you calculate salary, perks, housing, pension and other plus. If we look at the cost to company(CTC) of Babus in govt then it would be three times of private sector salary package at each level. However, we can safely assume that the efficiency of Babus would be less than half of any private sector employee and Babus work barely at thirty percent of their efficiency. What can be done? Bring in risk of loosing job for incompetence and also reward for proven ability, hard work and dynamism in a transparent frame work for all position in govt. without exception. Other thing is assume twenty five percent of govt staffs are redundant in their position; therefore, redeploying them would not affect govt. work in any way, rather it will make the babus slog a little. Further, excess manpower can be redeployed in rural areas to look after faster development of rural clusters. Out of over five lakh employees in Odisha State Govt., we can redeploy one lakh twenty five thousand personnel in five thousand cluster of villages covering all fifty thousand plus hamlets in the state with an employee strength of twenty five per cluster to look after entire gamut of socio economic and infrastructural development of each cluster. If this can happen on ground actually then Maoist would not get even an inch of place in dense forest. Utopia?