Baring few thousand Bureaucrats 3.2 million Govt employees are ordinary Indians only who never get a chance to travel abroad & have to struggle hard for the upkeep of their families. Why should Media blame all

Baring few thousand Bureaucrats  3.2 million Govt employees are ordinary Indians only, who never get a chance to travel abroad & have to struggle hard for the upkeep of their families. Why should Media blame all of them specially when majority of media personnel themselves have fat earning Remember there are 18485000 Govt/quasi Govt/Local bodies employees,13900000 Pensioners who have not only shed their sweat but accepted lower salaries and foregone matching Govt contribution  to their PF to earn their Pension. They are a big work force and combined with their families they are a  big vote bank. Don’t drive them to the wall. No Govt. will be able to survive w/o their work or their votes Fat govt has big bill By Rohan Venkataramakrishnan in New Delhi ` 1.74 lakh crore earmarked for salaries of its employees ORDINARY Indians are being asked to tighten their belts as the economy heads into the dumps, but Bharat Sarkar’s waistline continues to bulge. A whopping ` 1,74,081 crore has been earmarked to pay the bloated government’s lakhs of employees this financial year — about 10.45 per cent of its overall expenditure — even as the Prime Minister attempts to wag his finger at the liquidity- happy developed nations in St. Petersburg. “ You can look at the bloated nature of this State through its expenditures,” said Surjit S. Bhalla, eminent economist and chairman of Oxus Investments. “ There is flab everywhere to be cut… and it is only the sheer arrogance of this administration that instead of doing that, they would spend this time adding items to the expenditure bill on the scale of the Food Security law.” Combining pay, allowances and travel expenses for central government and railway employees, the State spent just under ` 1,00,000 crore in 2011- 12, a number that ballooned to ` 1,13,785 crore the following year and has been estimated at ` 1,24,646 crore. BALLOONING STATE With elections on the horizon, the government also seems prepared to add further to this bill by increasing the ‘ dearness allowance’ to a reported 80 per cent from 72 per cent ahead of the festival season, a decision that will benefit 80 lakh employees and pensioners — with a requisite hit on the bottom line. And although India has only a fifth as many public servants as the United States does, relative to population, the efficiency of even this unwieldy mass has been criticised. A 2006 World Bank report pointed to the ballooning state as one of the reasons corruption spreads and pointed to structural issues with the way India’s civil services are organised. “ The civil service is burdening by an expanding salary bill that has crowded out non- salary spending. Short tenures caused by premature transfers of officials responsible for delivering public services have undermined continuity,” the report said. “ Capacity gaps exist in some areas — India, for example, has the highest absolute number of maternal deaths in the world, but only three full- time officers at the central level dedicated to the task of supervising maternal health programs.” SURPLUS STAFF This lack of people where they are needed is usually compounded by a surplus of staff in Delhi’s air- conditioned ministries and to accompany politicians and high- profile bureaucrats. A MAIL TODAY report identified politicians with fleets of 10 cars and over to travel with them wherever they go, contributing to the fuel and salary bill with little in the way of productivity added to the Indian state. Rather than dealing with this substantial contribution to the fiscal deficit, the current Parliament session saw the government bring in the Food Security law, the Land Acquisition Act; and PM Manmohan Singh is currently berating the developed world for surprising emerging economies as a result of their ‘ unconventional monetary policies’. “ There is precious little about the great decline in India’s growth that has anything to do with the tapering off ( of US liquidity),” Bhalla said. “ Because the tapering off only came less than 6 months ago, but the great decline has already happened.” Although ‘ right- sizing’ in the current economy could have contractionary effects, the addressing of structural concerns — such as the dearness allowance, currently pegged to the CPI- IW data to adjust for inflation — would improve the government’s financial situation. Improved finances and a smaller fiscal deficit are likely to make it cheaper for the government to borrow — a crucial point at a time when yields on 10- year bonds have been appreciating alongside the rupee’s drop. “ Why use the CPI ( consumer price index)? That automatically imparts a huge bias, we know the weightage system is problematic,” said Bhalla. “ One of the first attempts at deficit cutting is that we should now link all these dearness not to CPI but to personal consumption deflaters. That itself, one could calculate, it would remove a fairly large amount off the government’s bill. That should be the first order of business.” Politicos moving in fleets of cars add to the burden

 

 

As economy limps, netas, babus (read Bureaucrats ) blow up taxpayers’ money

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NEW DELHI: From curbs on gold imports to steps to conserve fuel, the government wants people to tighten their belts. But it isn’t tightening its own.

An HT analysis has found that taxpayers’ money has been liberally splurged on making the homes of ministers swankier than they already were. Maintaining the rent-free bungalows of 77 central ministers cost the public exchequer R100 crore over the last three years at a time when an average middleclass Delhi family was finding it difficult to buy a home as rising prices put a dent in its savings.

The amount, by the way, is four times of what was spent on the upkeep of bungalows occupied by other “dignitaries”.

In these trying times, the government had officially maintained that it will trim its expenditure by 10%. But budget documents show that the government’s travel bill has tripled in the last 11 years to R3,500 crore in 2011-12 — enough to run the meal scheme for India’s schoolchildren for six months.

Rules were changed to meet the austerity goal, but those who felt the pinch got them changed back. A luncheon meeting convened by the then principal secretary to the PM, TKA Nair, in August 2009 was enough for senior babus to get back free tickets for their companions.

UPA ministers, forced to fly economy in 2008 at the time of the global economic slowdown, are back in the business class. In 2011-12, the government paid R678 crore on the air fares of 40 globetrotting ministers — 12 times more than the previous year’s sum.

Govt sits on bloated travel bills Rs3,519cr Upkeep of babus’ ( read Bureaucrats )

homes cost R100cr

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BLEEDING RESOURCES The govt’s total travel bill stands at Rs 3519cr  today

EVEN IF INFLATION IS TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT, THE TRAVEL EXPENSE SHOULD HAVE AT THE MOST DOUBLED

NEW DELHI: With the Centre’s travel expenses tripling in the last decade, the government seems to have failed to apply austerity measures on itself.

The finance ministry had recently asked central ministries to reduce non-plan expenses by about 10% to bridge the fiscal deficit.

With the decreasing number of central government employees, the target wasn’t unachievable. HT looked at budget documents since 2001, and discovered that the total travel bill for nearly 3.2 million government employees in 2000-01 was R1,100 crore. The bill stood at R3,519 crore 11 years later, though the number of employees came down to around 3 million.

Even if inflation is taken into account, the travel expense should have at the most doubled.

The officials attributed rising costs for the increase in government travel bills. “The cost of a ticket to the United States from Delhi has more than doubled. Even domestic air travel costs have gone up,” said a senior government official.

The flip side of the rising travel cost was provided by another official, who said, “Most tickets are booked at full cost to earn a complimentary ticket.”

Details provided by the government in reply to an RTI application showed that 1,576 bureaucrats traveled more than 50 million km and stayed (a combined) 24,458 days abroad between January 2005 and April 2008, costing the exchequer R542 crore.

The government’s reply to another RTI application shows it spent R678 crore on travel bills of 40 globetrotting ministers in 2010-11.

Total travel bill for 3.2 mn govt employees in 2000-01 was R1,100 cr. It stands at R3,519 cr today R678 cr spent on travels bills of 40 globetrotting ministers in 2010-11 March 1997: Govt allows officials to accept “free” tickets for personal use September 2008: Govt bans officers from taking free companion tickets to push them to buy cheaper tickets April 1997: Principal secretary to PM TKA Nair convenes meeting, government prepares to withdraw ban even before minutes are issued. NEW DELHI: In the past three years, the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) has spent about R100 crore on the upkeep and maintenance of 77 bungalows occupied by central ministers in the Capital’s plush Lutyens Bungalow Zone (LBZ).

What the government spent for beautifying the lawns, giving a fresh coat of paint, installing an AC or upgrading the furnishings of our ministers’ bungalows is roughly the price of about 80 medium sized three bedroom flats in Delhi’s middle class localities of Dwarka and Mayur Vihar.

In 2012-13, the CPWD spent a total of R35.63 crore on overall maintenance of bungalows occupied by 77 central ministers.

Besides the ministers’ houses, there are another 223 bungalows in LBZ occupied by judges of Supreme Court and high court, top army brass, commission chairman, cabinet secretary, and top law and policy makers. Repair and upgradation of these bungalows cost CPWD another R27 crore in 2012-13.

In all, the CPWD spent R62.63 crore on the facelift of 300 LBZ bungalows last year.

Over the annual maintenance that is undertaken by CPWD, central ministers get between R1.5 lakh to R2 lakh for renovation once they are allotted a new bungalow. “It’s a one time entitlement that an MP, who is appointed as a minister and is allotted a new bungalow, gets,” said an official.

“One of the reasons for the high maintenance cost is that these bungalows are very old. But many a times, there are also specific demands such as some special kind of tiles or furnishings and upholstery that adds to the cost,” an urban development ministry official said on conditions of anonymity.