Just a few haziris to the Congress vice president clinched what India’s 2.4 million ex-servicemen failed to get from the ‘system’ over decades.
The final blitzkrieg played out on Friday, just 72 hours before P Chidambaram’s Interim Budget, when select veterans marched into Rahul Gandhi’s office and mentioned their plan for a nation-wide call to vote enmasse for Narendra Modi. Scenting opportunity in the crisis, Mr Gandhi went into a huddle with his Raksha Mantri AK Antony, and Antony with his three service chiefs, clinching the principle of ‘one-rank-one-pension’ (OROP) in one decisive swoop.
Now OROP seems like a constitutional right. But did it have to wait for a regal assent: that a fauji who served the nation as a lance naik or colonel can have same pension for guarding the border compared to a lance naik (or colonel) retiring todayIJ Two quick points of context. Foremost, successive governments have preferred fiscal prudence over inherent morality in the OROP argument. Related, Mr Gandhi and his courtiers have left us with a problem larger than we might suspect.
To understand, let’s be reminded that the last review of the OROP demand was as recently end-2012. Headed by Cabinet secretary Ajit Seth, and comprising relevant secretaries in defence and finance, it must be highlighted that the group was serviced by Pulok Chatterjee, the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi satrap.
While inducing sweeteners into fauji pensions to the tune of about Rs 4,000 crore annually – thus bridging nearly 90 per cent of the inter se ‘gap’ and some questionable math placing, say, a major-general who retired in year xyz with more pension than, say, an IG or a Joint Secretary - Seth and Chatterjee stopped short of OROP. For good reason and not merely because babus have a biological hard wiring against faujis!
They felt that conceding OROP as a principle would invoke similar rights (and court cases!) among millions of their own brethren, the retired babus. Also, the fire would spread to State Governments across the country.
Mr Gandhi obviously has no space on his radar for such fiscal follies in the downstream. In recent months that one quick word with him has come to signify end of the counter argument.
So, replay of subsidized lPG from 9 cylinders to 12 annually. Or ushering visa on demand for almost the entire planet. The inanity of running subsidized fuel for 98 per cent of India’s lPG market, or in the case of unilateral visas, absence of trained immigration hawk eyes across gateway airports, once a deal breaker for M Veerappa Moily or Sushil Shinde respectively stand swept beneath the carpet.
What amuses is the speed at which Chidambaram capitulated on OROP – and then claimed in his speech that he’s ‘ex-cising’ within the morality of an ‘interim budget.’ How we believe the sanctimonious holier-than-thou of the last man standing for fiscal prudence!
OROP isn’t about denying the righful dues of our veterans. Nor is it about their new-found zeal to organize en bloc. It isn’t even about the absence of such unanimity among civilian pensioneers.
My fear is two-fold. First, Mr Gandhi’s fiat system has replaced established administrative niceties: Is the increase in retirement age to 62 nextIJ The outcome hangs on how a few outgoing secretaries to GOI can sneak into the Congress VP’s diary, not what the Union Cabinet has to say!
Second, a 4-member VIIth Central Pay Commission with Justice AK Mathur, economist Rathin Roy, and bureaucrats Vivek Rae and Meena Agarwal, was in place already. The tax payer expects them to match productivity with what we can afford on serving employees and pensioneers. A fait accompli on the ‘tail’ (pensions by way of OROP across the board) reduces the total amount Justice Mathur and team can spare for the ‘teeth.’
Finally, even if productivity be damned, and Reserve Bank expected to print more currency notes, what will be the Cambridge MPhil’s answer to competing demands among state government employees and the unmentionable things this will do to their financesIJ Silly questions that FM and the ‘heir apparent’ left on our doorstep!
Tail Piece: “The main problem is the appalling state of the data available. While there is complete information on the number of new pensioners added each year, there is no measure of the annual attritions, the switch-overs or even of the total number of pension accounts in existence. In such a situation, it is difficult to visualise how any kind of control can be exercised by the pension offices. The lack of data also hampers the validation of projections, which could otherwise have been used as a cross-check on the actual demands raised for pension disbursement” - Pronab Sen and Sibani Swain, Planning Commision Projection on Retirements and Central Pensions
(The columnist is CEO & Co-Founder, India Strategy Group, Hammurabi & Solomon Consulting. Follow @therohitbansal)