🔊 Listen to this article

One of the most contentious issues in public finance in India is the government’s expenditure on salaries of its employees. Often, we hear experts point out how salaries eat up bulk of the government’s budget, leaving little resources for other interventions. Such an approach of looking at salary expenditure can often be misleading, as it reduces the investment in a critical area like human resources to a mere data point, and often fails to discuss the other important aspects, such as criticality of government personnel, their persistent shortages in government set-up, and its effect on quality and outreach of government services. To address some of these issues with respect to government salary expenditure and staff strength in government set-up, this piece tries to unpack some of the main issues in the domain.

Let us start by looking at government expenditure on salaries. At the Union Government level, around 8.5% of the total Union Budget goes to pay the salaries of Central Government employees as of 2018-19[1]. At the state level, this ratio[2] ranges from as low as 12% in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, to a reasonably  higher figure of 26% in Kerala, 25% in Rajasthan and around 30% in special category states like Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam. Thus, the expenditure on salaries is one of the major components of expenditure budget.  However, this needs to be understood in the context of government as a service provider. In that context, it may be conceded that delivery of any service by the government is contingent upon several inputs (e.g. infrastructure, procurement of commodities, systems of delivery etc.), of which human resource is a critical one. Absence or shortage of human resources in any sector leads to weakening of the government service delivery set-up and has serious adverse effects on the outreach and quality of the services. This also leads to the allocated budgets being underutilized or not being used effectively. Thus, unless the government invests adequately in human resources, its entire delivery system runs a risk of collapse or being severely compromised.

In India, shortage of human resources in the government set-up seems to be an often ignored, yet a major problem. Whenever we have interacted with the officials, services providers and people, or seen the functioning of government systems on ground, the scenario seems to suggest that staff shortage is one of the main factors constraining outreach and effectiveness of service delivery. To put this in context, there are 1.6 government personnel[3]  for every 100 residents[4] in India as compared to much  higher figures of 3.3 in South Africa, 3.9 in Mexico, 5.9 in Brazil, 7.2 in Germany, 10.1 in the UK and 10.6 in Canada. This availability of government personnel per 100 persons varies across states. It ranges from a 2.1 in Chhattisgarh, to 1.7 in Rajasthan and Haryana, 1.5 in Kerala, around 1 in Odisha and Madhya Pradesh and just 0.8 in Gujarat. This clearly indicates that in comparison to several other countries, India is doing much worse with respect to human resources in the public service, both at the national and states level.

A little more analysis reveals, that the number dwindles further if we look at the vacancies across sectors in the government system. At the Union Government level, the levels of vacancy across social sector ministries as on 31 March, 2016 was very high[5] – around 50% in departments of agriculture, school education and literacy, higher education, minority affairs, and women and child development; and around 30% in tribal affairs, social justice and empowerment, pachayati raj – among others. Thus, the Union Government is unable to fill even the sanctioned strength, leave alone raising the numbers to levels adequate to deliver adequate baseline governance (Pai 2016)[6]. If we look at scheme-wise data, the picture is equally grim. For example, under the Integrated Child Development Services scheme, at the All-India level, there is almost 35% vacancy of Lady Supervisors in FY 2017-18. There are also significant vacant positions for Anganwadi Workers (AWW) and Anganwadi Helpers (AWH) in states like Bihar (around 25% for both AWW and AWH) and Tamil Nadu (around 30% for both AWW and AWH) as of 2017-18. The problem is more acutely felt for the skilled / technical staff (including all three kinds of such staff, viz. programme managerial staff, finance and accounts staff, and skilled service providers) as compared to the unskilled / support staff positions. For example, the latest Rural Health Statistics (2017) reveals that at the All-India level, the total vacancy (sanctioned vs. in-position) for Specialists [Physicians, Surgeons, Obstetricians, Gynecologists and Pediatricians] at CHCs is 68%, while the shortfall against requirement (sanctioned vs. requirement) is as high as 82%.

Thus, clearly the issue of shortage of government staff is rampant in India, both at the Union and states level. At the same time, in their attempt to eliminate the Revenue Deficit (and even show a Revenue Surplus, in some cases), following the FRBM Act, many States seem to have checked their spending (particularly in development sectors) by freezing the recruitments in regular cadres of their departments for more than a decade now. For example, data shows that states like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, which showed a Revenue Surplus in 2016-17, have less government staff per 100 persons in the state.

There is no debate that issues of efficiency and lack of accountability also exist in the case of government employees, which affect the delivery of government services, but that should not be confused with requirement. To build efficiency, there is a need for better accountability mechanisms and enhanced investment in improving capacities of existing staff. However, cutting down on the staff, disregarding the requirement on the ground would only add to the problem of poor service delivery. The single track approach to solely focus on efficiency, and limited or no discussion on acute shortage of human resources across sectors, is the classic case of missing the woods for the trees.

 

[1] Union Budget 2018-19

[2] Data on Expenditure on Salaries has been collated from RBI State Finances 2017-18 and 2018-19; (RBI mentions that data is as per Information received from respective state governments); Total State Budget collated from budget books of the respective states for FY 2018-19.

[3] Das, S and Shrivastava S (2014), Erosion in Governance Capacity at the Subnational Level, Budget Track Volume 10, Track 1-2, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, New Delhi

[4] including the personnel in the Union Government, Indian Railways, State Governments, Urban and Rural Local Governments and Public Sector Undertakings

[5] Annual Report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2015-16; Department Of Expenditure, Ministry Of Finance, New Delhi

[6] Pai, Nitin (2016), ‘Why government must hire more’ March 24, 2016 13:17 IST, The Hindu

 

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Saumya Shrivastava at saumya@cbgaindia.org.