Reducing Government Expenditure

The Government of India  has decided on 26^th June, 2018 ‘to discontinue overtime allowance given to its employees, except in certain categories like industrial employees, according to an order issued by the Personnel Ministry.’ a news item in The Hindu dated 27^th June says. This is based on the recommendation of the 7^th Central Pay Commission.  It seems that  this allowance was being doled out to even under secretaries of the government. Too bad a precedence which needed correction considering that only lower level employees, basically the wage earners, normally get paid overtime. The same newspaper  also mentions that ‘PM’s security to be beefed up ahead of 2019 polls’. Naturally, this is likely to increase the cost to the exchequer. True, a PM’s security is important for the country despite the startling fact that the security available to us as ordinary citizens of  the country  is almost zero, and  the contention of some doubting Thomases whether he deserves any higher security which is not available to the ordinary citizens. But, it leads to the questions I raised in my earlier post: whether a Prime Minister shall indulge in political campaign, and that too with beefed up security  resulting in even higher costs to the exchequer?

While the move to reduce the overtime for government employees is  in the right direction in order  to reduce costs of the government, there may be or there are lots of areas where costs of running the government machinery (both at the centre and state levels)have to be closely looked at.

1.Too much of entourage with ministers (state as well central)while travelling to attend various functions/events. One usually sees a convoy of state cars on a minister’s trip.

2.Government functionaries(like police constables in Kerala) being used for duties other than designated for. In Kerala, we always complain about paucity of police personnel to be employed in law and order requirements.

3.The travel and communication expenses of ministers and legislators borne by the government.

4.Government officials usually use high end cars for official travel. In a country where capital is scarce and where there is a need to conserve capital and reduce costs, why don’t we think  of subscribing to simplicity? Why we have no Manik Sarkars as CMs and PM across India?

5.Whenever new ministers take charge, they spend  a lot of money in refurbishing the official residences and replace the furniture and other equipments.

6. There are any number of wasteful expenditures incurred by the government, the list of which will be too long.