If there is one tribe in this country that has always had all sides of its bread buttered, come what may, it is the mass of government employees. Their fortunes have invariably swung upwards, whatever the state of the economy and unmindful of their usefulness to the country.
Of course, the other insatiable crowd, namely politicos, have drained public finances at a much faster pace, but at least theoretically, the citizens have an option–through elections, every five years or even earlier– to exchange one bunch of tormentors for another. But alas, there is no such source of succour or chance of salvation from the tyranny of this pampered proletariat who are as permanent as permanent could be.
Once entrenched in their seats, they are unshakeable;while during their working(?) years, they suck you dry for nothing in return, there is no respite for the tax-payer even after their retirement. The fleecing continues in the form pension, the reduction of which has now raised their hackles, but the payment of which is likely to render all future treasuries bankrupt. But that is of little concern to them. Blessed lot, indeed, they are, to be endowed with such single-minded self-devotion.
And what lofty rhetoric and heroisms that these captains of unions unleash from canteen corners, police vans or wherever they have spread themselves out. But behind the facade of all the orchestrated righteous indignation, that so spontaneously overflows when TV cameras are in the vicinity, lurks some unsavoury home truths. The list of doles showered upon these children of a profligate god is conversely a litany of woes for the hapless citizen who bleeds profusely so that the former are fattened no end.
One look at their demands would suffice, for they are not exactly fighting for survival or for a single square meal a day, unlike the greater part of the Indian populace to whom they are oblivious. Rather, assured of their pay packets, work or no work, till they gradually grow old in their seats and amble out of it at fifty-eight, they are now worried stiff about the misfortune that would befall them afterward.
This, despite a generous pension, not to speak of bulging purses at the time of retirement, or rather, formal retirement, I should say, as real retirement for most of them commences at the time of their appointment itself. When life security itself is a mirage for the teeming millions of the country and the country itself is faced with an uncertain economic future, it indeed calls for tons of temerity and loads of insensitivity for the government staff for whom job-security is as absolute as the Almighty himself, to be complaining.
Pray, what penance have they done to be entitled to such overwhelming largesse, and that too, at the expense of their less fortunate bretheren? Forget about penance, but what is their performance? Efficiency? And accountability? Do such things mean anything to them or bear any relation to their emoluments? Aah, if only had such norms been strictly enforced in their working environs, most of them would have already been cooling their heels at their homes, even without ESMA! After all, their pay-packets come from the people’s pockets who are their real employers.
Then don’t the people have a legitimate right to demand proportional services?And to decide on their worth?And then send them packing if they do not get their money’s worth? Aah, how we wish such a day arrives!
But things are topsy turvy. Now whom are these unions really targetting? Who are their tormentors? The State? But how can a welfare-state become an oppressor? In fact, is it not just because of that very welfare state that they are where they are and doing what they do now? And are not the government employees themselves part of the very same State and its people? Or, is their ire directed against a particular political dispensation? But then, they have raised the banner of protest against virtually everybody who has been in power. So the obvious inference is that they are in a state of perpetual inadequacy, insatiable to boot.
Far fromm being the commanding heights, they signify the demanding depths to which greed can plunge one into. You give them two, they would want four. Anamoly, they would say, which has to be rectified forthwith, so that milk and honey can flow — in their homes, that is. Very resourceful chaps they are, quite well informed about who’s getting what though they are ignorance personified when it comes to their own duties.
All for the sake of parity with some godforsaken peer in some godforsaken department in the mind-boggling mire of government departments. And if that parity is achieved, by hook and crook, the next thing on their agenda would be to seek parity with the central government employees or comarades in some other state government who are on a higher scale.
To their credit, it must be said that they never look down at anyone! That is true egalitarianism for them, not the pathetic plight of their hapless masters, the tax-payers, whom they are supposed to serve. Such odious comparisons and self-serving ideologies are their guiding leit motif, not merit or realisation of their own worth.
And they lapse into strikes, more as a matter of pavlovian habit at the very inkling of a cut in benefits, a threat that the union leaders, more than the rulers, perennially harp upon to keep their flock intact and salvage their relevance, particularly in these times when socialistic euphorias are bursting away faster than soap bubbles. But strike is a weapon invented by commy forefathers to fight exploitation of workers by oppressive managements of factories and companies.
Pray, where is the exploitation in the case of government servants? Are the governments of the country making these poor lambs work all day long and even nights and then cheat them of their hard-earned earnings? Or making them toil in windowless cells on empty stomachs? Is the government such a profit making enterprise that it should share its spoils with its employees with all gratitude? Bull-whatever it is! Rather, who is exploiting whom?
Indeed, if at all there is any exploitation, it is actually perpetrated by the government staff on the citizens of the country, a sort of inverted exploitation. In the form of corruption, rank inefficiency, absolute unaccountability and lest I forget, bloated pay cheques, pre and post retirement, that are inversely proportional to performance and defy equity!
Employment with the government is actually a favour conferred upon the beneficiary for no legitimate reason whatsoever, much less in appreciation of his or her abilities. While the government is deemed a model employer, there are no such reciprocal commitments that are expected of the employee. Of course, there are specified duties and obligations, but they are merely on paper, lost in the dusty labyrinths and never invoked. But the people are made to feel that their very signing of the attendance register is an act of supreme magnanimity.
Papers pile up, while they dreamily watch over with as much concern displayed by the flies sitting on those files. And then by striking work at the most inopportune of times, they screw up the routines and lives of their benefactors and in a fit of criminal presumptuousness, they seek their sympathy too, or rather, assume it. Normal life comes to a standstill but this they claim as suceess! Sadism could not be more explicitly manifest.
Parasites and pests would squirm in terminal inferiority complex in their presence! Indeed, the government offices are badly in need of a thorough fumigation!
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