Centre taking U-turn over ‘minimum government, maximum governance’

The Modi government is in the process of reversing the policy framed by the Manmohan Singh regime to trim the government by not filling up the government vacancies over the past 12 years. The process set in motion was adopted by Modi in the run up to 2014 elections and cherished it for the past over three years with the slogan of ‘Minimum government, maximum governance’.

A serious thinking by the government and by its policy-making NITI Aayog is to junk the idea of reducing the size of the government and instead fill up all the vacancies in the government, be it at the Centre, the states or in the public sector units (PSUs).

Though this would put a heavy burden on the tax payers to pay for babus, peons and alike without any work and may not solve the unemployment problem even partially, the NITI Aayog has recommended that this cosmetic remedy will dull the Opposition criticism on the jobless growth, failure of its poll promise of 10 million jobs a year and an unsuccessful attempt to lure the youth to become job creators and entrepreneurs instead of being the job seekers.

The policy of not filling the posts has created more than two lakh vacancies in the Railways alone. When asked at a press conference on Thursday whether the Indian Railways will go for a massive employment drive to fill up all vacancies, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal directed Railway Board Chairman Ashwani Lohani to come up with the answer. Lohani’s measured answer was to employ only enough that meets “our needs”.

Railways and many other departments have been resorting to “contract” employment because of the bar on fresh recruitment to fill the vacancies and that too at much lower payments despite the Supreme Court ruling that anyone on contract must get wages at a par with regular employees doing the same job.

Many state governments have been also following the Centre’s policy of not filling up the vacancies to reduce the workforce and engage all new hands only on contract. They also want to reduce

Many state governments have been also following the Modi govt’s policy of not filling up the vacancies to reduce the workforce and engage all new hands only on contract.They also want to reduce the administrative cost and their pension bill unlike the Centre which today is paying pensions to as many as 61.17 lakh former employees as against the salaries paid to only 49.26 lakh employees.

the administrative cost and their pension bill unlike the Centre which today is paying pensions to as many as 61.17 lakh former employees as against the salaries paid to only 49.26 lakh employees.

The Union labour ministry is in the forefront to open up the government employment as far as possible as its estimate is that it can absorb at least two million if not more. Many cynics, however, point out that this policy may not help the youth looking for jobs as most of them will be grabbed by those who are already working on contract since there is a ban on recruitment.