All Work, No Pay Makes IPS fume

It’s not just a few hundred rupees more which the IPS officers are worried about, it’s the mindset of the IAS to subordinate the police services, which is the major source of discontent over the Pay Commission

By Asif Syed

India’s Constitution provides that there shall be an All India Service recruited on an all-India basis with common qualifications, with uniform scale of pay and the members of which alone could be appointed to these strategic posts throughout the Union.” – B.R. Ambedkar in a speech to the Constituent Assembly on 10 Oct 1948.

In the ruckus which followed the Sixth Central Pay Commission report, the main focus has been on the recommendation of an unprecedented payout of Rs 30, 621 crores (Rs. 12, 561 crore in salaries and Rs. 18,060 as arrears) to central government bureaucrats with scarcely a mention to improving performance, even less to administrative accountability and almost none at all to cutting government flab.

Recommendations of the honourable Justice B.N. Srikrishna, who chaired the commission and Smt. Sushma Nath, an Indian Administrative Service officer, who was Member Secretary of the Commission, have met with derision by the media and the public, as an undeserved reward for sloth and inefficiency.

However, in all the commotion, a few quintessentially bureaucratic sleights of hand have gone unnoticed. Hidden in the 650 pages of the 6th CPC report are -- what some senior IPS officers say -- the machination of the IAS to not only grant themselves the highest remuneration but also establish themselves as a service over and above all the other services. From the seniormost police officers to those who have just joined the force, there is a feeling that the IAS and the senior judiciary have taken the opportunity presented by the 6th CPC to humiliate, and in effect, subordinate the India Police Service (IPS) in relation to the other All India Services.

IPS officers, represented by the IPS (Central) Association, have been actively sending the message to the highest offices including the Prime Minister’s Office and the Union Home Ministry that the entire police force feels a grave injustice has been done to them.

While the first buzz of discontent in the IPS appeared on the blogosphere in the form of a candidly written article by Abhinav Kumar, SP, Crime and Law and Order, Uttarakhand, which was later published in the Indian Express. This was quickly followed by an emergency general body meeting of the IPS (Central) Association on 27 March 2008. The IPS (Central) Association later submitted a detailed representation to the Home Minister.

The IPS has two principal grievances: recognition and remuneration.

Primarily they are upset that the 6th CPC has neither recognised nor even referred to the frontline role of the IPS in maintaining law and order and combating the increasing threats to internal security from organised crime, terrorism, insurgency and extremism. This, say senior officers, has been compounded by the fact that of all the All India Services, it is only the IPS officer who faces a constant threat to life. The fact that more than 9,000 police personnel have lost their lives in the line of duty over the past ten years underscores this resentment.

“The 6th CPC has downgraded the importance of the contribution made by the IPS in the functioning and effective governance of the country,” a senior IPS officer said. He said while on the one hand, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in an address to DGPs and IGPs that India’s economic programmes and development were wholly contingent upon upholding the rule of law in the country and therefore, police “have a very vital role to play in the development of the nation”, on the other hand, the 6th CPC does not even recognise the relationship between internal security, law and order and the IPS.

While recognition and appreciation of an officer’s job and by extension that of the role of that department is crucial to maintaining morale, the degree of importance given to a job is also instrumental in determining the remuneration of that job. This brings us to the second and tangible grievance – parity in pay and seniority.

There is a sense that from the first central pay commission to the fifth CPC, there has been a trend to establish the superiority of the IAS among the All India Services. This trend, the IPS says, has been institutionalised with the 6th CPC.

The 6th CPC has recommended that the existing 30 odd pay scales should be done away with and in its place it has introduced four running pay bands for almost all posts in the government.
The top two existing pay scales, which have salaries of Rs. 26,000 (fixed) and Rs. 30,000 (fixed), will be called Apex Scale and Cab. Sec/Equ. will have salaries of Rs. 80,000 and Rs. 90,000 respectively.

The 6th CPC has also recommended that every post, barring that of the Secretary/equivalent and Cabinet Secretary/equivalent to have a distinct grade pay attached to it.

“Grade pay (being a fixed amount attached to each post in the hierarchy) to determine the status of a post with senior post being given higher grade pay,” it adds. On the face of it, the above recommendation is fairly innocuous. However, when it is read with another recommendation which recommends a higher grade pay for IAS officers than IPS officers even though they are from the same grade and same batch that the true implications of the 6th CPC become obvious.
If the grade pay is linked to seniority, and if the grade pay for an IAS officer is higher than that of an IPS officer form the same batch and grade, then it is implicit that the IAS officer is senior to the IPS officer.

It is this recommendation that has the IPS up in arms and has the potential to destabilise the functioning of the All India Services. What it also does is set up an unofficial hierarchy within the services.

“If this recommendation is accepted the 6th CPC,” says Abhinav Kumar, “will henceforth be regarded as the Manusmriti of the civil services, a scriptural source of divine authority
giving sanctity and rationale to the iniquities and injustices of the bureaucratic caste system that is perhaps as damaging to the well being of modern India as the original caste system has been.”

The 6th CPC has recommended a grade pay of Rs. 6,500 for an IAS officer as compared with Rs. 6,100 for an IPS officer in the Senior Time Scale, Rs. 7,500 for an IAS officer and Rs. 6,600 for an IPS officer in the Junior Administrative Grade and in the Selection Grade Scale, the IAS officer has a grade pay of Rs. 8,300 while an IPS officer gets Rs. 7,600.

The ostensible justification given by the CPC for this variance is that “the initial posting of IAS officers are generally to small places, they face frequent transfers and the pulls and pressures they have to stand up to early in their career are much more intense. The slight edge in the initial stages of their career would, to an extent, neutralise these problems.”

This explanation has quite obviously met with howls of protest from the IPS. A post on the Internee by a serving officer sums up the prevailing sentiment in the IPS: “There is no doubt that the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission are not only highly prejudiced but are almost totally discriminatory.”

The IPS association, too, has been quick to point out the fallacy, albeit diplomatically, in the explanation provided by the 6th CPC that the “IPS, for a larger period in their career, serve not only in remote and difficult areas but also face a threat to their life. If the principle of posting in remote places, frequent transfers and pulls and pressures applies most to any service, it is the IPS.”
A serving DIG is far more candid. “What EDGE?,” he asked. “I was ambushed and shot on my sixth day of joining the force. And in my six years in the field, I was ambushed six times,” he added, showing scars of the wound where a bullet had pierced his arm. “Which IAS officer has to face that?”

A note being circulated among the IPS goes on to say that the 6th CPC “has justified higher grade pays to the junior IAS cadre, thereby making them senior to their IPS/Central Service batch mates. Considerable comment has been has been generated on the question of the IAS deserving an ‘edge’. The IAS officer is said to be in a coordinating, multifunctional and integrating role, holding important field level posts in small places early in their career and facing frequent transfers, pulls and pressures. It is interesting that the CPC overlooked the fact that in all these remote posting, IAS officers have the company of IPS officers. All these descriptions of the IAS job apply equally to the IPS in full measure, with the added hardship of larger number of years spent in the field, the serious threat to life and limb – resultant stress and ill health, the effects if which would definitely make a case for the same ‘edge’.”

While the difference in the pay is not much – in fact the 6th CPC feels the “pulls and pressures” faced by an honest junior IAS officer are worth only Rs. 400 to Rs. 900 per month – it is not the quantum of money that counts but what it connotes, that the IAS is the superior most Central service and that all other services are subordinate to it. The difference in grade pays means that the seniormost IPS officers in a the senior time scale, junior administrative scale and selection grade scale will be inferior to the juniormost IAS officer entering that particular grade. “What’s next,” asks a young officer “will they now start writing our APRs?”

The IPS and the IAS and the Indian Forest Service owe their origin to Article 312 of the Constitution, which provides for All India Services comprised of members who have common qualifications and who will receive a uniform pay. The IAS and IPS are recruited by the UPSC through competitive exams. Over the years the candidates that scored higher on the exam were recruited to the IAS. This has now become the source for an unofficial hierarchy.

“It is curious that while in the realm of economics and business we have since 1991 realised the need for more open, less hierarchical and merit-driven organisations, in the area of governance we see no need to question a system that substitutes the privileges of birth with the privileges of the UPSC exam. If you are born a Brahmin it is enough for a lifetime of privilege. As the 6th CPC sees it, the same applies to the IAS,” Kumar wrote.

In what could have serious repercussions, the controversy over the 6th CPC has further eroded the trust, which is so essential to enable smooth and effective governance, between the IAS and the IPS. “I am surprised when IPS officers express surprise at the recommendations of the pay Commission. When an ex-member of the judiciary was appointed as the Chairman of the Commission, I had a bet with friends that the police force would get a raw deal. It seems I have won the bet,” said a retired IPS officer.

“The crux of the Mussourie training is to develop a bond between the IAS, IPS and the IFS (Indian Forest Service). They are the only representatives the central government has at the district level,” said a serving officer. The 6th CPC, he says, has vitiated that bond.

“I don’t feel like meeting my IAS batch mates,” he said. “We started together, trained together and now for no other reason than the 6th CPC they are earning 33 percent more than me and are effectively senior to me.”

Senior IPS officers feel their grievances will not be redressed if they are confined to the regular bureaucratic channels as it is the bureaucracy itself which has put them in this position.
They feel their protests should take a different form. “We therefore have to move out of this situation where we are demanding a bureaucratic decision to one in which we demand a political decision,” said an officer. “We should take up the line with the PM and the Finance Minister that the country’s economic growth is dependent on public order being maintained in the States. The leaders can not ignore the morale of the guardians of law and order,” said another officer
The 6th CPC has also had a detrimental effect on the morale of mid-level officers in the DIG rank. The IPS had reportedly requested that this anomalous post which has led to a stagnation in career paths of IPS officers be done away with. The 6th CPC, however, has not only retained the position but has also downgraded the DIG scale to a lower pay band leaving those officers at a major financial and hierarchical disadvantage.

“The most unfortunate recommendation is the pay scale recommended to State DGPs. It lowers the position of the DGP in the eyes of the public and his own subordinates,” an officer said.
The 6th CPC has also not spared the DGs of the IPS. While it has recommended that the Director Generals of the BSF, CRPF, CISF and SSB should be included in the Apex scale the Director Generals of Police of the States have been left out. According to the recommendations of the 6th CPC the DG of a state will never reach the Apex pay scale in the normal progression of his career.
IPS officers say it is unfair to differentiate the pay of the director-generals of other police organisations and the states and to relegate them to an inferior status. While on one hand, there are states like Jammu and Kashmir and the northeastern states that are struggling against the menace of dacoity and Left–wing extremism.

In no way, the responsibilities of the directors-general of police of states like Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal can be evaluated to be inferior to that of any police organisation – neither in terms of organisational strength nor in terms of the responsibilities they bear.

Therefore, there should not be any differentiation in the pay at the level of the directors-general – whether of any police organisation or a state and that they should all be given Apex pay of Rs. 80,000 (fixed), the IPS officers say.

According to some back of the envelope calculations, if the recommendations of the 6th CPC are accepted, an IAS officer will make approximately Rs. 60 lakh more than an IPS officer over the course of his or her career. Add to this the humiliation of the loss of hierarchical parity and it is not hard to envision a mass exodus of the best and brightest officers from the IPS.

Ironically, the officers most at risk of being poached by the private sector are those very officers who joined the IPS out of a sense of service and duty, often after forsaking far more lucrative jobs in the private sector. But after the 6th CPC it will be hard for senior officers to make a convincing argument to persuade he best and brightest to stick with the service and not leave for greener pastures like their fellow officers Kiran Jadhav and Anita Roy.

Both the officers are of the 1991 batch have joined MIAL and TATA respectively for two reasons: One is a very tangible and attractive seven-figure salary and the second is an intangible but even more important factor, its called respect.