The decision making process at the Defence Ministry can put any organisation to shame.
Consigning all precedents of governance and administration to the bin, the Ministry is not being run by authorities competent to take decisions but by lower-level bureaucrats who have spent better part of their lives in the South Block and Sena Bhawan. What is shocking is that significant welfare related provisions related to the defence services which require a decision at Raksha Mantri or Government level including even those which have received an in-principle assent of the political executive, are junked by junior babus who do not even care to put up the file to their seniors and reject such proposals at their own end by initiating misleading file notings.
On this blog, Major Navdeep Singh has many-a-times addressed the subject as to how lower level appointments of the MoD hijack the system and ensure that the defence services do not get what is due. Some of the blog-posts signifying the above can be accessed here, here and here where may readers have differed by stating that the onus is on seniors in the chain rather than the juniors.
Now comes direct proof related to something which is dear to every commissioned officer of the Indian Military – Non Functional Upgradation (NFU).
For the uninitiated, NFU basically implies that whenever an IAS officer gets empanelled at a particular appointment at the Centre, all other Group-A service officers are also upgraded to the same level after a period of two years from the date of empanelment, on a non-functional basis irrespective of whether they are actually promoted or not. For example, if an officer of the IAS of 1982 batch is empanelled as an Additional Secretary to Govt of India, then all other Organised Group-A civil officers of the 1980 batch shall also be placed in the ‘Addl Secy to Govt of India’ pay grade of Rs 67000-79000 (Higher Administrative Grade/HAG) which is the same as a Lt Gen of the Army. As a result, almost all organised Group-A civil officers are retiring with the pay and pension of a Lt Gen whereas less than 1% of defence officers are retiring in the said grade. Interestingly, in many arenas, civilian officers serving under senior military officers are drawing a much higher pay (and consequently pension) under the system of NFU than their seniors from the defence services.
As stated earlier, the Chief of Staffs’Committee (COSC) had strongly conveyed to the Raksha Mantri the requirement of extending NFU to the defence services. This was followed by many letters and communications. Now comes the shocker. On endorsement of the proposal from the Services, the file was ultimately processed to the Pay/Services Wing of the MoD where a mere Under Secretary rejected the entire proposal in two short paragraphs covering one fourth of a page by concluding that the ‘proposal of the services cannot be agreed to’. The proposal which originated from the Apex body of the Services, the COSC and the PPOC, was junked by the lowest rung of the MoD who shockingly did not even consider it appropriate to send the file upwards to the Defence Secretary. The file was only sent for perusal upto Joint Secretary level and then the rejection letter was endorsed to the Services ostensibly on behalf of the Government by the same Under Secretary who had rejected the proposal in the very first note on the file.
Though the issue is not closed and the military top brass is alive to the subject, what the above shows is the kind of smartness being displayed by junior secretarial staff in hoodwinking the entire system. The political executive is blissfully unaware of what is happening around and the IAS & Military officers come and go.
More information would roll out in the near future.
Who rules the roost – the note maker.
In Delhi, it’s wake-up time for the Minister, the bureaucrat and the fauji.
