Austerity measures

Sir, - The Government has at last realised that austerity measures have to be clamped to check the increasing cost of administration against falling revenues, particularly after agreeing to deposit Rs. 4,429 crores into Oil Pool account (the amount which was drawn a decade ago to make up for deficit while the amount to be repaid into the pool should be double or treble the figure, taking into account the loss of interest to Oil Pool).

Ever since the Fifth Pay Commission Report was accepted and implemented, a major portion of the revenue was spent on salaries and dearness allowance, leaving very little to cover development expenses. Imposition of mandatory cut of 10 per cent in the budgetary allocation for non-plan, non-salary expenditure of all ministries alone will not suffice to keep the deficit under control. Other measures like reducing the age of retirement of government servants in all categories from 60 to 58 or 55 years and also a sort of early voluntary scheme as in the case of bank employees should be adopted or alternatively the eligible sons/daughters may be employed in case of senior members wanting to avail of such premature retirement scheme as a bait to reduce the salary bill. The manpower requirement of each department should be scientifically determined.

In the national interest, parochial considerations either for retaining a redundant office or employing persons should be given up. The committee headed by former Finance Secretary Mr. K. P. Geethakrishnan should be asked to submit its report early (if not already handed over). There should be a ban on recruitment until the position warrants cancelling of such ban. It will not be out of place to tell that the tax-payers money should be used more for their benefit and they should not feel that someone gets maximum benefit.

T. E. Narasimhan,

Coimbatore (TN)

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