The vyapam scandal involving politicians, senior officials and businessmen of Madhya Pradesh (MP, pop.77 million) and covering admission of students into institutions of professional education and of graduates into the civil service, the teaching profession and police, has received widespread coverage in the media. But there’s insufficient awareness of the damage it has caused to the public in MP which was beginning to shed its BIMARU (most backward) status.

During the past quinquennium, GDP growth in MP, averaging 10 percent per year, has been above the national average; the state has been successful in attracting industrial investment, and has made impressive gains in primary enrolments and learning attainments. However it must be noted that instances of ‘irregularities’ in admission into professional education  colleges, academic appointments and civil service recruitment tests conducted by the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examinations Board (MPPEB, aka Vyapam), Bhopal were being reported since the mid-1990s. Therefore, tens of thousands of unqualified  students, graduates and teachers have been admitted into medical colleges, academia, civil services and the police, a development certain to slowdown the growth momentum of the state’s economy. 

A second point to note is the sheer amorality and recklessness with which top politicians in MP, and indeed countrywide, are hell-bent upon enriching themselves without a jot of care for the public interest. In the Vyapam scam, the 2,000 people interrogated and/or arrested thus far include Lakshmikant Sharma, technical education minister of the state and chairman of MPPEB together with two of his officers on special duty, a superintendent of police, and joint commissioner of revenue among a host of bribes-paying students and parents, middlemen and examinee impersonators. Worse, when Sharma resigned in 2009, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, then newly-appointed chief minister took charge of the technical education portfolio. But as reports surfaced of over 40 people — reportedly whistle-blowing students, teachers, investigators and journalists — connected with the Vyapam scam having died suspiciously, Chouhan had to concede a CBI probe monitored by the Supreme Court.

These shocking developments, including serial killings, are disturbing pointers to the depths to which post-independence India’s government-dominated and under-funded education system has sunk. Empirical  evidence suggests that inter-sectoral rather than traditional solutions are needed. Therefore reform of India’s moribund education system, beset with fraudulent processes and practices, is to a great extent dependent not only upon education but also effective reforms in the law, order and justice systems and the nation’s financial sector, which must provide the resources to address the supply-side of Indian education.

The spreading rot in Indian education, the natural outcome of adoption of the neta-babu socialist development model six decades ago, has permeated too deep to be excised by conventional reform initiatives.

Urgent need to trim bureaucracy

The final meeting of the seventh Central Pay Commission (SCPC) chaired by retired Supreme Court judge Ashok Kumar Mathur, and constituted by the Congress-led UPA government in April 2014 to determine the pay and perquisites of 4.8 million Central government employees, was held on June 9. The commission is expected to submit its final report including the long-pending demand of retired defence personnel for one rank one pension, in  September.

According to reliable sources, there’s a strong possibility that like its predecessor sixth commission, it will recommend a substantial pay increase for this small and pampered community. If so, it will impose a heavy burden upon the Union budget which reported a fiscal deficit of Rs.5.01 lakh crore in 2014-15, equivalent to 4 percent of GDP.

In 2007 after the Sixth Pay Commission made an over-generous award, the wage bill of the Central government (a closely guarded secret which finds no mention in annual  Union budgets or the Economic Survey) more than doubled  to Rs.115,000 crore in 2013-14. Now with the SCPC having reportedly recommended a three-fold increase in entry level pay in each band, the Centre’s annual wage bill is likely to swell to over Rs.300,000 crore, which will be more than twice its annual allocation for education in 2020 at current rates of investment in human capital.

The plain truth is that the country’s 4.8 million Central government and additional 15 million state government employees (who are quick to demand pay parity) add up to too many overpaid and underworked, obstructionist bureaucrats who are a huge drag on the economy. In a revealing op-ed essay in the Times of India (July 9), Raghu Dayal discloses that the annual remuneration of a Central government employee in India is 4.8 multiples of the national per capita  income as against  1.4 multiples  in the UK,  1.2 in China, 1.4 in the US and 1.5 in South Korea. Moreover, the higher bureaucracy in India enjoys perks unheard of in most countries.

It’s pertinent to also note that every pay commission has simultaneously recommended reductions in the size of the country’s huge and unwieldy bureaucracy, suggestions which all administrations at the Centre and in the states have blithely ignored. For instance in 1997, the Fifth Pay Commission had recommended a 30 percent reduction in the number of Central government employees over a ten-year period. Similarly, the Sixth Pay Commission recommended the phasing out of all ‘D’ grade jobs (drivers, peons, chowkidars etc) to rationalise the hugely adverse (1:9) teeth-tail ratio of the civil service. 

This time around, in the interests of fiscal stability and administrative efficiency, the SCPC’s other recommendations should also be given serious consideration.