{"id":195957,"date":"2022-07-16T18:38:04","date_gmt":"2022-07-16T13:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=195957"},"modified":"2022-07-16T18:38:04","modified_gmt":"2022-07-16T13:08:04","slug":"the-permanent-problem-why-is-there-a-caste-system-in-govt-employment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-permanent-problem-why-is-there-a-caste-system-in-govt-employment\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘permanent’ problem: Why is there a ‘caste system’ in govt employment?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source<\/strong>: The post is based on an article \u201cWhy is there a caste system in government employment?\u201d published in the Business Standard on 15th<\/sup> July 2022.<\/p>\n

Syllabus<\/strong>: GS2 – Govt policies and interventions<\/p>\n

Relevance<\/strong>: Types of the government employments<\/p>\n

News<\/strong>: Recently, protests were seen against the Agnipath scheme<\/strong> which was launched to cut costs in the armed forces as schemes like one rank-one pension were putting pressure on the public purse.<\/p>\n

Therefore, this has raised debate over the nature of employment in government institutions.<\/p>\n

Types of government employment?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

There is a presence of a caste system<\/strong>: (1) permanent, (2) contractual<\/strong>, and (3) casual employees<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It is noted that the strength of contractual employees has doubled in four years to 2.43 million. And their share in total government<\/strong> employment has soared.<\/p>\n

What are the trends in government\u00a0employment<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

(1) The governments have been increasingly hiring contractual, and casual employees<\/strong> instead of permanent employees because the permanent category gets paid much better than the former two. Thus, these employees are cheaper than the permanent employees.<\/p>\n

(2) The central and state governments don\u2019t fill vacancies<\/strong> in the departments and agencies.<\/p>\n

(3) The government employees don\u2019t get paid<\/strong>, sometimes for months together. For example, a school teacher, a sanitation worker, or a social health (ASHA) worker.<\/p>\n

Why governments and associate bodies are moving away from hiring permanent employees?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Cost<\/strong>. The permanent government employees receive guaranteed sum of money as salary, housing rent allowance, full inflation-indexation and job security, medical benefits for life and pension and so on. And at present, the governments are under tremendous fiscal pressures.<\/p>\n

Productivity<\/strong>. In the absence of any reward system<\/strong> for work well done, there is no incentive to work. At the same time, statutory provisions make it hard to use the stick.<\/p>\n

–<\/strong> For example, there have been cases in which the teachers with relatively comfortable salaries<\/strong> sit at home and send surrogates to teach on their behalf in return for part-payment out of the teacher\u2019s salary.<\/p>\n

What are the issues in the coming future?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The unfairness of this caste system is bound to remain in the future because one of the new labour codes is poised to encourage hiring on contract.<\/p>\n

Way Forward<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Five years ago, the pay commission had recommended for a minimum wage of Rs 18,000 per month,<\/p>\n

Some years ago, the Supreme Court ordered that there should be no difference between permanent and contractual categories, in pay or benefits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: The post is based on an article \u201cWhy is there a caste system in government employment?\u201d published in the Business Standard on 15th July 2022. Syllabus: GS2 – Govt policies and interventions Relevance: Types of the government employments News: Recently, protests were seen against the Agnipath scheme which was launched to cut costs in… Continue reading The ‘permanent’ problem: Why is there a ‘caste system’ in govt employment?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[10503],"class_list":["post-195957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-business-standard","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704425604},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}