The strike organised by the teachers and employees groups associated with the opposition front LDF, which is underway in Kerala, against the introduction of contributory pension scheme to the government employees getting into government service after March 31, 2013 should have been avoided. As the new scheme is not going to affect anyone who is already in service, there are no logical justifications for this strike. If those who are striking are saying that they are striking for the future generations (future employees in the government service) then those arguments will not stand the test of the real facts, some of which will appear in this essay.
What is contributory pension? - As of now we follow a scheme of statutory pension in the state where the government employees on retirement will get a specific amount as pension based on certain criteria. According to the contributory pension scheme all employees who join the government service from April 1, 2013 will contribute every month 10% of their basic salary and dearness allowance each to a central government managed Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA). The state government will also contribute the same amount to the fund every month. When an employee retires he/she can withdraw 50% amount from the fund and based on an annuity scheme he/she will get pension from the rest of the amount. Thus the government and the employee will work together in providing his/her pension.
Kerala is already a consumer state and at a time when we are facing acute shortage of fund for social welfare measures it is impractical to continue with the present method of pension scheme. To validate the above mentioned point, let us see the following economic figures.
Annual revenue of the state for the financial year 2011-12 will come to 29197.09 crores. The salary and pension of government employees amount to 23536.68 crores, which is 80.61% of the annual revenue of the state. That means the government spent 80.61% of its revenue for the government employees, who is less than 5% of total population of the state. If we add interest payable by the state government, the amount required would be 29895.11 crores, which is 102.39% of annual revenue of the state.
If we also add the contribution made by the central government, then the revenue of the state would become 39587.85 crores. Then the percentage of salary + pension will come down to 59.45% and the percentage of salary + pension + interest will come down to 75%, which is still quite high, leaving very less money in the hands of the state government to continue with its social welfare measures for the millions of poor people in the state.
When the situation is already quite dismal, in the future, things will get more difficult and miserable. Future governments will have little money for the social welfare programmes and in the absence of money, government schools and colleges, government hospitals and other such social welfare organisations of the government will have to either reduce or completely stop their activities. Such a situation would be detrimental to even the existence of our state and is a sure recipe for violent upheavals. Any citizen with a little civic sense would understand that the government has decided on introducing contributory pension scheme taking into consideration the future of the state.
One needs no great intelligence to comprehend that the ongoing strike is one with political intentions only. The striking political parties should know that when they come to the government, they will also face the same problem of lack of money for welfare measures if the present day government doesn’t adopt the contributory pension scheme now.
With their united strength the government employees have successfully thwarted the attempts of the government to bring in a system where the salary revision will be applied only once in ten years. Now they have salary revision every five years and they are also getting many other benefits as well. Even then, the quality of service that they provide for the common man has not improved at all.
The laymen have no favourable opinion on the government employees and that being the case there is no way they are going to get a sympathetic hearing from the common man on their strike. The CPI (M) and other left parties are trying to give the strike a violent form by taking the strike to the streets by allowing their students and youth cadre to support the strike. The students and youth wing of the ruling Congress party are making things worse by confronting those striking employees in the street as well. It would be prudent if the government and the striking employees find some amicable solution to the present problem. As far as the future generations of the state are concerned, it is quite important that the strike fails and the contributory pension scheme prevails unless their future would be in jeopardy.
Statistics: ‘Budget in Brief’ of Government of Kerala, available in public domain
