Pension Row | Should Kerala provide for its politicians?

Spats between Governors and respective state administrations are nothing new in India. The scope of most, if not all, issues would be limited to the formation of a new government, or its dismissal on political grounds.

Since Governors would almost always remain reticent about public issues, we have often not heard their versions about political controversies first-hand.

But Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan is different.

Khan is not one who would desist from speaking about matters of general interest, no matter they are outside the realm of his State, or controversial. In a long time, we may not have seen a Governor who literally ‘defends’ the laws of the land, and gets himself ‘devoted’ in matters related to the ‘wellbeing’ of the people of his State. Khan also uses his ‘discretion’ at will to choose the matters to speak about.

After several fuming battles and truces over Bills, policies, and opinions, the situation has reached an impasse, worsened by the disinclination of the state government to comply further. The Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government used a principal secretary to raise its concerns about the appointment of a new member in the Governor’s staff, for political reasons. While the Governor shall be advised, in limited capacity by the council of ministers, it was out of line for a secretary to write to him about the ‘inappropriateness’ in the appointment.

Although the details of the ensuing deliberations are not known, the secretary who engendered the controversy was quickly removed from his position, and the Governor sprang into action to stab the government back with the same knife it used — political appointments in personal staff.

Kerala has a flawed pension scheme for the members of the personal staff of ministers, thanks to a 1994 amendment to the Kerala Personal Staff Service Wage Rules. Staff members would need to complete only a little over two years in service to become eligible for a minimum government pension of ₹3,550 from the following month. It grows further with their service, for a full pension after 30 years.

The strength of a Kerala minister’s personal staff is nearly double that enjoyed by a Union minister. Practically, ministers can replace the members in their personal staff after this short period with new political appointees. Effectively, this presents the opportunity for two political recruits to earn pension for one role over a full term of five years. They also receive a raise in both the salary and the pension during pay revisions. The salary of the Chief Minister’s personal staff grew by nearly 200 percent over the last six years. Nobody paid heed to the Pay Revision Commission’s recommendation to raise the minimum service period for pension eligibility.

Compare this with the pension benefits of a government employee. The employee who qualifies for the job after meeting all stipulated requirements must complete a minimum period of 10 years in the service to become eligible for a minimum pension, whereas nobody except the C&AG has even broached the inconvenient discussion regarding the qualification of the members in ministers’ personal staff. Even reputed government officers who have had professional differences with the government in service-related matters do struggle to get their post-retirement benefits on time.

Kerala’s economy has been floundering for a long time — financial control is in jeopardy, no major investments come up, businesspeople leave the state, and even small-scale entrepreneurs live under the threat of militant trade unionism. After exhausting all avenues for taking loans, the government even veered off the regular route to welcome off-budget borrowings, the constitutionality of which is now brewing into a major dispute with the C&AG.

It is in this context that one has to evaluate Kerala’s amoral pension scheme. It has established an unethical practice of feeding politicians with public money. It allows people to make a detour around the norms, and live on the taxpayers’ money for the rest of their lives.

Since politicians are the beneficiaries of this pension scheme, both the ruling party and Opposition are united against the Governor. They want the people to provide for them. They claim the scheme has been in force for decades, and, therefore, it must not be amended. Such standards were not used before amending the decades-old Lok Ayukta Act, when it violated their political interests.

Politics of the Governor and the government aside, the hole the pension scheme will create on the exchequer in the long-term will become a major liability for the people of Kerala. It is dishonest for a government to ignore this hole that adds to the revenue leakage, and instead choose to harp on about judicious spending to its people, many of who are of slender means in the aftermath of the pandemic.

It wouldn’t be foretelling if I dare say the hole will aggravate the instability of the already vulnerable boat, and play its part in turning it over in the future. Now is the time to plug it.

Sreejith Panickar is a Kerala-based political commentator. Twitter: @PanickarS. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.