'The Rank Pay Judgment' - Biji Cherian

Now that the dust has settled a bit on the excitement over the 'Rank Pay Judgement', I think it is time for some of us to do a reality check.

I had written about this case after the previous judgement in 2010, which Navdeep had posted as a 'Guest Post' on his blog - 'How Majors became Minors and More'. It is still there for those interested to read. Must confess that the title I had proposed was the less eye-catching 'Stop this victimhood narrative'. Any way the point raised in that were two; one, that Maj. Dhanapalan's case, addressed only a part of the damage done at the IV CPC and the second (which was also raised by Col Chaturvedi in the group blog recently), is that we need to find who was responsible for this degradation and loss. 

It is in this context that we need to see Navdeep's revelation that it was only in 2010 that Service HQs finally admitted that officers suffered a loss at the IV CPC. We had first raised the red flag in 1995, in the build-up to the V CPC. It took 15 years for the Service HQs to cease being hostage to the acolytes of IV CPC experts and see the reality, despite overwhelming evidence on ground. Doesn't speak very high of the institution's intellectual credentials. On a similar vein, we also need to look at Gen. Kadian's brief on the judgement in the mail below.

He is right in para 3 of his article that 'an intended benefit was thus reduced to a loss by the officialdom'. The tragedy is that it took the Service HQs 24 years to realise it. Worse, it was drummed up as a great achievement at the time and some may have even built their careers around it. Not really something to write home about.

But the more important aspect of the article that many of us need to pay attention to is para 2. With due respects, I must say that this contains some of those motherhood statements that are regularly given out by our pay experts without realising the damage it does. Let me expalin:

1. 'the armed forces have traditionally enjoyed an edge in their emoluments vis-a-vis their civilian counter parts' - Do we have any evidence for this? On the contrary, Service officers start their pay and pensionable service a year to 18 months after their civil counterparts and the so called 'starting edge' merely makes up for the increment of the time lost. Loss in pay and service remain with all its related drawbacks. This has been so since as long as I can remember.

2. 'under a common pay commission, the edge got eroded'- Again, any evidence? Nil. The only Service which traditionally had an edge was the IAS and our attempt has been to remove the parity with IPS and seek it with the IAS. Have a look at our proposals and the counter of the CPCs to that.

3. ' in order to make the armed forces an attractive career option, the Fourth Pay Commiission introduced an element of rank pay from Capt to Brig'.- Can't deny this but it covers more than it reveals. My understanding is that the integrated scale and rank pay were introduced by the IV CPC, not on their own but at the behest of the Services. Those who have the old figures can double check this but I am fairly certain from memory, of the 'dialogue' with our V CPC Cells. The CPC had already formulated its norms of pay progression which was for all Organised Gp A to move to Sel Gde in 14 years. This would have been applied to the Services as well. Since the Services wanted it in a single scale, they merged the scales upto Maj(SG) and effectively had the same wine in a different bottle for the Services, but with some loss for those upto Major. Since our experts wanted even senior guys in the same scale, the pay scales of Lt Col, Col and Brig were let go and they too were fitted in the Major's pay scale with a bit more RP. This was the biggest damage at the IV CPC with all its attendant consequences, from which the Services are yet to recover. Admittedly there has been a lot of back and forth on this but the truth lies in the figures, for all to see. This is also the reason that Cols and Brigs were stagnating on the pay-scale as soon as they were promoted to the rank post IV CPC. Officers of that vintage will remember this. Now imagine the stagnation if they had actually got their due.

My point is that often our statements give a misleading impression that we are an already pampered lot. The guy on the other side of the table, frames his response accordingly. Even more intriguing is our refusal to accept the civil norms of pay while simultaneously complaining that they are better off. A rethink is long overdue.

As far as specific pay-outs are concerned, I am glad NHQ/DPA has pointed out how the damage was done. But who held the fort in '86 when it happened? Why wasn't it noticed? And by the Army and air Force as well.

On the revised fixation examples that have been given in DPA's brief, I have little idea of figures involved but I suspect it would be wrong to round off to next higher stage after adding Rank Pay as. Shouldn't it be rounded of first, and RP added as a separate element? May not make much difference in the amount but I think it is an important technicality.

I am also surprised that the media, esp, the Indian Express missed a very important angle to this case. In particular because the judgement effectively made it a class action (Navdeep can confirm if it's so in legalese). This is probably the first time anywhere that military officers (as a class) have taken their own government to court and won resoundingly. So much for civil-military relations and GOI's pious statements on welfare of the armed forces. But definite credit to the military for seeking a democratic, judicial solution to an obvious injustice.

Biji

Biji Cheriyan

bijicheriyan@hotmail.com