Stretching Abhinav’s argument further : history speaks otherwise

While Abhinav Kumar had harped on the fact that Lt Cols who no longer command Battalions should not be granted a higher protocol than district administrative and police heads and that IAS and IPS officers preside over and manage more employees than military officers and hence deserve more pay and higher protocol than the defence services, it would be worthwhile to take a look as to how status equations were placed by the govt at the time of independence vis-à-vis sheer numbers as Abhinav would have wanted readers to believe. Also it is an established administrative norm that status and pay equations are never determined by number of employees presided over but are a resultant of a multiplicity of factors such as established relativity, functionality, duties performed, handling of human lives, equipment and importance to community. Stretching Abhinav’s logic, let’s analyse this blast from the past circa 1947 which would show that status and pay equations were never contingent upon the number of employees under supervision :

Brigadiers commanding about 3ooo men were equated with an IG Police – the highest police rank in charge of an entire state.

Lt Cols of the erstwhile Indian Medical Service (now AMC) commanding none were senior to the then second highest rank in the police hierarchy – the DIG.

Colonels who used to hold staff appointments with zero troops under command were equated with the highest rank in forest hierarchy – the Chief Conservator of Forests.

Lieutenant Colonels commanding less than 1000 troops were equated with the head of the entire excise machinery – the excise commissioner.

Majors who rarely commanded more than 100 men were always equated with Imperial Police officers with 15 to 20 years of service who used to head districts which were larger than some states of today.

So how is it that the status and pay were brought down ?. There is nothing in the successive pay commission reports which remotely suggests the depression of status of military ranks. In fact, pay commissions have made us believe that a status quo was always maintained between the pay of military and civil officers. Fine, but then how is it that a civil officer in the 3rd CPC grade of Rs 1650-1800 was granted Pay Band-4 with a Grade Pay of Rs 8700 by the 6th CPC while a Lt Col who was placed at Rs 1750-1950 was granted Pay Band-3 with a Grade Pay of Rs 7600 by the same Pay Commission ? How is it that a Capt is shown against Senior Time Scale under the 3rd CPC comparative table on Page 73 of the 6th CPC and suddenly is shown degraded and clubbed with 2nd Lieut and Lieut against the Junior Time Scale in the table representing 4th CPC – three military ranks equated with one civil grade and that too the lowest one !. There is nothing in the 4th CPC that suggests the downgradation of a Capt from STS to JTS level so how is it represented as such ?. Magic wand ?, No, but a crafty mind the execution of which escapes the untrained eye of not just the military but even the highest echelons of the bureaucracy and the cabinet. Again I would say that it’s those innocuous looking notes of the lower bureaucracy which hurt the most than anything else.

As stated by me earlier, the pitfalls of accepting Abhinav’s arguments are many. Every single Group-A officer starts with the same salary under the Govt of India, if the ‘number of employees presided over’ argument is taken into consideration, then we’ll see most Group-A civil servants being placed below thanedaars or even havaldars. Within the defence forces, we’ll have officers from arms seeking superiority in pay and protocol over officers from the services. Professors of Universities and senior govt doctors and scientists would be down in the dumps because of the absence of those numerical attributes so much considered cardinal and vital by our friend Abhinav.