Guest Post : How Majors became Minors and more....

BeeCee is a senior retired naval officer who in the past has remained closely associated with pay and status issues. He has earlier contributed through his guest posts on this blog which can be viewed by clicking here and here. Here is another one in the aftermath of the ruling of the Hon’ble SC in the rank pay case. These are his personal views. Enjoy !

As a ‘not really affected anymore’ party I had thought it prudent to stay out of the debate on pay, pensions, promotions etc. But the general reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on Maj Dhanapalan's plea, and lack of it from Service HQrs, PE's poser to RM on ‘Too many at the Top’, Ajai Shukla's piece on the army's internal health and the continuing narrative of hurt and victimhood by ESM has brought back to focus the tragic ‘comedy of errors’ that the Armed Forces enact periodically on personnel issues. But what has surprised me is the failure of those who follow these matters, to connect the dots. I am willing to be corrected if someone can explain otherwise, but essentially, the underlying cause for all the narratives seems to be the same.

A visit to the post ‘Not so Pragmatic’ will show how the Service HQrs had triggered the general downward spiral for officers at the IV CPC. Dhanapalan's case highlighted a part of its fall-out. But the general reaction seems to have missed the crux of the issue. I must confess that I have only read the Supreme Court verdict as posted by Navdeep on his blog, not the original Kerala High Court order. But it is enough to make the point.

The contention was that pay fixation by the GOI was contrary to the IV CPC award. The courts upheld his view and ordered a correction. He had not challenged the award, only the mode of implementation. Evidently, it will restore some of the loss of pay suffered by officers at the time. But, wasn’t this precisely the job of the Service HQrs, and in particular of the ‘Pay Cells’ formed to deal with the IV CPC? As a matter of normal practice, pay fixation after every CPC is done through mutual consultations between Service HQrs, MOD and CDA. What Maj Dhanapalan has done therefore, is what was left undone by the Service HQrs. Also since it was ‘Major’ Dhanapalan who decided to take a close look at what was done to those of his rank, he may have corrected the damage to Majors who were in service at the time.

But had a Lt Col, Col and Brigadier bothered to take a similar look, they would have been aghast to find that their pay scales had disappeared altogether. But they may have had less luck at the courts because unlike Dhanapalan’s contention, this was not an implementation issue but was awarded as such by the CPC. It would also have been rather embarrassing to highlight it because the CPC merely gave in to what the Service HQrs asked for (who deemed it an achievement at the time).

As in the past, in the excitement over the possibility of getting some arrears, nobody seems to be looking at the pay scales even now. It would be seen that the Major’s pay (with rank pay post IV CPC) or Major (Selection Grade) pay (pre IV CPC without rank pay), was comparable with the NFSG pay scale (now of Director) in the civil services at the time. Fast forward 20 years. The pay that Maj Dhanapalan argued for (or to be precise, its replacement scale) is the same pay that was sought for the Colonel by Service HQrs when Mr. Antony rounded up the VI CPC at MOD to give another hearing to the Services. Of course our interlocutors at the VI CPC alone can’t be blamed for the double demotion of the Colonel. 'AVS-I' had already demoted the Lt Col to Major’s level a few years earlier. And an earlier request (at the V CPC) for reduced pay all round had misfired. They merely took the next step in the path set by their illustrious predecessors. As a positive, one can’t fault officers dealing with the issue for lack of perseverance.

‘Too many at the top’ as PE says is actually a misnomer. If our own people (not CPC or bureaucracy or the RM for that matter) feel that Colonels need to be paid only what was earlier paid to Majors, then the only way to have a reasonable pay progression is to have as many Colonels as you had Majors before the pay reduction. From a pay point of view, a more honest description than ‘too many at the top’ would be to say that ‘Majors would now be called Colonels’, with related fallout for those above and below.

Coming to OROP, the argument may have some merit, but I think it wouldn’t be such a burning issue if the long retired Major gets the pension he had earned the hard way rather than what is prescribed for him now after they made the Major into a ‘minor’. Senior ESM may be missing the point when they try to compare pensions with recently retired ESM. I don’t have the data on this, but I suspect a comparison between the pensions drawn then by a Major (SG) and a civilian NFSG officer/ Comdt (SG) of CPOs who all retired around 1984-85 (just prior to IV CPC), and the pensions they draw now, could hold some clue. It may require another Major to go to court and plead that while the authorities are welcome to reduce the pay/ pensions of their officers, it cannot do so with retrospective effect.

A penchant also seems to be developing in the blogosphere to give unsolicited advice to the Chiefs. Let me also give in to the temptation. Instead of having officers/ ESM go on with their victimhood narrative and blaming all and sundry for their predicament, can somebody do an honest internal review of how Service HQrs have handled pay / pension / personnel matters since the Q&M paper of the 80s. If nothing else, it could put a break on the downward slide and perennial pay discussions.

Ajai Shukla is right that this endless discussion on pay/ promotions is an indicator of low morale. But it may be a chicken and egg situation. The low morale itself may be caused by perceptions of being treated badly in pay matters, irrespective of who is at fault. But unlike promotions and transfers, changes in pay structure can be examined objectively. On the bright side, I think his blog actually highlights an issue that gives credit to Service HQrs. The pay of jawans / JCOs have always been handled with better care than that of officers.

Bernard Shaw’s ‘Arms and the Man’ was taught at the NDA to caricature the officer who says, 'I never withdraw'. But many in Service seem to be emulating it as a desirable trait. Instead of admitting and correcting the errors at CPCs, we have devised means to cover it up and further compound the errors. It may not be accidental that the first major cadre review (1986) proposal followed the disastrous IV CPC ‘achievements’.