NFU: a Bureaucratic Scam of Gargantuan Proportions
NewsBharati 09-Dec-2020 12:09:28 PM
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- Major General Mrinal Suman
From the lofty days of being the steel frame of India, bureaucracy has degenerated into being the misfortune of India. Undoubtedly, the root cause of all the ills afflicting this country is India’s insensitive, self-serving and arrogant bureaucracy. It keeps inventing ingenious ways to feather its own nest, without any pangs of conscience. To Indian bureaucrats; ethics, probity and righteousness are alien virtues. Means are inconsequential; only the ends matter.
Non Functional Upgrade (NFU) scheme is a brainchild of bureaucracy’s selfish superciliousness. It totally disregards basic tenets of financial prudence, organizational hierarchy and responsible governance. NFU is a malady of epidemic proportions and has the potential of plaguing all organs of the state and devouring them to hollowness.
NFU is an outrageous way of self-aggrandisement. There is no international precedent for such a scheme. It is by far the most blatant loot by the ruling officialdom anywhere in the world. Sadly, NFU also exposes spinelessness of India’s political leadership. Apparently, bureaucracy calls the shots and the political leadership acquiesces without a whimper.
The Sixth Central Pay Commission, in its report of March 2008, recommended introduction of NFU to reward civil servants of 49 'Organized Central Group A Civil Services' with automatic time bound pay promotions till the Higher Administrative Grade(HAG). The stated purpose of NFU is to ‘alleviate stagnation in the civil services’.
NFU was endorsed by an ‘Empowered Committee of Secretaries’. It said – "Whenever any IAS officer of a particular batch is posted in the Centre to a particular grade carrying a specific grade pay in pay bands PB-3 or PB-4, grant of higher pay scale on non- functional basis to the officers belonging to batches of 'Organized Central Group A Civil Services' that are senior by two years or more should be given by the Government." NFU was also made applicable to the Indian Police Service (IPS) and the Indian Forest Service (IFoS). The government accepted the recommendation and granted NFU.
Opinion in the Seventh Central Pay Commission (SCPC) was divided on the issue. The Chairman felt that NFU should continue because it had 'existed for the last 10 years'. It was an archetypal status-quoist decision. It was not based on the merits of the issue. In addition, he wanted NFU to be extended to the officers of the defence forces and the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs). However, two distinguished members of the Commission faulted the basic premise of NFU scheme and recommended its total withdrawal. As was expected, gutless government decided to continue with NFU.
NFU implies that whenever any IAS officer of a particular batch is promoted to a specific grade pay in pay bands PB-3 or PB-4, grant of higher pay scale on non-functional basis should be granted to the officers belonging to batches of ‘Organized Central Group A Civil Services’ senior by two years. NFU is presently available up to HAG level.
For better understanding, let us take a true recent example. The Central Government, vide Department of Personnel and Training letter No AB14017/30/2011-Estt(RR) dated 20 Sep 2016, announced that the first officer of IAS batch of 1999 had been appointed Joint Secretary on 22 August 2016. It resulted in all officers of 1999 batch of IAS and 1997 batch of 49 'Organized Central Group A Civil Services' along with IPS and IFoS becoming eligible to earn pay of Joint Secretary grade on non-functional basis with effect from 22 Aug 2016, even while continuing to perform functions of junior appointments.
The Domino Effect
The domino effect of such a devious scheme is already discernible. To start with, NFU was meant only for 49 'Organized Central Group A Civil Services'. However, IPS and IFoS were soon added to the list of the beneficiaries. As was to be expected, the armed forces and the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) felt aggrieved. In addition to the denial of higher pay-packets, they are facing serious functional challenges, especially in mixed organisations. As pay scales decide parity in the government services, NFU has undermined the status of the defence forces and CAPFs with disastrous effect. Citing higher pay scales under NFU, most civilian officials refuse to obey their senior uniformed officers.
In September 2015, Delhi High Court declared CAPFs as organised services, thereby entitling them to financial benefits under NFU. Feeling degraded and discriminated against, the armed forces appealed to the principal bench of the Armed Forces Tribunal in New Delhi. In its verdict of December 2016, the tribunal has upheld the petition, thereby meeting the long-standing demand of thousands of defence services officers.
Right to equality of status and opportunity is enshrined in Article 14 of the Constitution. Article 16 (1) is more specific and states – “There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the State”. Thus, the government will find it difficult to deny NFU to other government employees as well.
If alleviation of stagnation is the sole justification for NFU, the unorganised Group ‘A’ Services, Group ‘B’ Services and Group ‘C’ Services have far fewer opportunities for promotions. As they suffer more prolonged stagnation, their case for the grant of NFU is much stronger and they are already demanding it. It will not be long before the employees of the state government demand similar dispensation.
Freebies like NFU carry the virus of making the environment demand more gratuitous gains. Instead of increasing the satisfaction level of the environment, NFU has increased the level of insatiability. NFU-grantees are seeking more while non-grantees are demanding NFU. Worse, having tasted blood, demand will soon be raised to apply NFU to HAG+ and Apex scales as well. Stagnation at HAG will be the brazen excuse. It is indeed a chaotic and scary scenario.
NFU is a Mala Fide Subterfuge
NFU is a mala fide scheme and suffers from the following fundamental infirmities:-
- It delinks promotions from career progression, thereby completely abolishing the merit based selection system. With assured pay promotions; there is no incentive to excel in work. As both strivers and layabouts enjoy same progression, efficiency suffers.
- NFU promotions are ‘automatic’ in true sense of the term. They are independent of all administrative imperatives like organisational structure and availability of vacancies.
- By linking promotions to progression in IAS, NFU makes an untenable attempt to equate all services whereas every service has its own role, responsibility, structure and opportunities for advancement.
- It is a fundamental principle that financial remunerations must relate to the job responsibilities, span of control and challenges of decision making. In no organisation can pay be delinked from the job being performed, with officers claiming entitlement to the higher pay scales without performing the corresponding functions.
- NFU is damaging the structural edifice of all services. Through promotions to entire batches, it is bloating the central services and making them more cylindrical in nature. Organisations like the armed forces and CAPF are hierarchical in command structure and have to have pyramidical structure with wide base and narrow top.
- In case stagnation is the main concern, the right way to manage it is through cadre-review and not en masse promotions. Such a dispensation makes efficiency and accountability totally irrelevant. Each service must progress as per its cadre structure. Senior level positions and pay scales should not be available to everybody as a matter of course.
Finally
No one could have put the infirmities of NFU dispensation more succinctly than Vivek Rae, a member of SCPC. He said, “In my opinion the granting of NFU at the upper middle and upper levels of the civil service is detrimental to both efficiency and incentive based career progression. Selection for higher levels necessarily needs to be merit based, not seniority based. The NFU concept completely negates this.”
As is apparent, NFU is a nefarious master stroke in skulduggery, which only the Indian bureaucracy can be expected to devise. It rewards mediocrity and encourages non-performance. In no other country in the world can a government employee expect pay of a senior position while holding a junior position.
NFU is symptomatic of bureaucracy’s self-serving arrogance with total disregard to basic norms of ethics and principles. Demonstrating its complete hold over the government functioning, it has quite brazenly sanctioned NFU to itself. Political leaders count for little. Apparently, even Modi’s much trumpeted 56 inches chest is not potent enough to tame the obdurate bureaucracy. Equally despondently, it is naive to expect bureaucracy to shed NFU voluntarily.
If India continues to exist as a nation, credit is due to three institutions – the armed forces, the Election Commission and the higher judiciary. As NFU is ‘malum in se’ (bad in law), the top court is India’s only hope to stop this open loot of the national exchequer; and it cannot let the nation down. The matter deserves to be taken up ‘suo motto’. We, the people of India, are quite hopeful.
Major General Mrinal Suman
Major General Mrinal Suman, AVSM, VSM, PhD is a highly qualified and experienced officer. He commanded an Engineer Regiment in the most hostile battlefield in the world i.e. the Siachen Glacier. He was the Task Force Commander at Pokharan and was responsible for designing and sinking the shaft for the nuclear tests. For that, he was duly decorated by the President of India. After superannuation, he headed Defence Technical Assessment and Advisory Service of CII and is considered to be India's foremost expert on myriad aspects of India's defence procurement regime and offsets. He is regularly invited to address various Indian chambers, associations and foreign industrial delegations. He is a prolific writer and has published more than 550 papers in different journals and newspapers; many have been translated into foreign languages. A keen observer of national concerns, his views command immense respect.