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STATES: WEST BENGAL
Big Leap From The Marxist Gospel
The commission also
proposed removing some of the unreasonable advantages the clerical staff
had extracted from the Left Front governments. Like Group B and C employees
getting an open performance report (OPR), in which the employee can comment
on the performance report penned by his superiors, while Group A officers
remain bound by the orthodox Annual Confidential Report (ACR) to which
they have no access. "The present system of OPR may be given up,"
the commission suggests. "The system of ACR may be extended once
again to Groups B and C."
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'DO IT NOW' MANTRA
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# Orders
have been placed for 20,000 smart cards that will record both attendance
and performance.
# Revival of diary system which requires
workers to list files received and processed every day.
# Government is strong on e-governance
and plans to link departments in Kolkata and the districts.
# Computers which were banned in government
offices are now being seen as tools to improve efficiency.
# A new appraisal form is doing the rounds
which stresses performance and accountability.
# The Government has resolved to rightsize
the administration, but is still to work out the modalities.
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Though Roychowdhury fumes at the idea of the
OPR being abolished-"a friendly government will not touch OPR"-it
is obvious that the sixth Left Front Cabinet has an agenda that is pragmatic
not ideological, and the left parties and their Government are united
in their resolve to reduce the size of the administration. The term "rightsizing"
is now as much a buzz in the corridors of Writers' as it is in the Department
of Personnel in North Block or in the Administrative Reforms Department
under Union Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie.
The "government babus" of Bengal are
phenomenally slothful, and the leftists had designed rules that encouraged
slothfulness instead of curbing it. At the root of such indulgence lies
the unfettered right given to government employees to form unions and
even go on strike. Till 1980, the employees were bound by the West Bengal
Government Servants' Conduct Rules, 1959. The Left Front government replaced
it with West Bengal Services (Duties, Rights and Obligations) which rules:
"Every government employee shall have full trade-union rights, including
the right to strike."
Many of these acts make the Marxists leaders
of today blush, for the trade union right has gone a lot beyond the government
employees, to the school- teachers, panchayat workers and the uniformed
men. The union leaders are notorious for using the hotline to the CPI(M)'s
Alimuddin Street headquarters for every matter of promotion, transfer
or recruitment. "The Bengali worker is efficient as long as he is
not unionised," says Satyajit Chakraborty, an NRI scientist and director
at the Institute of Engineering and Management at Salt Lake. In 1997,
McKinsey, the US consultancy, was appalled by the tendency among the state's
lower staff to "interfere with the higher management functions".
The Bhattacharya administration is arguably
eager to turn a new chapter, the chief minister's peppy post-poll slogan
being "Do It Now". However, the Government is not in favour
of a golden-handshake-based reduction of staff. The quality of staff auditing
in Bengal is alarmingly poor, with no precise information on the people
available centrally. Despite these limitations, the fire-spewing leftists
of yesterday have begun an exercise in which modern HRD practices are
being called in to tell the good employee from the bad. An appraisal form
for Group C employees which is doing the rounds puts only 25 per cent
of the marks to attendance and leaves the remaining for performance, efficiency
and accountability. That's a big leap from the Marxist gospel.
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