4% Stalled DA Hike vs 30% Cut in cabinet minister's salaries.

noreply@blogger.com (Pradeep Nandi) — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 13:36:00 +0000

How much would the government save in Total?

Background

Earlier in September 2019, as sated by Economic Times in an article that all temporary and contractual workers would receive equal salaries as their permanent counterparts receive. This was supposed to benefit about 10 lakhs contractual employees working with the central government.

Three years after the Supreme Court ruled that temporary employees should have a salary of equal worth to permanent workers, however many were not even bothered because they knew that like earlier these were just going to be another so-called false hope which would take many years to become reality.

Photo by @rupixen

Now coming to context with COVID-19 and increasing inflation coinciding with decreasing GDP growth, though IMF has taken a very modest approach in estimating that it would not affect India and it will still have a positive GDP growth. But our estimate of becoming a 5 trillion dollar economy by 2024 has now come again into question.

Previously-

All cabinet Ministers who were being paid around Rs. 4 lakh rupees a month would take home 30% less salary for the entire financial year of 2020-2021. In India there are about 788 MPs which include 245 Rajya Sabha MP 543 Lok Sabha MP. All in all they are about to save about Rs 7900 crore during the financial years from both salary reductions and suspension of MPLAD funds for year 2020-2021. This money saved would go to the consolidated fund of India as said by Mr. Javedkar on April 6 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the ordinance to cause the salary cut. This has been reported by in The Hindu dated April 6.

Salary comparison of a Government employee vs a Member of Parliament

On average a government employee is paid between Rs 40,000 to Rs. 1.5 Lakh (Excluding Rs. 2.5 Lakh for cabinet secretary). Their salary is counted under taxable income so they receive their salaries after pre-deduction of income tax under the various tax slabs present in India. On the other hand salary of MPs does not come under taxable Head salary income rather come under income from other sources and namely constituency allowances.

MPs are entitled to Rs. 40,000 per month as constituency allowance and another Rs. 60,000 every month for office expenses in the form of staff and stationary. The earnings of a person as an MP are tax-free as stated by an indiatoday.in an article dated 23 March 2017. So in comparison a middle-class employee is comparatively earning less as compared to an MP in 2020.

Photo by @rupixen

Also a person becoming an MP for even a day is eligible to get a basic monthly salary of Rs. 50000 as an MP and Rs. 20,000 as pension after retirement. So this has been going on since its inception.

A detailed analysis of the salaries of MP will be done in my next article.

Continuing this objective of this article below-

Government Stance-

Now coming to DA increase case, basically the government of India hikes the DA on basic pay twice a year to compensate for ever-increasing inflation. Similarly in March 2020 government decided to increase the DA by 4% i.e from 17% at present to 21%. But within a fortnight to tackle the COVID-19 crisis the Indian government decided for nationwide lockdown and thus DA hike has been hanging since then. Earlier it was decided that DA hike would be counted from January 1, 2020, and arrears for the same would be given to government employees and Pensioners.

Photo by @ambientpictures

Now coming to DA increase case, basically the government of India hikes the DA on basic pay twice a year to compensate for ever-increasing inflation. Similarly in March 2020 government decided to increase the DA by 4% i.e from 17% at present to 21%. But within a fortnight to tackle the COVID-19 crisis the Indian government decided for nationwide lockdown and thus DA hike has been hanging since then. Earlier it was decided that DA hike would be counted from January 1, 2020, and arrears for the same would be given to government employees and Pensioners.

How much money would the government save in total from both these decisions?

Photo by @ashishjha

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This is the question we are going to answer in this article. Now as per reports from The Hindustan Times the total savings from stalling the DA hike for a year and if held for a year it would amount to a whopping Rs. 14,595 Crore and as reported by The Hindu money saved from salary cut of MPs would result in Rs. 7,904 Crore. 

Now where does the government plan to use this kind of money, I could only hope it utilizes as it says to tackle the COVID-19 situation only. 

There have been reports that the government gives a go for its ambitious projects i.e the Central Vista government Building makeover when the nation is facing a cash crunch as well as COVID-19 pandemic situation. This would be covered in our next article. 

Dilemma of an Educated Youth in India 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Pradeep Nandi) — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 13:32:00 +0000

Every middle-class kid as he begins his school, college and then he stands at the broadway where he has to choose his desired field for higher education. He thinks that though he did not make to top tier colleges, he will try his best to at least earn something when he matures enough, as he thought that private universities are good enough and there you go he just slipped into quicksand. He tries very hard so that he is not left to the hands of the society to be a part of their mockery. Little does he know that the politicians and the actual people behind the lawmaking are screwing his future over and over again with various policies coming day after day in such a way to benefit mostly businessmen and able to achieve great political funding in the long run.

Graduated but left with no choice

Now this kid having born in a developing country where votes are being purchased by a meagre Rs. 5000 from poor and then these people, so-called politicians or representatives just vanish not to be seen till the next elections. Now coming to the plight of the educated youth who knows how to vote, but he is not aware of whom to vote. To him all seem the same, sometimes he thinks to himself join the “gutter” and clean it but that he can only do so in his dreams. In such a country where Hindu-Muslim is the major topics being talked about rather than Employment, Economy, Clean Cities, Farmer Welfare, Improving Education system etc and the list goes on and on.

Ideas when he has an ideal brain 

But I am not going to rant here what is going on or what has been done in the past, I just want to bring out the inner distress that educated youth is feeling in a country where Employment is going down day by day and here come another pandemic COVID-19 and hopes of getting a new job for the students who are graduating in 2020 are lost. This is not the worst part, even those students who were able to secure an internship were at the last moment canceled due to the above-mentioned pandemic.

Now even work from home is not possible for fresh graduates without any work experience in such a state where experienced people are losing their jobs, he does not have any hope of getting one anytime soon. Now coming to some reputed news articles which he reads and gets demotivated again. He tries to upskill himself in this ever-changing world. In this process he comes across content writing and his inner news addict comes to view.

He always had the passion to read news and know his surroundings and happening around the world. He tries to look for news in the mainstream media which all are filled with Hindu Muslim hatred again and he is back to square 1. He thinks everything is revolving around this in this world and thinks that to stay relevant to the media, he either needs to adopt the same attitude an follow the herd once again like when he chose to engineer or he could just start asking relevant questions and fact-checking everything before believing. He chose 2nd option and wants to try his hand in working for someone who could provide him with a stage to express what is hidden inside him and let him evolve into a better individual as a whole.

He is trying the same thing

From the next article on wards he is going to post articles questioning the government as an when required.

Doubt it

4% Stalled DA Hike vs 30% Cut in cabinet minister's salaries.

Dilemma of an Educated Youth in India 2020