Netas vis-a-vis Babus

The salary and allowances of the Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) is likely to be doubled from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 3 lakh per month. The pensionary benefits to ex-legislators will also see a rise. A House Committee has recommended a salary hike from Rs 60,000 to Rs 80,000, along with a sharper increase in conveyance, medical, communication, secretarial and sumptuary allowances. A purchasing power hike in pensions and perks like subsidised housing loan, car advance has also been proposed.

The last time that the law makers gave themselves a pay hike was in 2016. Their total renumeration was doubled from Rs 80,000 to Rs Rs 1,60,000. While it generated a lot of public resentment, the hike was not self-gratification. There were good reasons for the increase in legislator renumeration then, as also now.

In the troika of functionaries -- executive, legislative and judicial -- where should legislators stand vis-a-vis the bureaucracy? Judiciary being a class sui generis, the legislative and the executive are the two arms of the operational day to day governance and policy making. As such, there should be some semblance of a parity between what the executive, and the legislative sides.

Unlike the civil servants and the judicial bureaucracy, the legislators come very cheap. Historically, the renumeration of a legislator has been a fraction of what a civil servant draws. In the decade of 1980s, for instance, the salary of an elected legislator, for instance, was one fourth of what the Chief Secretary was drawing.

This huge differential defines the relationship between the legislators and the bureaucrats. For salary and renumeration do reflect the value and status a society accords to professions and roles. This is so not just in a social sense but also in a hierarchical sense. The sight of MLAs being kept waiting by Secretaries augurs well neither for democracy nor for administrative efficiency, as it signals a dangerous inversion of constitutional authority and erodes the collaborative discipline essential for effective governance. A culture of petty power-play has eroded mutual respect and coordinated governance. Which is why, in 2016, a legislator’s salary was pegged and put at par with the salary of the Chief Secretary.

However, between then and now, because of indexation and successive pay commission awards, the salary of the civil servants outstripped the MLA’s salary. It is now less than half of what the Chief Secretary draws. The proposed hike is therefore welcome as it will restore the parity once again.

Globally, legislators earn 1.5-3 times more than average civil servants and are comparable, 0.8-1.2 times, to the senior bureaucrats. Those countries with competitive pay (e.g., U.S., Australia) see more professionalized legislatures with higher turnover and output. Low-pay systems like in India, deters professionals and more qualified people getting into public representation. This contributes to perceptions of low-quality politics: poor debates, and petty pilferages from developmental funds, the CDF, that is at their disposal.

Besides this inter-se salary issue, there is a much larger issue of expenditure allocation; what priority does it reflect? The anomaly between what J&K spends on its law makers, compared to its employees is too embarrassing to even compare.

In the fiscal year 2025-26, as against a salary bill of Rs 172 crore, the total salary bill of the bureaucracy in the current fiscal year 2025-26, is Rs 23,520 crore. Add to this the pension payments. The total pension bill for the J&K administration this year is Rs 15,380 crore. For the legislators it is Rs 300 crore. All told then, the government spends Rs 50,000 crore annually on its employees, past and present compared to Rs 500 crores on its lawmakers -- primarily the 90 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs), including the Chief Minister, Ministers, Speaker, and Leader of the Opposition. This is less than 1 per cent the salary bill of the administration; what is expended by the bureaucracy for the bureaucracy and on the bureaucracy.

Indeed, even the astronomical figure of Rs 50,000 crore for salary and pension is an underestimate. It does not include Rs 12,000 crore spend on salaries and pension of police which is now being funded by the Union government off the budget. So, the annual salary bill of the government is more than Rs 62,000 crore. The salary and pension of legislators is only 0.8 per cent of what the government spends on itself.

Of course, this is not a like to like comparison as there are only a few hundred legislators, and many lakhs on the other side. But the point is not about per capita spends but about the allocative structure of the budget. Budgetary allocations, besides the compulsions of past profligacy, must reflect the expenditure priorities of the government. This has become important now, more than ever before.

In the current diarchic system, it is important to distinguish between legislative-political functions under the umbrella of governance and bureaucratic-executive functions as administration. This distinction should be the foundational premise of functioning in the UT of J&K. Primacy must be given to political governance involving leadership, value choices and legitimacy over bureaucratic administration. The latter is at best is an instrument for implementing politically determined policies, deriving its authority from elected leaders rather than independent discretion. Its focus has to be procedural regularity, and hierarchical accountability, rather than substantive decision-making on societal values or long-term vision. To be sure, governance via legislation is an expression of the “will of the state”. Administration, the bureaucratic function, is an execution of that will. By spending 100 times more on those who administer than those who are elected to govern, the state is giving priority to administration over governance. This needs a reversal. More than austerity packages, budgetary allocations need a systemic overhaul.

Tail piece:

Along with its intent to hike the legislators’ salaries, the government notified an Austerity Package. Poor optics apart, the “Expenditure Management - Economy, austerity measures and rationalization of expenditure” order is a cruel joke.

A key measure of the austerity package that has been announced, is the ban on “all official dinners and lunches, except those hosted by the Lieutenant Governor and Chief Minister or with specific approval of the Chief Minister”. The job of a Chief Minister now is to approve the dinners of his Ministers. Not to mention the administrative chaos if the Chief Minister approves and the LG doesn’t. The way things are right now, guests could go hungry!

The best part of the austerity package is that it nowhere mentions how much does the government intend to save through these measures. No where does the order indicate that the saving will be: tens of crores? hundreds of crores or thousands of crores? Just a few lakhs is an informed guess.

This year the government of J&K has budgeted to spend Rs 1.12 lakh crores. Of this, Rs 60,000 crore i.e., a little more than half is fixed, as it includes salary, pension, interest payment and power gap. These can’t be reduced in the short run. But the miscellaneous expenditure – the non-committed or discretionary revenue expenditure – which is estimated to be Rs 16,769 crore, need a haircut. Even a ten per cent reduction here will save the government around Rs 1,500 crore.

The author is a Contributing Editor of Greater Kashmir.