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13 states were unable to pay wages last year

Renni Abraham

In an in-camera meeting held with a handful of Members of Parliament from Maharashtra, state finance minister Jayant Patil, collectors, chief secretary V Ranganathan and finance secretary Ashok Basak on Thursday in Bombay, Union minister for divestment, statistics and programme implementation Arun Shourie revealed that 13 states in the country were unable to pay salaries to its employees last year.

He was reacting to a demand from the assembled MPs who sought an increase in the corpus available to them for initiating development in their respective constituencies from the existing Rs 20 million to Rs 50 million.

According to a senior government official, who attended the meeting, Shourie emphasised that the financial state of the country was in doldrums. "Merely the interest paid by the central government on past debts eats up 50 per cent of the tax revenue collected by the Government of India," he said.

According to the government official, "The Union minister then added that a total corpus of Rs 380 billion was spent annually on various anti-poverty schemes in the country. With the number of below-the-poverty-line families pegged at 50 million, if this corpus was divided and sent by money order to these 50 million families they would get Rs 8000 per annum which would allow them to purchase two-and-a-half to three kg rice every day of the year," Shourie noted.

The Union minister immediately added that, however, for this to happen all the anti-poverty schemes would have to be scrapped, something no government could muster the political will to do, as it would result in an opposition outcry that it was anti-poor.

Shourie also pointed out the Fifth Pay Commission recommendations had resulted in a Rs 530 billion pay-out by the government and added, "The next pay commission would effectively wind up the Indian sovereignty."

Shourie also told the assembled MPs that all expenditure on defense, pension, salaries and development being undertaken in the country was being done on borrowed money with the Government of India paying a whopping Rs 370 billion in salaries to its employees alone.

"It is peculiar in such a scenario that MLAs in Delhi have had funds, allocated for undertaking development projects in their constituency, hiked from Rs 10 million to Rs 20 million. In UP too, similar hikes have been effected by exertion of parliamentary pressure. But where is the money going to come from?" Shourie asked.

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