Absolute pay parity between private and public sector in India is must to help India become a developed nation

It is now necessary to grant parity between pay scales and perquisites in Government and the public/private sector for three reasons: (i) Low salaries in the Government are resulting into the recruitment of very ordinary public servants with comparatively low human capabilities. Workforce with average capabilities can not fulfill the aspiration of the country that aims to “transform the Government Organisations into modern, professional and citizen-friendly entities that are dedicated to the service of the people”. (ii) Journey of the nations towards the ecological, economic and social sustainability is a knowledge-intensive journey requiring Government workforce to continuously acquire and use the best available knowledge to make the difference on the ground. A Government workforce with low human capabilities is not only incapable of identifying the best available relevant knowledge it is also incompetent to convert knowledge to action. No country in the world has ever achieved sustainability for ecosystems and human well-being for its citizens without linking knowledge with action (i.e. without connecting science to decision making). (iii) The most problematic issue is that recruitment of public servants with low human capabilities and low intellectual capital due to salary-driven joining of talented people of the society to the private sector. There is now robust evidence to show that bulk of the creativity, innovation and thus productivity lies in the minds and abilities of a small number of highly talented individuals in society. Both before and after India gained independence, the country has consistently allowed such talented individuals either to migrate or to join the private sector. As numerous studies prove, by losing the top tier of talent to private sector, the Government also lost most of the intellectual energy to private sector due to comparatively low salary in Government. This lack of talented employees forces the Government to employ large number of personnel with very low human capital endowments who nevertheless continue to under perform resulting into a classic situation of oversized and underperforming bureaucracy. This is the key obstacle towards transforming the Government organisations into modern, professional, efficient, productive and citizen-friendly systems. Without making arrangements for incentives, such as pay parity with private sector, Government now would never reasonably be able to attract the talented tier of citizens to join it, and therefore may never be able to effectively reduce the size. The only plausible remedy is the absolute pay parity with private sector.