Central Excise/ customs/ Income Tax staff seeks better service conditions, mainly promotions
The lower rung officers of the Revenue departments seem to be a very frustrated lot, mainly because they don’t get promotions. Yesterday they organised lunch time demonstration (It can’t be called lunch hour as the lunch break is only 30 minutes) in front of their offices demanding better scales and reasonable promotions. The Ayakar Bhavan and the Central Excise Bhavan looked different with employees staging demonstrations as curious assessees watched in amusement.
But there is a real problem there. How long can you carry a massive dissatisfied work force? Look at the Inspectors in Income Tax or Central Excise. They pass one of the toughest exams in the country and then are dumped as dirt. You can’t run the department without them but when it comes to distributing largesse, they are the last in the line. You can’t find an identical cadre in any department. The inspector is selected after a really tough test, given a fairly good salary and thereafter thoroughly used without any rewards. He has no subordinates; means has nobody to pass the buck on to. The entire department is one huge pyramid of a boss to him. His work is not identified. He works as a clerk, typist, peon, messenger, Xerox operator, manager, trouble shooter, protocol officer (the officer is added only to cheat him into doing a better job in chaperoning egoistic bosses). A Sepoy can refuse to carry a file, a UDC can refuse to type but an Inspector is one who does everything. Why should you hire such talented people and then use them for trivial odd jobs? And they are assured of dark career prospects. One who joins as an inspector remains as one for fifteen years when he may get a promotion as Superintendent where he will remain for the rest of his life. The department has been for some inexplicable reason very unfair to the Inspectors while it had been extremely nice to other cadres.
A person who had joined the department as an LDC twenty five years ago is a Superintendent today having got five promotions. He is a very happy man in life. At the other end a person who joined the IRS around the same time is now a Commissioner. And the one who joined as Inspector is a Superintendent and will remain one till he retires.
And all that they shout now is, “Give us three promotions in life” . Will somebody listen or is their cry one in the wilderness of bureaucratic indifference? How long can you expect this Atlas to shoulder this heavy load? What will happen if he shrugs?