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| A. Viswanathan: Don't pension him off | | BACKSTAGE |
| Sunil Jain / New Delhi Aug 04, 2008, 05:29 IST |
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 The first impression you get of grey-haired Central Provident Fund Commissioner A. Viswanathan is of a man who takes his defeats as stoically as he takes his victories. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that the victories themselves have come after even more bitter defeats. So, when many hail his ability to finally get the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) to agree to allow more than just one fund manager (SBI has a monopoly today) to manage the new annual accruals of the Employees Pension Fund Organisation (EPFO) that he heads, Viswanathan plays it down.
When it is argued that the move to allow private fund managers will pave the way for the New Pension Scheme (NPS) that will allow other pension funds to enter the market (the Left had opposed the NPS on grounds private fund managers were a bad idea, but now these very managers will manage EPFO funds), Viswanathan says the NPS depends on whether the UPA is able to muster support for the bill. And, now that he’s won a major victory, will he move to get the CBT to agree to invest up to five per cent of the EPFO funds in equity? Though aware of the increased returns this will help fetch, Viswanathan says this is something the next government will decide on, after he has retired, in December this year.
Though getting in private fund managers will help the EPFO generate better returns, Viswanathan doesn’t have the time to savour his victory. His immediate task is to put back in place the aborted attempt to modernise the EPFO that is probably the only organisation of its size (it has a corpus of over Rs 150,000 crore) in the country that uses single-entry accounting — this ensures it has no robust audit trail to track frauds. The EPFO also doesn’t have the facility to allow subscribers to keep track of their balances on an online basis or even offer clients a unique ID to use across the country — so, if you change employers, it could take years for your balances to be transferred to the new employer.
Interestingly, one of Viswanathan’s predecessors Ajay Singh was actually sacked for trying to implement this project as ministry officials thought he was getting too big for his boots. It is to the soft-spoken consensus-loving Vishwanathan’s credit that he managed to revive the dead project. It helped that the 59-year old physics graduate from Chennai has spent his career in government, the last 28 years in the EPFO itself — he has previously been the Controller of Imports and Exports. Sadly, the contractor, Siemens Information Services Limited, wasn’t able to deliver on the first field trial — finally, after a period of dispute, the contract was terminated. (On March 24, 2006, an excited Viswanathan had told this newspaper that subscribers would be able to see their EPF balances online within a year’s time and could even get a single Unique Identity Number.)
Stung by the setback with the private sector, and aware levels of patience with EPFO reforms are running thin, Viswanathan’s trying to revive the project with the help of the government-owned National Informatics Centre (NIC). Naturally, there are enough sceptics but Viswanathan believes that if the project is spread out, it will get done. So, he’s scaling back his targets and, in the first 7-8 months, just wants the existing manual procedures to be computerised. Replacing single-entry book-keeping with a more robust double-entry system, he says, could take another 2-3 years.
Even as the NIC tries to automate the EPFO and provide up-to-date and complete information on its subscribers/defaulters, Viswanathan is trying to find a way to fast-track things — he’s talking to NSDL to use its database of taxpaying companies (these firms probably account for the most of the EPFO’s annual accruals) and asking them to provide some data to him on a regular basis.
Whether he’s able to succeed will depend on a lot of things, but Vishwanathan’s happy to have helped contain the EPFO’s bleeding by moderating some pension benefits — he’s aware though that he was not able to convince the CBT about rationalising other benefits and that the EPFO has unfunded liabilities upwards of Rs 25,000 crore at the moment. But there’s just so much a man can do if he wants to live to collect his pension.
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