Letters: Measuring performance

With reference to Rahul Jacob's interview with Manish Sabharwal in 'Lunch with BS' (November 14), Sabharwal gives several good suggestions, but the one regarding the Pay Commission for civil servants to link salaries with performance is vague.

Sabharwal's suggestion is not a new one - the Sixth Pay Commission had made a similar one. It had proposed to give 10 to 15 per cent of employees an additional three per cent pay. A team, which included an IIM professor, was asked to identify the parameters on which this three per cent additional pay should be based. All government departments were asked to rate the performance of an employee but they failed.

The problem of identifying the targets scientifically cannot be minimised. If, for example, in a tax department, the criteria consist of the number of assessments, seizures and anti-evasion activity, all such numbers can be manipulated. And all departments do not have the same type of jurisdiction. The present system of an annual confidential report does take into account the performance of employees in terms of the work done by them. But ultimately it is the junior employees' relationship with the seniors that matters the most.

Employees have been given bad scores in the annual confidential report because they did not arrest an innocent man whom the boss wanted to harass for personal reasons. When society is corrupt, it is no wonder that several officers are also corrupt. This cannot be remedied even if the criteria are fixed scientifically.

Sukumar Mukhopadhyay New Delhi

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