Govt's civilian staff grows, but is it leading to efficiency gains?

Sometime in June 2022, the Narendra Modi government made a bold announcement on job creation. It outlined a plan to recruit one million people across different departments and ministries of the Union government over the following 18 months. According to the announcement, these recruitments were to be undertaken on a “mission mode.” 

The context of that announcement was both political and economic. Political because the announcement was made a little less than two years before general elections were due to be held in 2024, and jobs had already become a cause for political as well as electoral concern. Economic because the Indian economy was wrestling with the challenges of creating more salaried jobs for a rapidly rising number of people joining the labour market. The Union government, as one of the large employers, wanted to do its bit to address that political and economic need. 

  What gave impetus to fulfilling this promise were the numbers on vacancies in Union government departments and ministries, put out by the then minister of personnel, Jitendra Singh, in Parliament, a few weeks earlier in February-March of 2022.  According to that data, total vacancies in central ministries and departments as of March 2020 were estimated at 870,000, with the defence ministry (247,000 civilian employees), Indian Railways (237,000), home ministry (128,000, mostly in central police forces), the department of posts (90,000) and the audits division (28,000) accounting for as much as 84 per cent of the total vacancies. Note that the total sanctioned staff strength in the Union government then was set at 4 million.

  The Union Budget for 2025-26, presented earlier this month, provides an idea of how the Centre has gone about recruiting staff in all its departments and ministries, other than those in the armed forces. The reality is that this data does show an increase in the staff strength in different departments (including Indian Railways) and ministries of the Union government. But this increase is not as big as was promised in June 2022. 

  The Union government’s total staff strength (excluding the armed forces) was estimated at 3.17 million at the end of March 2022. Two years later, at the end of March 2024, that number rose to 3.3 million, a rise of just 137,000 or 4 per cent. There is now an expectation that by the end of March 2025, this number should go up to 3.66 million. Mind you, the number for March 2025 does not indicate the actual staff strength. But even if you consider this revised estimate, subject of course to further revision, the increase in staff strength since April 2022 would be about 489,000 or 15 per cent. The criticism would be that against a promise of one million more government jobs, the achievement after three years is less than half of that goal. The government would defend this performance by arguing that achieving close to half of the target has at least helped address job concerns to some extent. 

  Without going into the merits or demerits of creating more jobs in the government, it is important to note that all governments from 1991 to 2022 succeeded in bringing down the staff strength during their terms in office. The total civilian staff strength of the Union government at the end of March 1991 was about 4 million. This came down to 3.32 million by the end of March 2014. The Modi government too reduced this number to 3.17 million by the end of March 2022. What is often ignored in most public policy debates is that governments over the years have succeeded in pruning their civilian staff strength without much acrimony or agitation. 

  This was possible because vacancies were deliberately not filled and several jobs were struck off the staff rolls but were brought back through contractors on temporary assignments. But to have slashed the official civilian staff strength by 21 per cent in about three decades is a change that seems to have been brought about without any turbulence. Remember that nobody in these governments actually reduced the sanctioned strength of civilian staff, which continued to be 4 million. The fact also is that even after the Modi government has raised the civilian staff strength by 15 per cent in the last three years, the revised number of 3.65 million remains well below the sanctioned strength of 4 million. 

  But what contributed to the rise in the civilian staff strength in the last three years? Note that over 86 per cent of the total civilian staff is accounted for by just four heads — Indian Railways, posts, central police forces, and tax departments. In the first seven years of the Modi government, the Indian Railways saw a steady decline in its staff strength, from 1.32 million in March 2015 to 1.21 million in March 2022. And even as the overall civilian staff strength has risen by over 489,000 in the last three years, the Indian Railways has seen a small increase during the same periods—about 3,000 employees. 

  Of the four heads, the postal department and the police saw the largest increase by over 179,000 and 143,000, respectively, in the last three years. The two tax departments (overseeing direct and indirect taxes) have seen an increase in their staff strength by over 71,000, bringing their total strength to over 172,000. Many questions arise from the pattern of manpower hiring by the Union government.  

  The sharp rise in central police forces shows an increasing footprint of the Union government in matters of law enforcement, an area where states need to hire even more and improve the police-to-population ratio. The increasing headcount for postal employees raises the question of whether the department of post needs to focus on other kinds of operation in an era where people are moving away from postal communication and adopting digital tools. You may also wonder why the tax departments should see such an increase in their manpower when digital filing of tax returns and online scrutiny and assessment are becoming the norm. The increase in the tax departments’ manpower strength is quite staggering. Taken together, these four heads (Indian Railways, police, posts and tax departments) have accounted for over 80 per cent of the total increase in civilian staff in the last three years. 

  The pertinent question here is not whether the government should be hiring more staff. Indeed, the size of the Union government’s civilian staff — whose cost at only about 1 per cent of gross domestic product is quite moderate compared with that in many developed countries or even developing countries — remains manageable. And this manpower cost for the Centre will be even lower if you exclude the Indian Railways from its staff strength. The more relevant question is whether the increased recruitment is being planned in a manner that ensures productivity and efficiency gains on the one hand and minimises government interference on the other. More staff should not mean less efficiency and increased bottlenecks.