Back to more govt staff, more PSU outlay

In the first three years of Mr Modi's first term, he did remarkably well in reducing the headcount of government staff in various central ministries to 3.23 million

In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had inherited from his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, a government whose manpower size was about 3.45 million. A little-known fact is that in the first three years of his first term, Mr Modi did remarkably well in reducing that headcount of government staff in various central ministries to 3.23 million.

Predictably, the pace of reduction slowed with each passing year. After effecting a 4 per cent cut in the government’s manpower size to 3.31 million in 2014-15, the pace of reduction fell to 1.6 per cent at 3.25 million in 2015-16 and even further to 0.44