Revision as of 15:22, 4 December 2015

2000-2014:numbers and salary bill

The Times of India

Number of central government employees(not including Defence personnel) in lakh, and the wage bill of the government in crore rupees

Jan 17 2015

1,571 nursery seats for spl kids

Shreya Roychowdhury

As per the Directorate of Education’s records, there are at least 229 schools in Delhi that are capable of teaching students with some form of disability or the other. In the schools that have disclosed this information to DoE, there are over 1,571 nursery seats for children under the ‘special needs’ category—some schools are exclusively for disabled children, the rest are mainstream ones. The DoE has uploaded data on seats, category of disability the schools can handle and fees—which it collected from schools last year—on its website for applicants to use as reference.

Both the National Progressive Schools’ Conference and the Action Committee for Unaided Recognized Private schools have mentioned children with special needs in their suggested guidelines.

While few schools have mentioned disabled children in their nursery admission policy to begin with, even at those that have, reservation for this category has been implemented differently. At some, seats for this group are outside the 25% EWS-DG (economically weaker section-disadvantaged groups) category. At Springdales, Pusa Road, for instance, there are three seats for disabled candidates that aren’t part of the 25% EWS quota. “We normally get many applications from this group every year, over 50,” says principal Ameeta Mulla Wattal.

Some schools have carved a 3% reservation out of the 25% EWS-DG one as children with special needs (or CWSN) form one of the “disadvantaged groups”; this was recommended in the Action Committee guidelines as well.

Lawyer-activist Khagesh Jha, however, points out that “the Kendriya Vidyalayas had done the same thing but that guideline was quashed by the high court.” “Schools seem very confused on reserving of seats,” says Jha.

Number of central employees: Estimates

The Times of India, November 20, 2015

Expenditure on the employees of the departments of Defence (civil), Posts, External Affairs and Commerce and Industry, 2011 and 2014; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India, November 20, 2015

No. of govt employees? Nobody knows

Exactly how many employees does the Central government have? The report of the Sev enth Pay Commission seems to suggest that nobody is quite sure.The report validated data on personnel received from the various ministries by comparing it with the data from two sources, the expenditure budget of the finance ministry and a census of government employees prepared by the labour ministry's Directorate General of Employment and Training (DGET). It found glaring inconsistencies in the two in some ministries. The most startling difference, the report points out is in the case of the civil employees of the defence ministry.

While the expenditure budget puts their number at just under 34,500, the DGET places it at nearly 3.8 lakh and the data obtained by the commission at almost 4 lakh. There are also huge differ ences in the figures for the postal department, the foreign ministry and the commerce ministry (see graphic).

In general, the commission found that the DGET data was closer to the numbers obtained by the commission though dated, while the expenditure budget numbers were substantially different. The report, therefore, calls for standardization of data on an IT platform to ensure its integ rity and availability of consistent data.

The same chapter in the report makes an interesting comparison with the strength of the federal government in the United States to point out that while the US has 668 federal employees per lakh of its population, India has only 139 per lakh, thereby bringing into question the notion that we have an outsized government.

It also makes the point that like in the US, federal government employment in India (excluding the Railways and Posts) is concentrated in a few departments, only more so.

In the US, the defence department accounts for about 34% of the federal personnel and the departments of veteran affairs, homeland security and the treasury between them another 29%.In India, the home ministry accounts for 55%, defence civilians 22% and revenue 5%.

The foreign ministry had the highest per capita expenditure on pay and allowances for personnel at Rs 34.95 lakh in 2012-13, while the home ministry's figure was a mere Rs 2.97 lakh.

One obvious reason was that Group A officers form a much higher proportion of MEA personnel than in most other departments barring some like space, civil aviation, IT and renewable energy . The allowances for postings abroad would clearly be another factor.