What is the salary that Finance Minister Jaswant Singh pays the finance secretary, his senior-most officer?
Surf the Civil List Web site of the Government of India, which contains the salary details of all IAS officers.
The answer may well come to you as a gentle reminder that things in the government have not changed very much.
His salary is Rs 26,000 per month. The Cabinet secretary gets a little more -- Rs 30,000 per month. That's a salary that many private sector managers and professionals in India earn at the very start of their career.
You might argue that a secretary's gross salary is much more than Rs 26,000. That, indeed, is true if you include in the salary the cost of perquisites.
Let us do a quick calculation. Add Rs 20,000 as the house rent for the flat he gets from the government at a nominal rent.
Add another Rs 15,000 per month for the cost of providing him an office car and other facilities like telephones. Even then, a secretary's gross salary goes up to Rs 61,000 or Rs 65,000 if he is lucky to be the Cabinet Secretary.
Is that a decent salary for a person who runs a ministry and reaches that position after spending about 30 years in service?
The old-fashioned might still argue that the power and glory associated with working for the government of India should be seen as a good and attractive compensation that no salary could match.
But that is not a valid argument. The salary of a secretary should reflect the responsibility he carries on his shoulders. By that yardstick alone, what the government pays its secretaries is a pittance.
Unfortunately, a legitimate debate over the right compensation package for senior government officials has always been drowned by the concerns arising out of the government's rising wage bill for an oversized bureaucracy.
Since the early nineties, the government has been trying to reduce the size of its bureaucracy. But it has achieved little progress.
The Fifth Pay Commission had recommended an increase in salary to be linked to a cut in the number of employees on the government rolls. But the United Front government accepted the recommendation for a wage hike, but not the one on downsizing.
Thus, the government has protected its four million employees, but has paid little attention to its senior officials who carry on the burden of running the ministries.
Nor has any committee so far addressed the specific issue of whether they are adequately paid in line with the market and the responsibilities they carry.
Not surprisingly, the government has ceased to draw the best talents for its annual examination for recruiting IAS officers. And the country's finance minister makes no secret of his anguish over the absence of capable officers to run the finance ministry.
The irony is that Mr Singh admits that the best possible talent in the country should ideally man the finance ministry. And yet he has done little to ensure that the best officers come to North Block.
The fact is the current system is completely devoid of any incentives.
For instance, whether you are the finance secretary or the secretary of the department of youth affairs, the government will continue to pay you a salary of Rs 26,000 per month.
Former finance minister Manmohan Singh was plain lucky that he could get the best officers from different ministries to man the departments in the finance ministry.
Also, he could motivate his officers by throwing at them the challenge of managing the Indian economy during its worst t crisis and implementing the first phase of economic reforms.
Today, the scenario is completely different. The mindset of a bureaucrat has also changed. If the government is serious about getting capable officers, it has to introduce fundamental changes in the system.
If the government wants to continue recruiting senior officers from the civil services examination, then the compensation package for all posts, occupied by IAS and IFS officers, has to be made flexible and brought closer to what the market would pay such officers with similar experience.
Once the salaries are revised and restructured, the government can throw open the key secretarial jobs to recruitment from the private sector.
Let there be genuine competition among the top private sector managers and the IAS officers for secretarial positions in important central ministries.
Today, only a few of them agree to be a secretary in a central ministry on financial terms that are quite a joke compared to what they earn in the private sector.
Once the salary of all posts, occupied by IAS and IFS officers, is revised appropriately, there will be more competition and the government will have a wider choice.
And, Jaswant Singh wouldn't have to anguish over the absence of capable officers to run the finance ministry.