Different D A to Babu??

Here's some good news for babus – a clear majority of the youth in some of India's biggest cities believes there's nothing wrong with the goodies they have got from the Sixth Pay Commission. What's more, there's even a section that believes they should have got bigger pay hikes. That's the finding of a six-city opinion poll done among college-going students exclusively for TOI by Synovate, a global market research agency. The poll was conducted among students from the elite IIMs and IITs as well as those from government colleges and approval for the pay hikes cuts across both segments. Overall almost two-thirds approved of the hikes and if we add the 11% who felt the hikes should have been even higher, that's an impressive three-fourths of all respondents who felt that the pay increases were not overly generous. However, there were variations in the response to this question across cities. In Delhi, for instance, 89% were in favour of the recommendations being implemented, while in Mumbai — at the other end of the scale — only 43% approved of it. The approval ratings were in the high range for Chennai (76%) and Bangalore (64%), but much lower in Ahmedabad (56%) and Kolkata (48%). Interestingly, there was hardly any difference between the responses from the IIMs/IITs and those from government colleges. In fact, if anything the elite institutions were slightly more inclined to approve of the pay hikes than the others. But should pay hikes have been linked to productivity in some way? An overwhelming 80% said they should have been. Here again, there were greater variations in responses across cities than between students from different types of institutions. In Delhi, 95% wanted such a link to be made, whereas in Kolkata and Ahmedabad those seeking productivity-linked wage hikes were only 68% and 69% respectively. Have the latest pay increases made a difference to the way the students perceive government jobs as a career option? We first asked them how many of them would have sought government jobs before these hikes. The answer was a surprisingly high 63%. Unlike the previous questions, the responses in this case varied significantly not only across cities, but also depending on the type of college the respondent was studying in. Only 41% of IIT/IIM students said they would have looked at the government as a career option before the hikes, while 77% of students from government colleges replied in the affirmative. Not surprisingly, Delhi had the highest percentage (82%) of those voicing this opinion. This could also explain why Delhi students were more approving of the pay hikes than those from any other city. At the low end of the scale in terms of enthusiasm for sarkari jobs were cities like Bangalore (49%), Ahmedabad (55%) and Kolkata (56%). We then asked them whether the Sixth Pay Commission's recommendations had made the option of a government job more attractive to them. Again, about 63% said they had. The variations across cities and institutions reflected the same patterns as the responses to the previous question, with 50% of IIT/IIM students maintaining that despite the pay hikes, working for the government was not an attractive option. Responses to questions on the link between government pay levels and the extent of corruption in India reveal a certain despair about tackling this festering problem. When we asked them how important a factor low pay levels was in breeding corruption, about half the respondents felt that it was a major factor and another 29% said it was a minor factor. That left only 21% expressing the view that pay scales had nothing to do with the phenomenon of graft. Not all cities reflected the overall pattern. In Chennai, for instance, 44% said low pay scales were not a factor in corruption and only 28% saw this as a major factor. At the other end of the spectrum, a mere 4% in Ahmedabad said it was not a factor, while 65% saw meagre pay as a major contributor to corruption. Across institutions, the IIT/IIM students were less inclined to dismiss it as a non-factor (17%) than those from government colleges (24%). But, when we asked the students whether the latest pay increases would help bring down corruption levels in the government, 45% said they would have no impact at all, while only 17% felt they would have a significant impact, the rest being of the view that they would make only a slight difference. Chennai once again appeared the most cynical of all the cities, with 72% saying there would be no impact and just 7% saying the impact would be considerable. At the other extreme, 17% in Delhi said there would be no impact while 37% said there would be a major impact. Students from the IITs/IIMs were less inclined to be optimistic on this score than their counterparts in government colleges, though the differences between the two sets of respondents was not very large. The broad message coming through from the poll seems to be: The pay hikes are fair enough, but don't expect things to change very much as a result of them.