A culture of human exploitation and disrespect for the law prevails, and we are expected to enforce government machinery at cheaper cost without any claim for the recognition and benefits. Disrespect for human beings is in the DNA of the current system. While slavery is, of course, the most extreme situation in the field level offices, the truth is that the Gazetted officer is being ruthlessly exploited. Our Officers perform backbreaking work, at the very low pay scales; have no benefits and virtually no protection to their self-respect. Historically Gazetted Officers have been and continue to be excluded from Indian fair labour standards and are prevented from unionizing. The cruelty of modern-day slavery prevailing in the Government has motivated our officers to continue fighting for their rights, prompting the Government agencies to support our demands that include better pay scales and working conditions and new environment.

Pay commissions have been viewed, or at least have been portrayed, as a stable watch dog of our economy, looking out for everyone’s good like a kind of gentle Big Brother. We wouldn’t survive without the Pay Commissions, is what most of our Gazetted officers believe. What we fail to see is the reality that the door to the Pay Commission is a revolving one with the Finance Ministry of India. What we do not see is that the Pay commission is a Government agency that manufactures policy in the interests of Government. Our job now is to unite every resource available and put every shoulder to the wheel. A strong united movement of Gazetted officers alone can change the status of the Gazetted officers and render Justice.

Our thirst for justice has been remaining unquenched for six decades. In fact, it has been deliberately allowed to aggravate by repeated injustice by the Pay Commissions and by the Authorities who seem to have taken upon themselves the task of suppressing us further and further in to virtual slavery. Our thirst for justice is real acute and painful. We can quench our thirst for a fair deal, only when we, every one of us, establish emphatically that we are capable of sustained struggle. Our thirst will be quenched when every one of us demonstrate that “it is nobler to take arms against the sea of trouble and by opposing end them”

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