Assam's financial health

Assam's overall financial health had just started to improve in the past few years when the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown everything to the wind. As this newspaper reported on Saturday, the Assam government's financial status has reached such a state that it is now not even in a position to pay salaries and pension to its employees and pensioners round the year. As per the latest position, the state government has to depend heavily upon the Centre for such payments for four to five months in a year. This means, the Assam government can pay salary only for six to seven months out of twelve. During 2015-16, it could pay salaries and pensions to its employees with its own resources only for six months. By 2018-19 this had improved to seven months. Now that practically nothing has moved for eight months in a row – first due to the anti-CAA movement, and then due to Covid-19 – it will not be surprising if Dispur has to beg before Delhi for the entire year. There is a popular yet false perception that Assam is rich in natural resources including petroleum, natural gas, tea and coal. As on date, only 29 per cent of the state's budgetary allocation comes from its own resources of revenues like that of Excise, Transport, VAT, Sales Tax etc. The Government of Assam has been staggering under the huge salary and pension burden which is currently around Rs 31,000 crore per annum to its close to five lakh employees. Any lay person who does not know from which sources the state government collects its revenue, however knows it well that a sizeable chunk of the state government employees do not contribute in way towards generating any income for the state. Additionally, the lay person also knows that what quality of services majority of state government employees actually render. There is also the issue of corruption, starting from the office peon at the bottom to a section of officers and ministers. While it is common knowledge that there is a dangerous lack of work culture in the government sector, this virus is also spreading to the private sector in recent years. Such is the mindset among a sizeable section of people that they would even sell off their family land of seven generations to Bangladeshi infiltrators to bribe a minister or an officer to get a government job with the sole intention of recovering ten times that amount by indulging in corruption.