Only in Nagaland?


Check out the December month taken from the official Nagaland Calendar 2015 (shown above). The rows of red at the bottom indicate the number of days that were declared as public holidays for government employees on account of Christmas – seven days altogether, minus the Saturday and Sunday in between.  

Does it not make you blush in embarrassment just looking at it?

This is another case of ‘only in Nagaland’. I, at least, couldn’t find any state in the country, even the predominantly Christian ones, gifting so many paid off days for its employees to celebrate Christmas. In fact, nowhere in the world can you find so many days declared as Christmas public holidays. Some include 24th, but mostly it’s only the actual day – 25th. Only when it coincides with a weekend does it stretch to a long break of three or four days.

For instance, even the Philippines, a country that has earned the distinction of celebrating the world's longest Christmas season with Christmas carols heard as early as September 1, has only two days – 24th and 25th – declared as legal non-working days. Closer home, I could confirm that sister state Meghalaya notifies 3 official off days – 24th to 26th.    

Another thing I could confirm was that the Nagaland government has increased the Christmas public holidays as compared to 2010. That year, the declared official holidays were 23rd to 27th, with three working days in between before New Year break, which was from 31st to 2nd. Apparently the government felt that it’s overstaffed and under-worked workforce needed more pampering in the form of paid holidays! 

Well, those are the ‘official’ public holidays, but as we all know the unofficial holidays begin long before the official ones. In recent years, the hullabaloo of the Hornbill Festival at the beginning of the Christmas month has given everyone the perfect excuse to start absenting themselves from work. Moreover, the pre-Christmas celebrations, which have become quite the fashion, contribute much to wastage of time and resources for absolutely unnecessary matters. All offices barely function for the whole of the December month with only a few rare employees sincerely attending to their duties.

Okay, so the grand Christmas break and celebration is over and done with and work is supposed to begin full throttle again by the first working day after New Year’s Day. This year, 2nd and 3rd fell on a Saturday and Sunday respectively, so those two days don’t count. But Monday, the 4th, should have had the offices buzzing with activity again. No, siree, not in Nagaland. Today is already the 16th and till yesterday the offices were still quite deserted except, again, for those few rare species of sincere employees. The large majority are still nursing their Christmas hangovers and will be doing so for most of January. Nothing new……..it’s the norm every year. It’s a disgraceful accepted way of life and nobody expects anything else.

Politicians and bureaucrats love to lecture on work culture every chance they get, especially at youth and student events. And they do get plenty of opportunity as everyone just adores having them as ‘chief guests’ at their programmes. Well, my advice to them would be to stop lecturing and start doing something (seriously) about the shameful and total lack of work culture in the government offices – not only in punctuality and attendance, but in every aspect. Leading by example is a far more powerful change tool than self righteous lectures.

What’s happened to the ‘No Work No Pay’ policy? Is it being implemented strictly? Why is the major portion of our state budget going towards paying people who saunter into their workplaces, if at all, two or three or even four hours late, spend a couple of hours or so gossiping and drinking tea and then briskly slipping out again? Or those who don’t spend even a month’s worth of time in their places of posting? Earlier, one would at least find these govt employees in their offices in the first or second week of the month for the purpose of salary collection. Apparently, even this is no longer done as salaries are nowadays deposited into bank accounts and can be drawn from anywhere. So most don’t even bother about keeping up appearances anymore, I’m told.

According to the latest reports I could find, Nagaland has a total of 1,40,000 state government employees - 96, 000 regular and the rest in the work-charged and fixed pay categories. The 13th Finance Commission (2010-2015) had recommended the state should spend only 35% within revenue expenditure on salary of government employees. However, the salary expenditure is reported to be to the tune of 60%.

Another recommendation of the Finance Commission was for Nagaland government to reduce its employees by at least 46,000. Do it, I say, do it…….instead of making lame excuses of limited scope for employment generation and revenue earning and appealing for Nagaland to be treated as a ‘special category state’, which the state government has reportedly done. 

Kick out underperforming or non-performing staff, trim the over bloated workforce and get the offices working efficiently. That would be a major, major achievement!




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