Each of your children will pay ` 83K to clear off Goa’s loan burden...

One of the most critical pieces of information tabled on the floor of the house, would have gone virtually unnoticed if we hadn’t picked it up, highlighted and front paged it because of the gravity of the information and what potential it has of doing to our future generations. The total debt of Goa stands at Rs 12,433 crores which makes the per capita burden at Rs 82,015 crores. This effectively means an average family of four has a debt burden of Rs 3.5 lakh which makes it around Rs 83,000 per individual, if the reality is that debt is serviced from the direct and indirect revenue raised though our income, services and businesses.

The chasm between revenue generation and expenses has been widening, forcing the government to rely on market loans and as we shall see, the ever bloating size of the state work force, with no tangible mapping of efficiency, is actually the biggest component of our expenses. From 2012 to 2016, we have increased (with a very marginal drop in 14-15) our market loan component constantly. A Rs 120 crore drop in the last fiscal still makes it higher than the amount borrowed in 2014-15.

Here’s a quick snap shot of what we have been borrowing only under the Market loan head, not including loads under NABARD, NSSF and EAP:

Year 2012-13- Rs 1182 cr

Year 2013-14- Rs 1295 cr

Year 2014-15 Rs 1266 cr

Year 2015-16 Rs 1450 cr (when the effect of the mining impact hit home the hardest)

Year 2016-17 Rs 1320 cr

One of the arguments bandied for the high borrowings are spends on major infrastructure projects. But in reality it is the Centre which has played Santa Claus for Goa’s development projects unburdening Goa of the weight of finances it had to bear for vital infrastructure projects.

Some of them are the four-lane Usgao-Khandepar bridge (Rs 250 crore), four-lane Dhavali bypass (Rs 55 crore), Nuvem-Dramapur western bypass (Rs 200 crore), NH17-B link between Verna industrial estate and Angddi, Loutolim (Rs 200 crore) and the four lane bypass from near Chaudi to Mashem, Canacona (Rs 260 crore). The Canacona project also includes bridges at Talpona, Galgibaga, and Mashem. Many of these projects were already initiated by the agencies of the Goa government. The Canacona bypass was on the verge of being tendered, while the PWD was about to sign on the dotted line of the work order for the Usgao-Khandepar bridge. The Dhavali bypass, western bypass, and link projects in mid-December were also cleared, when the lottery like windfall from the Centre was announced. But the big daddy funding actually came for the new Zuari bridge estimated at Rs 1,200 crore.

Thus, if you actually see the pattern of support, the pressure for more funds is less due to infrastructure commitments, handled by the Centre.

The elephant in the room is therefore not the big fat bridges but the big fat government work force, which is feeding on rapidly reducing financial resources. It is ever growing and every hungry. It seeks permanence when it is temporary, it seeks an increase in pay when its permanent, it even thrives on benefits like leave without pay for five years as employees with Indian passports they head off abroad to make their fortunes based on their citizen cards of Portugal, acquired in the quiet which allows them, to keep their jobs in Goa and enjoy government health care, education and money from side jobs in England and other parts of Europe. Feeding this elephant, saps the energy, resources and yes the future of our children, with a Rs 83,000 burden on each of their heads. Which is why this is so unfair. In departments like Power, Health and PWD, it almost became a right of passage for the unemployed and the unemployable youth, to slink into a department job by simply showing up at the door of the minister, anytime within 365 days of an assembly election. The overloading of the government, on the basis of the “jobs for the boys” principle is threatening to bring down the very government with the weight of its workforce. The 62,000 employees are like an albatross around the state’s neck, with the sloth of a walrus in perennial slumber.

The state has only now halted the recruitment process. But this fat will not go with diet control. You need surgery. Goa’s 62k (61,256) employees (as per 2015 census) are the highest government employees to people ratio in the country. This means that one among every 22 persons is a government employee. The figure could have gone up by at least a 1000 in the last one and half year considering the recruitments in Electricity Department and Goa Medical College.

The 2013 Census of Employees released by the Directorate of Planning, Statistics and Evaluation shows the Goa Government employs a total of 58,008. In 2010, there were 53,069 government employees, thereby proving that there has been a consistent increase. In fact, and this is shocking, the salaries paid due to the increase in the number of posts amounted to 38 per cent of the Non Planned Expenditure of the state. Yes 38%.

In 2010 this ratio of Government servants to people was marginally better 1:28 and in 2007 it was still better as the ratio stood at 1:32. But it was nowhere near national standards where this ratio is healthy.

By contrast, Gujarat, during its Narendra Modi years, had one government servant for 254 people, which meant that Gujarat had ten times less government employees per population. The stress on e governance and more importantly, its strict implementation led to this robust ratio. Goa’s E governance initiatives have done nothing to reduce the fat.

And lest we forget if we add the retired government servants who have done yeomen’s service for a better governed Goa, ostensibly, the total government employee population goes up close to 10 lakhs.

But the merry feast of government jobs, devoured by the hungry tide, is cooked by every political party in power. The greed for jobs and the need to feed this greed is party agnostic. This is not a phenomenon limited to either the Congress or the BJP but is system generated. But the power to correct the system rests with any government brave enough to see the realities of a bloated workforce and simply do a surgical strike. A surgical strike on the slow moving workforce, sinking under its own weight, will be Mr Parrikar’s crowning glory and perhaps the real deal for his state.

The big ask is will he do it. He knows that the BJP’s failure to create as many jobs led to the political stripping down to size of its biggest political heavyweights in the 2017 elections. That failure hangs heavy. But the solution is not to add more weight to the work force, because it cannot take any. The state has to create alternate avenues of income where the state does not have to fund or pay salaries. Innovation, entrepreneurship and external funding for specialised projects which may not need a highly skilled work force, is the need of the second. This workforce has to, well, work.

The milieu of governance where you can sign and scoot cannot prevail in the alternate scenario. We, the people of Goa cannot, simply cannot afford to feed the political aspirations of politicians or the lazy greed of those, who want the state to pay them under the tutelage of their political masters. We simply do not have Rs 83000 per head to do this. We cannot and will not feed sloth. We want our sons and daughters to get their professional and career baptism by fire and not by political hire. The money saved can be spent on technology, projects, hiring professional talent for the betterment of our systems and governance and above all to simply release us from the pressure of the debt trap which will be the curse of our future generations.