Stately service: All power, no pay

MUMBAI: While one acronym symbolises power, the other symbolises pelf. The IAS is several thousand crisp notes of green away from the IIMs. And chances are that if a bright young Indian is offered a choice between the two, he will opt for the one with the all-important ''M'' (for money)—especially if he has half a chance of doing a Sumedh Jaiswal.

Jaiswal, a fresh graduate of IIM Ahmedabad, has just been snapped up for a foreign posting by Deutsche Bank for a cool $96,000 per annum or Rs 43 lakh.IIMAhmedabad graduates who are recruited for local postings can easily expect to be paid starting salaries of Rs 6 lakh a year, the average pay for freshers from the institute. This year, the multinational consultancy firm,McKinsey, signed up five students at an annual start-up of Rs 12 lakh. That''s more than what an IAS or IPS officer would make close to the end of a career spanning three decades. The gross annual pay (minus perks) of the chief secretary of Maharashtra is Rs 5 lakh. The Mumbai police commissioner earns Rs 4.4 lakh annually. Even the chief justice of the Bombay high court, one of the top constitutional authorities in the state, gets only Rs 6.5 lakh.
"Our children who graduate from management schools start by earning more in their first year than what we make after 30 years of government service," says an IAS official wryly. Even a middlerung public sector company employeemakes more money than his IAS boss. At the State Industrial and Investment Corporation of Maharashtra (SICOM), for instance, the general manager, a professional, earns much more than the managing director, who is an IAS officer. The salary imbalance can cause uncomfortable situations, complains a civil servant, since profesional managers sometimes don''t feel obliged to report to those who earns less than they do.