Good news-Retirement Age may go up 62 Years in view of 7th CPC

7th Pay panel formed, retirement age may go up 62 yrs
The award of the seventh pay commission will be
implemented from the beginning of 2016 and will
benefit nearly 3 million pensioners. But since state
governments generally match central wages, the actual
beneficiary list stands at over 11 million employees and
pensioners.
Siddharth Zarabi
The national capital, home to a vast majority of central
government employees, is headed for elections this
November. And so are four other states, followed by
the general elections sometime early next year. This,
more than anything else, explains the central
government's hurry to promise its employees higher
wages.
The award of the seventh pay commission will be
implemented from the beginning of 2016 and will
benefit nearly 3 million pensioners. But since state
governments generally match central wages, the actual
beneficiary list stands at over 11 million employees and
pensioners. The fact that this award is one more in a
long list of expenditure-heavy pre-election programmes,
will mean several consequences for India's finances.
Back of envelope calculations suggest that even if the
increments in the 6th pay commission were to be
matched, the centre's wage bill could rise by up to Rs
1 lakh crore in 2016. But on the other hand, this payout
will spark a surge in consumption starting that year.
Why? The sixth pay commission award amounted to
around 0.5 percent of GDP and a tidy sum was handed
out as arrears in the start of 2008. That extra spending
power meant that the ensuing slowdown was mitigated
to some extent. This could play out again in 2016.
Meanwhile, CNBC TV18 learns that the proposal to
extend the retirement age of central government
employees by two years has received fresh impetus. A
decision on this could be taken within a week or two,
and would be the second major populist decision by the
UPA to woo the urban middle class and the powerful
government employee mass in Indian society.