PM Narendra Modi government to reward hard working employees with cash prize

The Modi government seems to be emulating the corporate culture of performance-based incentives to encourage the babus meet the deliverables. Ministry of railways and ministry of finance are planning to introduce incentives, including cash incentives, to hard working staff who meet the goals. Both the ministries are planning to introduce such schemes especially in case of those projects that are on PMO radar like Jan Dhan Yojana and construction of rail over bridges on national highways.

For instance, to ensure the speedy implementation of road over-bridge and road under-bridge on the railway tracks, new railway minister Suresh Prabhu has announced a sum of Rs five lakh which will be used to reward the officials who show zeal in implementation of the project. At least 21,000 such over bridges, and under-bridges are pending in the country, causing the work on national highways to be stuck at many places. Last week, transport ministry and railway ministry signed an MoU for speedy clearance of these over bridges and under-bridges.

Railway minister Suresh Prabhu said, "A sum of Rs five lakh will be set up to reward the officials who show good performance." A ministry official said the sum will be meant for both the ministries and will be used to reward officials from both the ministries if they show stellar performance on implementation of the project. The backdrop of the development seems to be the criticism hurled by road transport minister Nitin Gadkari upon the railways in a meeting presided over by prime minister Narendra Modi when the new government took charge. Gadkari had complained to the PM that the file movement in the railways is very slow, which hampers the work and leads to cost escalation.

Another government department, which is planning to roll out performance based incentive is the department of banking and financial services. Here too, the scheme that has been picked up is the key PMO initiative on financial inclusion – Jan Dhan Yojana.

An official close to the development told dna, "A scheme for incentivizing the bankers has been framed and has been communicated to them." The plan has been finalized after the new banking secretary Hasmukh Adhia took over last week. The scheme, however, has not been implemented on the ground level as of now. As on November 10, 7.24 crore accounts have been opened under PMJDY of which 4.29 crore in rural and 2.95 crore are in urban areas. RuPay Cards have been issued in case of 3.97 Crore accounts.