Make an Allowance...

Recently, I had the opportunity of getting involved in a nationwide survey done on Government health professionals and various hospitals in our country. The questionnaire covering the salary and incentive package available for our government doctors was a very amusing one.

The salary being paid to the doctors by the Government seems to be low compared to the money they can make by private practice. So, this survey tries to find out what are the incentives they get and what should be done to discourage private practice. I was totally tickled to read the kind of incentives Government is offering in some States for the Government doctors.

Apart from the salary, they get something called Dearness Allowance, which is supposed to take care of increased cost of living. Then, we have travel allowance, tour allowance and daily allowance. Some of the health staff get shoe allowance and some other people get only a coat allowance. Yet others get a Gloves Allowance and some lucky people get a Soap Allowance. Why soap allowance? Just to wash their hands off their patients?




Doctors are not willing to go and work in villages. So, the Government offers them Rural Area Allowance when they decide to work in small places. But, they are not too keen to work in big cities also. So, they are paid City Compensation Allowance. While normal people may be spending huge amounts of money to visit hilly regions, our government servants want some compensation to work in such places and so, they get Hill Area Allowance (This HRA is not to be confused with the House Rent Allowance, which they will get wherever they are!) Some States prefer to keep the door open by generally giving something called Difficult Area Allowance, without, of course, defining what is a difficult area. If rural areas are not possible and cities are difficult, hills are problematic and difficult areas are out of the question, where will these people work, I wonder.

Then, we have other interesting family allowances. For children's education, you have education allowance. (To improve your own knowledge, you can get Medical Journal Allowance). There isn't anything for getting married, but there is a Small Family Allowance, if you have only two children.

After going through this questionnaire, I thought our government doctors are really an exotic creatures - like some kind of archids - who can work only in a very small band of climatic conditions and social settings.



Given a chance, the only allowance I would like to ask will be something like:

Only Men Allowance : If certain days, I am surrounded only by men, then I would like a compensation for that.

Terrible Noise Allowance : If there is a visitor to the office who has a very high decibal level of speech, then an extra Rs.100 as an allowance will be fine.

Anger and Cry Special Allowance : One thing I can't stand is people shouting at someone else in anger, and worse, crying. So, if I am forced to attend one such session, probably, the thought that I will get this special allowance can be soothing.

Terrible Dress Allowance, Sick Joke Allowance ... I can go on like this.