AP’s Double-Engine Government Runs on Pending Arrears

Andhra Pradesh’s N Chandrababu Naidu-led government arrived selling itself as the adult in the room: disciplined, development-minded and equipped with the fiscal calculator allegedly misplaced by its predecessor. It also promised government employees, teachers and pensioners a better Pay Revision Commission and Interim Relief. Two years later, the adults are still discussing the bill.

On 31 August, the AP JAC warned of agitation over the 12th Pay Revision Commission, five pending dearness allowances, arrears and surrender-leave payments reportedly pending since 2020. On 1 September, AP JAC Amaravati announced a Work to Rule campaign from 15 September. Its profile-picture slogan was: “CM Sir... Give us our money.” This is not the usual language of a workforce dazzled by a roadmap.

The government’s preferred genre is now the meeting. Employees say they cooperated for two years after being assured their demands would be discussed with Naidu. Teachers have separately begun an indefinite hunger strike over the proposed Special TET for in-service teachers, saying repeated approaches to HRD Minister Nara Lokesh and officials produced no satisfactory action. The administration’s response, if assembled into a single document, would probably be titled Assurances: Volume II.

Naidu’s political brand has always been the CEO-of-the-state performance: measured tone, large nouns, fiscal responsibility and a promise that arithmetic will eventually become prosperity. But fiscal responsibility is not the art of making an obligation disappear behind the word “roadmap”. The same election campaign that asked employees, teachers and pensioners to make the “proper” decision while voting also promised to treat them better. They made their decision. Now they are asking for the corresponding transaction.

The irony is not that Andhra Pradesh has no money; that would require a budget argument. The simpler problem is that the government found money for the manifesto, the campaign and the victory speech, but apparently not for the invoice. The employees have been told to wait for the next meeting. The government has been waiting since the election for the promises to stop being payable.