DHRUBA CHARAN PANDA Vs. STATE OF ORISSA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A question of universal importance revolving round the role of employer, more particularly the State Government to grant 'pension' to its retired employees is involved in this case. Several learned counsel assisted the Court in this case without any particular reference to background facts of the case at hand. The problem is of wide amplitude and grievances factually are more or less the same. After rendering years of service the employer finds from records that the employee has reached a particular age and he should retire. Immediate consequence of these is reduction in the payment made to him by the employer. Thereafter what the employee gets is normally called pension. Factual matrix as indicated above only assists in dealing with broader issues involved.

(2.) A political society which has a goal of setting up of a welfare State, would introduce and has in fact introduced as a welfare measure wherein the retiral benefit is grounded on consideration of State obligation to its citizens who having rendered service during the useful span of life must not be left to penury in their old age, but the evolving concept of social security is a later day development. And this journey was over a rough terrain. To note only one stage in 1856 a Royal Commission was set up to consider whether any changes were necessary in the system established by the 1834 Act. The Report of the Commission is known as 'Northoote -Trevelyan Report'. The Report was pungent in its criticism when it says that: 'in civil services comparable to lightness of work and the certainty of provision in case of retirement owing to bodily incapacity, furnish strong inducements to the parents and friends of sickly youth to endeavour to obtain for them employment in the service of the Government, and the extent to which the public are consequently burdened, first with the salaries of officers who are obliged to absent themselves from their duties on account of ill health, and afterwards with their pensions when they retire on the same plea, would hardly be credited by those who have not had opportunities of observing the operation of the system'. (See Gerald Rhodes, Public Sector Pensions, pp. 18 -19).

(3.) LET us therefore examine as was done by the apex Court in D.S. Nakara v. Union of India : AIR 1983 SC 130 as to what are the goals that pension scheme seeks to subserve. A pension scheme consistent with available resources must provide that the pensioner would be able to live; (i) free from want with decency, independence and self -respect, and (ii) at a standard equivalent at the pre -retirement level. This approach may merit the criticism that if a developing country like India cannot provide an employee while rendering service a living wage, how can one be assured of it in retirement ? This can be aptly illustrated by a small illustration. A man with a broken arm asked his doctor whether he will be able to play the piano after the cast is removed. When assured that he will, the patient replied, 'that is funny, I could not before'. It appears that in determining the minimum amount required for living decently is difficult, selecting the percentage representing the proper ratio between earnings and the retirement income is harder. But it is imperative to note that as self -sufficiency declines the need for his attendance or institutional care grows. Many are literally surviving now than the past. We owe it to them and ourselves that they live, not merely exist. The philosophy' prevailing in a given society at various stages of its development profoundly influences its social objectives. Those objectives are in turn a determinant of a social policy. The law is one of the chief instruments whereby the social policies are implemented and pension is paid according to rules Which can be said to provide social security law by which it is meant those legal mechanisms primarily concerned to ensure the provision for the individual of a cash income adequate, when taken along with the benefit in kind provided by other social services (such as free medical aid) to ensure for him a culturally acceptable minimum standard of living when the normal means of doing so failed. (See Social Security Law by Prof. Harry Calvert, p. 1).