7th Pay Commission: Not a day goes by when there is not some good news or the other about the Indian economy. India's GDP trajectory is soaring upwards and this in turn will ensure government revenues at the central level reach a more than comfortable level. Now, the biggest hurdle in clearing the salary pay hike of government servants is nothing but fear of the financial outgo hurting the revenues of the government. Many states have already indicated that they may have ordered the implementation of the 7th Pay Commission recommendation, but they at the same time flagged the impact on their revenues. While no such thing has been mentioned by the Centre, there is no doubt that such a big expenditure by government on its staff will hurt the revenues and raise prospects of dreaded deficit raising its head.

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Nevertheless, since there is economic growth happening, there is hope that 7th Pay Commission salaries may be raised by a fitment factor of 3.68 times rather than the pay panel's recommendation of 2.57 times. Today, IMF has given the good news to the world that India is the fastest growing economy at 7.4% in 2018 and things will get better as rate of growth will jump up to 7.8 per cent in 2019. It added that the medium-term prospects remain positive. 

Notably, yesterday in Tamil Nadu, state government staff under the aegis of its union sought to hold a protest march again. While the march itself was thwarted by the police when it arrested as many as 7500 protesters, the significant fact is that there are as many as 12 lakh government employees and 7.42 lakh pensioners in the state. Cops used all kinds of strategies to ensure govt staff did not enter the city. This is the second such protest they have held. The issues they have raised are payment of arrears as per the 7th Pay Commission recommendations, rectifying pay anomalies for employees and reverting to old pension scheme. 

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As far as Central government employees are concerned, they would be hoping more and more such good news on economy keep coming, putting the revenues of the Centre in a comfortable enough position to get their demands cleared.