Manish Anand/ SNS
The Indian bureaucracy is a white elephant in the typical sense. Just as the owner of the white elephant never gets rid of it because of the legacy attached to it, the bureaucracy too remains part of the Indian governance system with all the flaws afflicting it.
Babudom, a Raj relic, is in urgent need of a revamp before it becomes redundant and undermines the democratic advancement of one billion plus people. But governments and legislatures refuse to look into it as they sit over reports for reform of civil services, the fulcrum of the Indian bureaucracy.
The state of affairs can be gauged from the flurry of visits IAS and IPS officers made to new ministers after the change of guard in Bihar recently. A cabinet minister in Bihar had this to say: “Everyday I am visited by IAS and IPS officers, all claiming to be loyal to my party and promising their commitment to me.”
Bureaucrats do not even shy away from cashing in on their caste equations with ministers in power. And when ministers refuse to meet them, the babus lobby for postings with close attendants of ministers. “We used to be in such awe of these IAS and IPS officers, but now with so many of them making a beeline everyday we feel sorry for the Indian administrative system. They make a case for themselves out of belonging to the same caste as the minister,” said an aide of a cabinet minister in a state.
It has got so bad that IAS and IPS officers are branded for their political leanings at the junior and middle levels and some also at the senior level. “We have identified all the IAS and IPS officers who were loyal to the previous government and who did their best to subvert our chances of winning elections. All of them will be shunted out in due course of time and all those who suffered at the hands of the previous government would be brought back to important postings,” said another cabinet minister in Bihar.
“Many upper caste officers had taken central deputation during the rule of the previous government, and now with the change of guard in Bihar they are coming back with a favourable government now in place,” said a social activist from Bihar.
No surprises that the cabinet secretary of Uttar Pradesh has been branded the most corrupt IAS officer by her peers in the state. Also, the Magsasay award winning IAS officer Gautam Goswami is languishing in Beur Jail, Patna, for swindling money meant for flood relief in Bihar, reportedly in collusion with top politicians of the state.
Apologists always come out with so-called shining examples of bureaucracy to cover the diseased set up. Yes, there are officers who challenge Naxalites to open debate; who visit Muslim villages during communal riots and deliver speeches in chaste Urdu, instilling hope in the system; who mingle in a crowd of thousands of agitating students over the killing of their colleagues, empathise with them and to promise that they would be heard; who openly chastise villagers for keeping lower caste people away from their domain. But they have always been in a minority and suffer at the hands of the political establishment of the day.
Instances are abundant to paint the bureaucracy black, but the irony is that the Central government and the Parliament just refuse to take notice of the fact that their so called “steel frame” is disintegrating.
In the recent past, the Hota committee and Alagh Committee reports on reform in the civil services were submitted but both of them are gathering dust. Parliament has no time to look into the recommendations and take action. Both the committee chairmen extensively toured foreign countries and took a long time to submit their reports, which undoubtedly incurred huge costs paid out of the taxpayers’ hard earned money.
A joke doing the rounds in official circles is that if you exhaust all extensions of services after retirement, just lobby for chairmanship of some committee and go abroad to enjoy the luxury of taxpayers’ paid out working holidays. “The Indian bureaucracy has always been trained to write reports and they are internationally recognised for their caliber in this regard,” remarked a career bureaucrat.
Serving bureaucrats have damned both these reports as extreme reactions, which could never have been accepted by parliamentarians. “From lowering the age limit to 25 years to recruit candidates just after their 12th examination as well as sending bureaucrats for corporate postings to improve their skills in governance were just simplistic solutions that Mr Hota and Mr Alagh reached. They did not bother to attend to the archaic structure of the bureaucratic system from recruitment to training and postings as well as professional growth,” said an IAS officer.
“The average age of recruits in the civil services is 28 years, and all the training modules were developed with the assumption that the average age of recruits would be 21. Now, how do you expect to mould such people who have fully developed beliefs and attitudes. Despite that the training runs for a minimum of 19 months for Indian Revenue Services and 36 months for Indian Police Service. Is there any match between training requirements and age of trainees?” he asked.
How much importance is given to training of budding bureaucrats can also be gauged from the fact that postings at training centres are considered punishment postings. “With serving bureaucrats reluctant to take up training assignments, top officials dish out promises of postings of their choice if one takes a training posting,” said a serving bureaucrat.
The recruitment process of civil services has not seen any change for a long time. It still practices the “scaling system” to pare down all optional subjects that candidates take for the examination. Expectedly, after implementation of the Right to Information Act (RTI), many candidates applied to know how their papers were evaluated and how this “scaling system” works. But the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) did not oblige the candidates and still keeps under wraps its unique “scaling system” for different subjects taken as optional papers.
The result is that a few optional papers are more scoring than others, benefiting a few candidates and proving to be a disadvantage to others. “Why do the Indian vernacular languages fetch so much more marks than other subjects? Can the UPSC tell us what makes such subjects so special?” asked a serving IPS officer.
“The written examination (2000 marks) makes the personality test (300) almost redundant. There are many IAS and IPS officers who got 90-150 marks in the personality test, which makes their ability for such jobs suspect,” added another IPS officer. The UPSC doesn’t differentiate between the job of an IAS officer and a departmental job like the postal services, he added.
But larger issues are politicisation of bureaucracy, which belittles the delivery mechanism of governance for the common man. Politicians have a short-term agenda, and they make the bureaucratic set up milch the common man as a buffer for their election campaigns as well as to be financially secure. And the bureaucrats are more often than not loyal to politicians rather then their professional commitments.
“It’s in the interest of politicians not to keep themselves away from influencing career moves of bureaucrats as well as their day-to-day functioning in the name of democracy. This way they can always play on the insecurity of officials,” said a serving IAS officer. “Do not expect separation of the functioning of law enforcement agencies and law makers as well as of policy makers and implementation of policies. The separation will undoubtedly benefit the common man and the nation socio-economically, but it is suicidal for politicians. And, it’s not going to happen with the current bunch of politicians either,” he added.
It’s in this context that a general category candidate can take the civil services examination till the age of 30, and other backward caste candidates can do so till 33 and scheduled caste and tribe candidates have no age limit at all. Hence, there is no possibility of reform either in recruitment or training process. The system has to go on as it suits the highly insecure politicians that Indians are blessed with.
And what if someone is determined to make a difference. For them an assistant income tax commissioner has this to say: “Four assistant income tax commissioners were posted in Delhi and in three months all of them were shunted out to far-off places. Their crime was that they did not take Rs 10,000 packets to their superiors on Diwali-eve. The punishment taught them the rules of the services and in future they will not slip up.”
Questions people can always ask such as why do so many die when floods visit a state or why do so many farmers commit suicide when drought strikes or why a stretch of the Golden Quadrilateral caves in or why do criminals with heinous crimes on their records find their way into Parliament and legislatures or why money meant for pensioners and the aged finds its way into the pockets of babus and netas or why the children of ministers go abroad for higher education. But people are pacified by promises of investigations.
At the end of the day, people are to blame as they do not know how to exercise their rights and make governance accountable. But the journey is long and full of rigours to test the collective character of all Indians.
The Indian bureaucracy is a white elephant in the typical sense. Just as the owner of the white elephant never gets rid of it because of the legacy attached to it, the bureaucracy too remains part of the Indian governance system with all the flaws afflicting it.
Babudom, a Raj relic, is in urgent need of a revamp before it becomes redundant and undermines the democratic advancement of one billion plus people. But governments and legislatures refuse to look into it as they sit over reports for reform of civil services, the fulcrum of the Indian bureaucracy.
The state of affairs can be gauged from the flurry of visits IAS and IPS officers made to new ministers after the change of guard in Bihar recently. A cabinet minister in Bihar had this to say: “Everyday I am visited by IAS and IPS officers, all claiming to be loyal to my party and promising their commitment to me.”
Bureaucrats do not even shy away from cashing in on their caste equations with ministers in power. And when ministers refuse to meet them, the babus lobby for postings with close attendants of ministers. “We used to be in such awe of these IAS and IPS officers, but now with so many of them making a beeline everyday we feel sorry for the Indian administrative system. They make a case for themselves out of belonging to the same caste as the minister,” said an aide of a cabinet minister in a state.
It has got so bad that IAS and IPS officers are branded for their political leanings at the junior and middle levels and some also at the senior level. “We have identified all the IAS and IPS officers who were loyal to the previous government and who did their best to subvert our chances of winning elections. All of them will be shunted out in due course of time and all those who suffered at the hands of the previous government would be brought back to important postings,” said another cabinet minister in Bihar.
“Many upper caste officers had taken central deputation during the rule of the previous government, and now with the change of guard in Bihar they are coming back with a favourable government now in place,” said a social activist from Bihar.
No surprises that the cabinet secretary of Uttar Pradesh has been branded the most corrupt IAS officer by her peers in the state. Also, the Magsasay award winning IAS officer Gautam Goswami is languishing in Beur Jail, Patna, for swindling money meant for flood relief in Bihar, reportedly in collusion with top politicians of the state.
Apologists always come out with so-called shining examples of bureaucracy to cover the diseased set up. Yes, there are officers who challenge Naxalites to open debate; who visit Muslim villages during communal riots and deliver speeches in chaste Urdu, instilling hope in the system; who mingle in a crowd of thousands of agitating students over the killing of their colleagues, empathise with them and to promise that they would be heard; who openly chastise villagers for keeping lower caste people away from their domain. But they have always been in a minority and suffer at the hands of the political establishment of the day.
Instances are abundant to paint the bureaucracy black, but the irony is that the Central government and the Parliament just refuse to take notice of the fact that their so called “steel frame” is disintegrating.
In the recent past, the Hota committee and Alagh Committee reports on reform in the civil services were submitted but both of them are gathering dust. Parliament has no time to look into the recommendations and take action. Both the committee chairmen extensively toured foreign countries and took a long time to submit their reports, which undoubtedly incurred huge costs paid out of the taxpayers’ hard earned money.
A joke doing the rounds in official circles is that if you exhaust all extensions of services after retirement, just lobby for chairmanship of some committee and go abroad to enjoy the luxury of taxpayers’ paid out working holidays. “The Indian bureaucracy has always been trained to write reports and they are internationally recognised for their caliber in this regard,” remarked a career bureaucrat.
Serving bureaucrats have damned both these reports as extreme reactions, which could never have been accepted by parliamentarians. “From lowering the age limit to 25 years to recruit candidates just after their 12th examination as well as sending bureaucrats for corporate postings to improve their skills in governance were just simplistic solutions that Mr Hota and Mr Alagh reached. They did not bother to attend to the archaic structure of the bureaucratic system from recruitment to training and postings as well as professional growth,” said an IAS officer.
“The average age of recruits in the civil services is 28 years, and all the training modules were developed with the assumption that the average age of recruits would be 21. Now, how do you expect to mould such people who have fully developed beliefs and attitudes. Despite that the training runs for a minimum of 19 months for Indian Revenue Services and 36 months for Indian Police Service. Is there any match between training requirements and age of trainees?” he asked.
How much importance is given to training of budding bureaucrats can also be gauged from the fact that postings at training centres are considered punishment postings. “With serving bureaucrats reluctant to take up training assignments, top officials dish out promises of postings of their choice if one takes a training posting,” said a serving bureaucrat.
The recruitment process of civil services has not seen any change for a long time. It still practices the “scaling system” to pare down all optional subjects that candidates take for the examination. Expectedly, after implementation of the Right to Information Act (RTI), many candidates applied to know how their papers were evaluated and how this “scaling system” works. But the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) did not oblige the candidates and still keeps under wraps its unique “scaling system” for different subjects taken as optional papers.
The result is that a few optional papers are more scoring than others, benefiting a few candidates and proving to be a disadvantage to others. “Why do the Indian vernacular languages fetch so much more marks than other subjects? Can the UPSC tell us what makes such subjects so special?” asked a serving IPS officer.
“The written examination (2000 marks) makes the personality test (300) almost redundant. There are many IAS and IPS officers who got 90-150 marks in the personality test, which makes their ability for such jobs suspect,” added another IPS officer. The UPSC doesn’t differentiate between the job of an IAS officer and a departmental job like the postal services, he added.
But larger issues are politicisation of bureaucracy, which belittles the delivery mechanism of governance for the common man. Politicians have a short-term agenda, and they make the bureaucratic set up milch the common man as a buffer for their election campaigns as well as to be financially secure. And the bureaucrats are more often than not loyal to politicians rather then their professional commitments.
“It’s in the interest of politicians not to keep themselves away from influencing career moves of bureaucrats as well as their day-to-day functioning in the name of democracy. This way they can always play on the insecurity of officials,” said a serving IAS officer. “Do not expect separation of the functioning of law enforcement agencies and law makers as well as of policy makers and implementation of policies. The separation will undoubtedly benefit the common man and the nation socio-economically, but it is suicidal for politicians. And, it’s not going to happen with the current bunch of politicians either,” he added.
It’s in this context that a general category candidate can take the civil services examination till the age of 30, and other backward caste candidates can do so till 33 and scheduled caste and tribe candidates have no age limit at all. Hence, there is no possibility of reform either in recruitment or training process. The system has to go on as it suits the highly insecure politicians that Indians are blessed with.
And what if someone is determined to make a difference. For them an assistant income tax commissioner has this to say: “Four assistant income tax commissioners were posted in Delhi and in three months all of them were shunted out to far-off places. Their crime was that they did not take Rs 10,000 packets to their superiors on Diwali-eve. The punishment taught them the rules of the services and in future they will not slip up.”
Questions people can always ask such as why do so many die when floods visit a state or why do so many farmers commit suicide when drought strikes or why a stretch of the Golden Quadrilateral caves in or why do criminals with heinous crimes on their records find their way into Parliament and legislatures or why money meant for pensioners and the aged finds its way into the pockets of babus and netas or why the children of ministers go abroad for higher education. But people are pacified by promises of investigations.
At the end of the day, people are to blame as they do not know how to exercise their rights and make governance accountable. But the journey is long and full of rigours to test the collective character of all Indians.
