We need bureaucrats with a new ethos who are more attuned to performances on the ground and not just policy designs. Under the current system, lack of domain knowledge is a hindrance to effective policy formulation, points out MOIN QAZI.
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“The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.”
– Brooks Atkinson.
When India attained independence, Sardar Vallabhai Patel was the first to envision civil services as the ‘steel frame’ of Independent India. Despite reservations of several colleagues, his resolve to retain the cadre was strong. While speaking to the first batch of civil servants at the Metcalf House, Delhi, Patel pithily articulated the future role of civil servants. In his address on April 21, 1947, Patel said,
“Your predecessors were brought up in the traditions in which they … kept themselves aloof from the common run of the people. It will be your bounden duty to treat the common men in India as your own.”
Later, Vallabhbhai Patel in his letter to Jawaharlal Nehru on 27 April 1948, emphasised the role of civil services,
“I need hardly emphasise that an efficient, disciplined and contented service, assured of its prospect as a result of diligent and honest work, is a sine qua non of sound administration under a democratic regime even more than under an authoritarian rule. The service must be above party and we should ensure that political considerations, either in its recruitment or in its discipline and control, are reduced to the minimum, if not eliminated altogether. The constitution is meant to be worked by a ring of service which will keep the country intact.”
Today, more than six decades later, the Indian bureaucracy is both celebrated and reviled. Far from what Patel had warranted, his vision of a “steel frame” is now derided as “babudom”.
While the bureaucracy has earned itself some qualified praise, it has disillusioned many. An overwhelming majority today asserts that the services are no longer a ‘steel frame’ but have become a ‘creaking structure’.
Upgrading the IAS: Attempts and Barriers
Under the current system, lack of domain knowledge is a hindrance to effective policy formulation. This has led to a situation where an agricultural expert is looking after the defense, a veterinary doctor is supervising the education system and a geography graduate is dictating the health policy. It is in this backdrop in which the government decided to allow lateral entry into the IAS.
In the past two decades, the Constitution Review Commission (2002), the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (2008), and the NITI Aayog’s 3 Year Action Agenda (2017) have all suggested domain specialization instead of generalized competence, looking at the rising complexity of modern-day policymaking.
Moreover, in view of the complexity of issues confronting the country, we need specialists as well as individuals from relevant sectors, so that we get diverse talent and varied perspectives in policy formulation and implementation.
This is a shift that even the United Kingdom started making as early as the mid-20th century when the Fulton Commission started privileging domain knowledge over simple seniority and ‘experience’.
While it is true that those entering through lateral channels may face tough resistance from the IAS lobby which is highly possessive of its power club, the attempt is worth the effort.
In the case of IAS, there is no mechanism for weeding out inefficiencies. Once a candidate clears the exam they are assured of promotion throughout their careers, irrespective of their performance. The only disincentive they may incur is a fringe posting.
Moreover, in view of the complexity of issues confronting the country, we need specialists as well as individuals from relevant sectors, so that we get diverse talent and varied perspectives in policy formulation and implementation.
Even in the days of the ICS, officers could select a branch of governance after a period of services, such as the social sector or economics, so that they could specialise and perform better. That practice has since been abolished.
The government had earlier tried this experiment by establishing the Industrial Management Pool [IMP] in 1959. The IMP envisaged hiring talent from the private sector to man high and mid-level managerial posts. But the attempt failed. After just one hiring in 1959, the IMP came to a formal end in 1973.
Inducting domain experts may not necessarily solve all problems.
IAS officers brought in through the traditional route undergo a mandatory “district immersion” and have a thorough exposure to the ground realities through field experience in their initial years of service.
They act as a link between the common man and policy-makers.
The absence of similar exposure and sensitivity with respect to India’s complex socio-political setup is a strongly valid argument against inducting private sector professionals into policy-making.
There are several reasons for the dilution of excellence in the civil services which produced giants like K.P.S. Menon, L.K. Jha, and P.N.Haksar. One is the poor encouragement the system provides for merit. Vision is one thing, creativity is another.
Systemic challenges hampering good intent
In the services, one is up against a calcified system, a bunch of fickle-minded political leaders who change their opinions faster than they change their clothes, and crude local interests that can make life miserable for an upright official. What can one possibly do when they are facing such odds?
We must sympathize with those who suffer the taint and stigma of vigilance strictures. They even face dismissal from their service for a small slip in a career, otherwise studded with professional achievements and sacrifices of their families.
The IAS is hamstrung by political interference and outdated personnel procedures. The government must adopt safeguards to promote accountability while protecting bureaucrats from political meddling.
Today, our bureaucracy is twenty times more bureaucratic, our deference to the chain of command more cringing and decorous, our worship of paper more entrenched.
One of the direct inheritances of the British Empire was a bureaucratic state that is light on investment in human capital and essential services and heavy on paperwork.
The British employed relatively few people and promoted a culture that generated extraordinary volumes of paperwork. These twin realities—minimal staffing and dense thickets of red tape—still characterize Indian governance. And, like the British Empire before it, the Indian state has a Kafkaesque regulatory maze of bureaucratic procedure.
The system has been paralysed with precedents, so every year we accrete new ones.
The wheels hobble at a lugubrious pace.
The British bequeathed us hierarchical machinery– but when it comes to hierarchical institutions, nobody can teach India anything.
A bureaucracy must be an enabler and not a hinderer that clogs the decision-making pipeline.
Today, our bureaucracy is twenty times more bureaucratic, our deference to the chain of command more cringing and decorous, our worship of paper more entrenched. To quote Hyman Rickover, “If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won’t.”
A bureaucracy that wastes its precious human potential is morally indefensible.
This does not mean that there should be fewer oversight checks. An administration certainly needs guardrails in the form of non-negotiable rules. Without such rails, the system can stray badly. But necessitating a dozen signatures where a few can do, is a criminal surfeit of supervisory controls.
Similarly, we have a colossal army of paper-pushing subordinates churning out work of frivolous value. Honest and competent civil servants—and there are many—need to initiate human capital reform to create high-performing machinery that does fewer things but does them better.
A bureaucracy must be an enabler and not a hinderer that clogs the decision-making pipeline.
As the British Prime Minister Theresa May observed, “We’re getting rid of bureaucracy so that we’re releasing time for police officers to be crime fighters and not form writers.”
Change guided by its own tenets
Most retired senior civil servants in India have argued that there are three tenets underpinning the functioning of the civil service- permanence, neutrality, and anonymity.
These tenets provide continuity and change that are important for democracy so that we have a continuously evolving system of governance. It is a challenge in a modern democracy to live up to them. Given the autonomy and protection that the Constitution guarantees to the civil servants is enough reason why these morals and tenets cannot be practiced.
Perhaps, the best antidote to the present despair is to study the examples and lives of those who have fought against the odds and succeeded.
The civil services are certainly a tightrope walk and much depends on the sagacity and instincts of the role bearers themselves. As the well-known retired civil servant, Najeeb Jung spelled out for us,
“A civil servant often finds himself or herself in unsolvable, peculiar, and unpredictable situations. He or she tackles them to the best of his or her ability, planning with care but often hitting in the dark sometimes; with luck he gets away, unscathed but sometimes luck runs out.”
There are still horizons of hope. The system still has its stars that keep twinkling even in this looming darkness. Some may feel that their position is hopeless, that there is nothing they can do, or that the system is too strong for them.
Perhaps, the best antidote to the present despair is to study the examples and lives of those who have fought against the odds and succeeded.
In every country, there are some courageous people who have refused to give in, who have stuck by their principles, and whose lives shine as examples of what can be done. Few people outside the system realize the very personal cost that follows the decision to risk it all in an act of conscience.
Not all can expect recognition or to become folk heroes.
For most of those who put their conscience first, the satisfaction and rewards are not fame, but in knowing that they did what was right and that things are definitely better than they would have been.
Their small deeds may not command attention; but in merit, they may equal or exceed the greater and more conspicuous actions of those with more freedom and power.
Jawaharlal Nehru once said the Indian Civil Service was ‘neither Indian, nor Civil, nor a Service’. However, his deputy Sardar Patel considered the civil service “the steel frame of government machinery”. Both worked to create a model for civil servants that served India well when the primary task was nation-building, now that the focus has shifted to public welfare.
Therefore, we need bureaucrats with a new ethos who are more attuned to performances on the ground and not just policy designs.
(Moin Qazi is a development professional. Views are personal.)
