Bureaucracy in crisis
Source: By Swapan K Chattopadhyay: The Statesman
Seventeen years after the then Prime Minister made such an observation on the systemic bottlenecks of his own government; there has been no fundamental change. Indeed, complaints about the role of the bureaucracy must be as old as the bureaucracy itself. Indian bureaucracy, which is perhaps the most bloated and most expensive in the world, seems to be sinking in a quagmire. As a result, socio-economic programmes and governance generally are suffering.
One of the world’s largest republics was set up after independence. It was a functioning democracy with a multi-party system. A stagnant colonial economy gave way to an economy with a 3.5 per cent growth rate. There was a paradigm shift in the policies and outlook of the government; the bureaucracy was entrusted with responsibility as never before.
Sadly, however, Indian bureaucracy failed to respond to the rising aspirations of the national government as it could not shed its age-old habits ~ routine administration, delay in taking decisions and a reluctance to engage in experiments. It developed a negative outlook. In a word, there was no change in the mindset.
Apart from the secretariat-level officers who are principally associated with framing of policies and the issue of government orders, there are a large number of front-ranking public service officers and employees of various categories, who have been termed as “street-level bureaucrats” by Michael Lip sky. They function in the district and village levels where the presence of the bureaucracy is actually felt by the socio-economically backward people. The public service personnel include teachers, policemen, welfare workers, doctors, nurses, employees of panchayats and urban local bodies, land reforms officers, inspectors of different departments DMs, SPs, and BDOs that can be added the clerical staffs, who deal with files at the lowest level.
A partisan attitude, delinquency, inefficiency, corruption, a tendency to misbehave with people, and pathetic lack of information can impede field operations. This can erode the credibility of the government. In the net, the return on the investment of public money is near-zero. This is exactly what has happened in the case of Indian bureaucracy. Over the past few decades, it has declined rapidly on account of corruption and politicization.
A 2005 study conducted by Transparency International revealed that more than 55 per cent of Indians have to bribe their way to get the job done in a government office. In the book, Corruption in India: The DNA and RNA, Professor Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari have stated that public officials in India may be cornering as much as Rs. 92,122 crore ($ 18.42 billion), or 1.26 per cent of the GDP, through corruption.
In their recently published book, An Uncertain Glory, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen have observed: “Corruption has become such an endemic feature of Indian administration and commercial life that in some parts of the country nothing moves in the intended direction unless the palm of the deliverer is greased.”
Referring to corruption in Bihar, NC Saxena, former Secretary to the Union ministry of rural development, once made a scathing remark ~ “It (corruption) is a low-risk high-reward activity. Many civil servants in the state (Bihar) are corrupt and have narrow horizons and a feudal outlook. The lower level of the bureaucracy is even worse and it has become insensitive and hostile to the poor section of the society.”
Mr Saxena did not mention certain states, which doesn’t mean that they are untainted. The degree of corruption only varies from state to state. Even the Union government is no exception. In a system where transparency and accountability are at a discount, the objective of public service gets distorted.
Immediately after independence, the government could have evolved an in-built system of checks and balances to kill the virus of corruption before the malaise went out of control. But this was not done. “Corruption is fostered and nurtured by the absence of systems of accountability ... Even establishing some kind of super-powerful ombudsman, with draconian powers that are not tempered by judicial procedure (as in some versions of the proposed ‘Lokpal Bill’), can generate more problems than it helps to solve. When a system is faulty, and gives people the wrong kind of incentives ~ to neglect one’s duty and to reap illicit earnings without systematic penalties ~ what has to be amended is the system itself. For example, any system that leaves government officers effectively in sole command ~ or oligarchic dominance ~ over giving licences (say, import or mining licences), without checks and invigilation, can become a minefield of corrupt practices.” (Dreze and Sen, an Uncertain Glory).
A former Karnataka Governor, Govind Narain (ICS), once remarked that the Sixties not only marked a watershed in the country’s politics but also in the bureaucracy as far as corruption is concerned. Initially, money was collected through political channels but in the 1960s, political leaders started making money by using the government machinery. Government officials soon got used to their share in the funds and many of them did not perform their legitimate function without getting their share. This habit has gradually become part and parcel of the system.
According to BK Nehru who also belonged to the ICS, the country’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was responsible for nurturing the seed of corruption among officers when he ordered a reduction in the salaries of the civil servants. He argued that a huge hike in the salary of a civil servant, who has already become corrupt, will not help him come out of the slush.
The crisis of Indian bureaucracy has been aggravated by the role of the political masters who tend to use the bureaucracy as a tool to serve their narrow political interests. Random interference with the transfer and posting of the officers of any rank has made the department of personnel almost irrelevant. During the Emergency, a vigorous attempt was made by the government to galvanize the bureaucracy into a “committed” organization.
Long and uninterrupted rule by any party or any front of parties with brute majority in the legislature has also harmed bureaucracy through political meddling.
The front-rank officers, who are primarily responsible for distribution of foodgrains, financial grants and other benefits are the primary targets of the political musclemen. Even the panchayats are pressured by politicians to fix development priorities. Officers either get bullied or lured into adopting unfair means. In the process, the image of the government gets tarnished.
Opportunist and careerist officers take advantage of the situation to the detriment of the system per se and also at the expense of public interests. It would be useful to recall the observations of the Shah Commission, which had inquired into Emergency excesses ~ “The politician who uses a public servant for purely political purposes and the public servant who allows himself to be so used are both debasing themselves and doing a signal disservice to the country.”
Source: By Swapan K Chattopadhyay: The Statesman
Seventeen years after the then Prime Minister made such an observation on the systemic bottlenecks of his own government; there has been no fundamental change. Indeed, complaints about the role of the bureaucracy must be as old as the bureaucracy itself. Indian bureaucracy, which is perhaps the most bloated and most expensive in the world, seems to be sinking in a quagmire. As a result, socio-economic programmes and governance generally are suffering.
One of the world’s largest republics was set up after independence. It was a functioning democracy with a multi-party system. A stagnant colonial economy gave way to an economy with a 3.5 per cent growth rate. There was a paradigm shift in the policies and outlook of the government; the bureaucracy was entrusted with responsibility as never before.
Sadly, however, Indian bureaucracy failed to respond to the rising aspirations of the national government as it could not shed its age-old habits ~ routine administration, delay in taking decisions and a reluctance to engage in experiments. It developed a negative outlook. In a word, there was no change in the mindset.
Apart from the secretariat-level officers who are principally associated with framing of policies and the issue of government orders, there are a large number of front-ranking public service officers and employees of various categories, who have been termed as “street-level bureaucrats” by Michael Lip sky. They function in the district and village levels where the presence of the bureaucracy is actually felt by the socio-economically backward people. The public service personnel include teachers, policemen, welfare workers, doctors, nurses, employees of panchayats and urban local bodies, land reforms officers, inspectors of different departments DMs, SPs, and BDOs that can be added the clerical staffs, who deal with files at the lowest level.
A partisan attitude, delinquency, inefficiency, corruption, a tendency to misbehave with people, and pathetic lack of information can impede field operations. This can erode the credibility of the government. In the net, the return on the investment of public money is near-zero. This is exactly what has happened in the case of Indian bureaucracy. Over the past few decades, it has declined rapidly on account of corruption and politicization.
A 2005 study conducted by Transparency International revealed that more than 55 per cent of Indians have to bribe their way to get the job done in a government office. In the book, Corruption in India: The DNA and RNA, Professor Bibek Debroy and Laveesh Bhandari have stated that public officials in India may be cornering as much as Rs. 92,122 crore ($ 18.42 billion), or 1.26 per cent of the GDP, through corruption.
In their recently published book, An Uncertain Glory, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen have observed: “Corruption has become such an endemic feature of Indian administration and commercial life that in some parts of the country nothing moves in the intended direction unless the palm of the deliverer is greased.”
Referring to corruption in Bihar, NC Saxena, former Secretary to the Union ministry of rural development, once made a scathing remark ~ “It (corruption) is a low-risk high-reward activity. Many civil servants in the state (Bihar) are corrupt and have narrow horizons and a feudal outlook. The lower level of the bureaucracy is even worse and it has become insensitive and hostile to the poor section of the society.”
Mr Saxena did not mention certain states, which doesn’t mean that they are untainted. The degree of corruption only varies from state to state. Even the Union government is no exception. In a system where transparency and accountability are at a discount, the objective of public service gets distorted.
Immediately after independence, the government could have evolved an in-built system of checks and balances to kill the virus of corruption before the malaise went out of control. But this was not done. “Corruption is fostered and nurtured by the absence of systems of accountability ... Even establishing some kind of super-powerful ombudsman, with draconian powers that are not tempered by judicial procedure (as in some versions of the proposed ‘Lokpal Bill’), can generate more problems than it helps to solve. When a system is faulty, and gives people the wrong kind of incentives ~ to neglect one’s duty and to reap illicit earnings without systematic penalties ~ what has to be amended is the system itself. For example, any system that leaves government officers effectively in sole command ~ or oligarchic dominance ~ over giving licences (say, import or mining licences), without checks and invigilation, can become a minefield of corrupt practices.” (Dreze and Sen, an Uncertain Glory).
A former Karnataka Governor, Govind Narain (ICS), once remarked that the Sixties not only marked a watershed in the country’s politics but also in the bureaucracy as far as corruption is concerned. Initially, money was collected through political channels but in the 1960s, political leaders started making money by using the government machinery. Government officials soon got used to their share in the funds and many of them did not perform their legitimate function without getting their share. This habit has gradually become part and parcel of the system.
According to BK Nehru who also belonged to the ICS, the country’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was responsible for nurturing the seed of corruption among officers when he ordered a reduction in the salaries of the civil servants. He argued that a huge hike in the salary of a civil servant, who has already become corrupt, will not help him come out of the slush.
The crisis of Indian bureaucracy has been aggravated by the role of the political masters who tend to use the bureaucracy as a tool to serve their narrow political interests. Random interference with the transfer and posting of the officers of any rank has made the department of personnel almost irrelevant. During the Emergency, a vigorous attempt was made by the government to galvanize the bureaucracy into a “committed” organization.
Long and uninterrupted rule by any party or any front of parties with brute majority in the legislature has also harmed bureaucracy through political meddling.
The front-rank officers, who are primarily responsible for distribution of foodgrains, financial grants and other benefits are the primary targets of the political musclemen. Even the panchayats are pressured by politicians to fix development priorities. Officers either get bullied or lured into adopting unfair means. In the process, the image of the government gets tarnished.
Opportunist and careerist officers take advantage of the situation to the detriment of the system per se and also at the expense of public interests. It would be useful to recall the observations of the Shah Commission, which had inquired into Emergency excesses ~ “The politician who uses a public servant for purely political purposes and the public servant who allows himself to be so used are both debasing themselves and doing a signal disservice to the country.”
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