CAS Dialogue: Status of India's Bureaucracy

CAS article no. 0075/2016

The following is text of a discussion held by members of Chennai Centre for China Studies on April 20 2016. The theme revolved around the status of India’s bureaucracy.

Cmde. R. S. Vasan IN (Retd.)

Director, C3S.

Sri B. S. Raghavan (Patron, C3S), had said that Prime Minister Modi needs to sort out the bureaucracy which is falling short of expectations. Here is the link to the article that echoes Sri Raghavan's views forcefully: http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/it-s-time-the-pm-shook-up-the-bureaucracy/story-SJdTKTZJBQWIR7HwL8T8wL.html#

Mr.Sivaraman IAS (Retd.),

Former Revenue Secretary, Ministry of Finance

Government of India.

Such opinions and suggestions by reporters appear in thousands of news papers.

We all talk of reforming bureaucacy but we tend to forget that we belonged to that tribe. Surely we should concede that the present day bureaucrats and armed forces officers are at least as sincere as we were. Some of them have much better qualifications than most of us of the old stock:

• They set up the e-platform for agriculture markets in a record 45 days.

• They have conceptualized FPOS to reform agriculture in a practical way.

• They have unlocked projects worth lakhs of crores of rupees and are proceeding to implement them.

• They auctioned coal mines and got over Rs. 2 lakh crores without a hitch or complaint of partiality

• They auctioned the spectrum properly.

• They have developed a scheme to make the discoms function.

• They indeed prepared a budget which one as a veteran in that area would consider as one of the best in the last decade and more.

• They have set up an e-platform for clearance of projects at the central level.

But what we call obstructionism is at the level of the state governments.

Mr. T.V. Krishnamurthy

Management Professional, Chennai.

The views expressed in the link are routinely said by many. But given the new tools introduced by the P.M to evaluate performance based on deliverables, one is confident that there may be changes in some leadership positions in the executive. That holds good for some Ministers too.

One wants to share one’s experience at a recent mock interview in Shankar's' academy (IAS exam tutors). The panelists mostly asked questions from the details provided in the application by the candidates. Hence most questions tended to be on subjective knowledge. Many question were neither pan Indian nor global in nature and were about Tamil Nadu and the college or state they came from. There were also questions on climate change, Kyoto Protocol and ecology. These questions are on set pattern and the candidates can be expected to reel out the facts without any original thinking or ideas. In other words there were very few or no questions relating to real life situations which pose actual leadership challenges or queries on why we need WTO or a non-proliferation group, how direct cash transfers are conceptually good for plugging leakages or how allocation of Rs. 2 lakh crores in the rural economy will boost production, employment and the overall GDP.

Surprisingly some candidates were found to be very promising. A very serious search in several forums revealed actual interviews in the UPSC for IAS from candidates who have appeared and passed. They are not very different from the questions asked by the panelists in Shankar's Academy. One was very disappointed with the questions asked by the chairman and four other members. All questions were subjective. This is the biggest aberration in our system. Several excerpts were read from the actual interviews, mostly latest, covering the period 2013 and 2014.

We should completely overhaul the UPSC interview system and at least there, they can consider persons from the non government sector, mainly successful entrepreneurs, CEOs from successful companies and outstanding academics strong in concepts and case studies. The current examinations, placing huge emphasis on subjects like history, geography or languages etc. are completely anachronistic. Imagine a person who has passed in languages joins the IPS. In what way is he fit for the job, based on his excellent marks in the examination?

Just as we are not able to produce Nobel laureates despite brilliant engineers and doctors from premier institutions, we will not be able to produce top class leaders in the civil service so long as we place emphasis on knowledge and only knowledge without challenging the candidates on concepts, real time challenges, possible solutions and actions as they would see appropriate and would have acted upon.

Col. R. Hariharan,VSM,

Retired Officer of Intelligence Corps, India.

Yes; columnists are often quite sweeping in their remarks and probably they feel unless it takes down somebody or other by a few pegs their articles may not get many hits. But undoubtedly there are grey areas and black sheep among bureaucrats.

According to sources who deal with the government, things are now dealt with by bureaucracy more than before. A business contact describes how typical is the case of IPR applications pending because bribes were demanded at the counter. They collectively met the HRD minister to complain. After hearing them and seeing the office functioning, she has made application (online or by speed post) with no counter transaction. And the bureaucrats handling it have a deadline to complete. The action took exactly three days! Of course it failed when the P.M asked the bureaucrats to clear over 2 lakh pending trademark registration applications before end March 2016. They simply rejected 90% of the applications to stick to the deadline. The moral of the story is our systems have to change so that bureaucracy has no option but to adopt the more versatile system.

Regarding Parikkar keeping one step ahead of Army Chief, it is possible for him to do this, as on Kashmir, he & NSA are directly accessed by IB which is very fast unlike the Army's rather creaking chain of communication. Unfortunately one finds the army bureaucracy is still in the manual mode most of the time in this era of real-time communication.

Mr. B.S. Raghavan IAS (Retd), Former Policy Advisor to UN (FAO), Chief Secretary, State Governments of West Bengal and Tripura, Secretary to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Government of India.

All bureaucrats cannot be tarred with the same brush. At all times there are exceptional and extraordinary bureaucrats. But they are outnumbered by the run-of-the-mill bureaucrats bringing bureaucracy a bad name. It may well be they are also victims of outdated colonial systems and practices. It is about them most of us are commenting and not about the performers among them.

In one’s personal experience, in the last 30 years, not one letter written, not one email sent, in a public cause to the chief secretary or secretary to SG or the Centre by me or friends, or any other public figure colleagues, have been replied to. Phone calls are never returned. On a few occasions people have gone all the way to Delhi to meet a high bureaucrat on appointment, but on arrival after a lot of strain and expense have been told that they could not meet him because of some urgent preoccupations.

What about the state of the ordinary man-in-the-street? Circulars have to be issued from time to time asking the bureaucrats to be courteous, helpful, prompt etc that is, on qualities which one thought were inborn with any human being.

Mr. T.V. Krishnamurthy

Management Professional, Chennai.

One agrees. The public dislikes the bureaucrats because they feel they are very powerful. This show and awe they create in the society is the reason why so many engineers and doctors dream of attaining IAS.

Here we are not talking about additional secretaries or secretaries who by the time they reach their positions are above the age of 50 and much more matured. But to speak to them on phone or getting appointments will be next to impossible. Common citizens do not commend them for this.

This love, hate and self-glorification will go on forever.

(All views expressed in this dialogue are the members’ own.)