The Hindu Business Line : No case to shelve the bureaucracy

INDIA'S technology-driven growth, while helping the nation move towards self-sustenance and global competitiveness, has bypassed large sections of the population. For the majority, the clock of progress has remained still.

In the realm of wealth distribution, the problem runs much deeper. Even today, land remains the most coveted means of production and its holding pattern has not seen any perceptible change.

Education and basic amenities still come at a premium, and access to them is controlled by caste overlords. Owing to rigid mindsets and misplaced priorities, the root causes for these problems have not been addressed. And, hence, the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening which, if not bridged quickly, will tempt the underprivileged to take recourse to desperate measures.

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, in his maiden address to the nation, assigned highest priority to fundamental reforms in government. The democracy of political tokenism, especially at the lower rungs, has failed to distribute evenly the fruits of the above-world-average growth rates that the country has been able to register over the last decade and a half.

Democracy, therefore, must permeate the socio-economic fabric and reach the grassroots level. This can be achieved through decentralised planning. Also needed is transparency in public systems and administration for viable and self-procreating progress. For this, the practice of window-dressing and making cosmetic policy changes must be stopped.

While the proponents of free market and `minimum government' are targeting the bureaucracy, and for valid reasons too, they often do so without having any viable alternatives.

Mindless dismantling of the bureaucracy will not help improve governance; alternatives free of much of the shortcomings must be at hand. True, one cannot be faulted for criticising a sluggish bureaucracy, often caught in the quagmire of rulebooks and somewhat transfixed by a bizarre and obstinate inclination to go by the word rather than by the spirit. It is also seen as hindering the process of globalisation.

But what many fail to perceive is that, often, the worst of the times is also paradoxically the best in terms of opportunities. In fact, of all the known structures of governance, bureaucracy is demonstrably the most robust and resilient.

The very fact that it has existed this long, and even in these changing times, is proof of its usefulness. In a country with a multitude of problems, bureaucracy is perhaps the only way to maintain an organic communion between policymakers and the end-users.

In many structural areas of governance, bureaucracy remains the only alternative. Though oft-ridiculed for its vastness, there is much potential that can be tapped, especially during periods of change.

As a vehicle for carrying policymakers' formulations to the common man, the bureaucracy has gained in strength and stature to emerge as an essential tool for effective functioning of any government. The time has come to rejuvenate the bureaucracy, by marrying the virtues and attributes of the new world order with those that the civil services has retained and reinforced over time. It is one thing to criticise the bureaucracy, but an altogether different proposition to visualise governance without it. Regional disparities, economic and geographic, often lead to political conflicts with parochial overtones.

While political vision and leadership are essential to mitigate such clashes of interests, it will come a cropper without a strong, pan-Indian bureaucratic set-up that is committed, dispassionate, objective and resolute. Such a set-up is crucial for tackling sensitive national issues that have global overtones.

True that the bureaucracy's role would be somewhat limited in a market economy, but its task will be more crucial and refined than in the past. In the situation of expanding interfaces that entails the role of NGOs and other bodies outside the realm of government, the bureaucracy is now saddled with the responsibility of spotting partners in growth and amalgamating with them through a constant process of observation, evaluation and corrective regulation.

Though haunted by a colonial past, with many preferring being served than to serve, a lackadaisical bureaucracy is often the result not of any lack of inherent capabilities but the non-existence of effective implementable deterrents, the lack of premium for effective decision-making, the absence of administrative protection for bona fide mistakes and failure to discourage inefficiency or even thinly-veiled acts of deliberate wrong-doing. Missing sorely is an effective built-in appraising mechanism; the sooner it is in place, the better.

It is important to ensure that in the name of appraising, enterprising bureaucrats who do not toe a particular line are not made to pay the price. The relationship between the bureaucracy and the legislature remains constrained, afflicting both the arms of governance. For the bureaucracy, the dividing line between independence and accountability gets blurred as diverse interest groups pull in different directions.

It certainly is not the occasion to be drawn into a blame game. It is time the role of the permanent and political wings of the executive are specifically enshrined in the Constitution; though Article 311 provides some protection to the members of the civil service against arbitrary action, legislation is required to be enacted providing inviolable statutory footing to the values and principles governing the functioning of the civil service, and defining the exact role of civil servants as distinct from those of the elected representatives.

(The author is a member of the Indian Revenue Service. The views are personal.)

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