INDIAN BUREAUCRACY TRAPPED

Bureaucrats are the fall guys for everything that’s wrong with India. But are the babus as uncaring and unmindful of the nation’s problems as they are made out to be or are they the victims of a political class that has prevented them from playing their true role as administrative guardians? Dozens of top-serving officials have spoken to gfiles over the last three years. Editor Anil Tyagi analyses the causes of inertia and reproduces many of the voices that have spoken with candour.

“We have to make sure that the rural sector develops at the same pace as sectors like services, manufacturing and the urban sector. There has to be balance” — KM Chandrasekhar, Cabinet Secretary (gfiles, April 2009)

“Both the Central and state governments have not built the capacity of panchayats. Unless you provide them reasonable buildings, essential manpower, essential infrastructure, how will they really function?” — ANP Sinha, Secretary, Panchayati Raj, (gfiles, September 2009)

“I saw 16 Secretaries of Tourism in UP in my five-and-a-half-year tenure in the Ministry of Tourism. No Secretary stayed more than three to four months. There is no political and administrative commitment for growth of tourism in UP” — Amitabh Kant, Additional Secretary; CEO, Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (gfiles, October 2009)

THESE are only some of the on the-record voices of India’s senior most bureaucrats who bear the onerous responsibility of running a nation of 1.2 billion people – one fifth of all humankind. Are they angry?
Are they frustrated? For sure, they are concerned. Disclosing their minds in interviews to gfiles over more than two years, their pain is revealed. These Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers with grassroots, hands-on experience know the nation’s problems. They know what needs to be done, which schemes need emergency implementation. But now, even as they sit at the top of their hierarchies, they are a sick and worried lot because, instead of becoming a part of the solution, they have become a part of the problem.
In describing their situation, the epithets fly fast and furious: they are stymied, often paralysed into inaction, trapped, ensnared. So who is preventing them from doing what must be done?
The tragic irony of modern-day Indian governance is that these guardians of administration – about 10,000 in all –have become the servants of politicians who come into power often winning no more than 29 per cent of the popular vote. This, after all, is the reality of India’s first-past-the-post modern democracy.
Once upon a time, when Indian democracy was still in its infancy, bureaucrats were considered and impediment to the growth of a newly free nation. In comparison to the politicians of yesteryear who were clean, driven by vision, dreaming of moulding a new India, bureaucrats reeked of imperial, Raj-oriented, self-perpetuating power.
It followed that the bureaucracy should be kept under control, its designs contained, by the people-empowered authority of politicians. The Minister should not only be involved in policy matters, but also be the master of everything happening in the Ministry. People, in general, thought this was right.
There was no change in popular attitude until the 1970s when criminalization of politics started affecting the lives of Indians. At first, the criminals were used by the politicians, and then they started venturing into politics directly. Money and muscle power rather than principled governance became the deciding force in the political arena.
The new political class that emerged through the process, irrespective of the party or organization, was the sole custodian of politico-administrative authority. The bureaucracy was subservient to this class. Defiance would invite punishment. Barring a handful of conscientious objectors like Aruna Roy who left the IAS to work for the political empowerment of the poor, the rest had no option. Those who dared, occasionally to revolt were appropriately ciphered.
The common man was caught in a bind as corruption in high places grew. He did not trust the politician. But nor could he look upon the bureaucrat as his saviour or a source of justice. They seemed to be hand-in-glove.
By the 1990s, two historic events changed the trajectory of independent India’s journey. One was Mandalisation of politics, and the other liberalization of the economy. Both had many advantages. Mandalisation opened the path to fulfilling aspirations of the lower strata of the population. Liberalization saved the sinking economy and opened the path to fulfilling aspirations of the emerging middle class.
But Mandalisation also brought to centrestage a set of politicians who had scant regard for regulations as well as the rule of law. This was the third assault on the system, already creaking under the weight of criminalization of politics and spread of corruption.
Politics became a means of personal aggrandizement and liberalization opened up prospects of earning huge money, legally and illegally. The political class, bereft of credibility, brazenly dominated the system.
The system needed correction. And increasing numbers of bureaucrats began to realize that they must shoulder their share of responsibility for the sake of the survival of the spirit and vision of the nation.
Through the loopholes that the political class forgot to plug emerged people like TN Seshan, the Election Commissioner who took on the mightiest without fear. A floodgate opened. The judiciary stepped in Politicians cried themselves hoarse over judicial activism. But people benefitted. The midday meal scheme in schools, for example, was a result of judicial intervention. NGOs jumped into the fray. Aruna Roy, the ex-bureaucrat, led a successful grassroots campaign for the most powerful tool of people’s empowerment – the Right to Information – with the backing of many dedicated bureaucrats like former Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar.
The political class had to yield. In addition, the emergence of the Vigilance Commission with its website, consumer courts, and related watchdog bodies headed by bureaucrats have given relief to the common man.
But the forces that threaten fair and impartial governance in India are ever present. India is now an attractive international market. The “growth engine” is being projected as if India has already joined the elite club of the developed world notwithstanding its grinding poverty. It is also serving as a propaganda vehicle for politicians and businessmen to justify greed, and self-aggrandizement as the natural corollaries of a hugely prosperous India.
THE argument is not whether to globalize or not, nor against growth and prosperit. The question is, prosperity for whom and at what cost?
What is the reaction of the bureaucracy? In their own guarded way all top bureaucrats who have spoken to gfiles on the record have said they feel trapped. They are unable to act as a deterrent to the personal aggrandizement of politicians and vested interests who have been treating the Indian state as a private milch cow. They have no power to bust the politician-businessman nexus. They have no power to launch a fight against the humongous corruption thriving at all levels of governance. They have no power to put a stop to non-governance. Here’s what they have told gfiles over the last two years:
Wajahat Habibullah, Chief Information Commissioner, said in April 2007: “The Right to Information Act (RTI) is the most important legislation in independent India. People consider it to be their law...The government is cool about it but individual officers are enthusiastic. They are eager to implement it. So, at the institutional level there is a certain reluctance to share information. You could see that the government wanted to amend the RTI Act to withhold official notings on files. The officials are not averse to the notings being accessible. An honest officer is only too keen that his notings be seen. It is the political class that is opposed. But, thanks to the media debate, the government had to step back.”
Is the bureaucracy well equipped to face the challenges of development? Here’s what Yogendra Narain, the then Secretary General of the Rajya Sabha, said in July 2007: “The workload is too much. The bureaucracy is reeling under pressure. The Centre has already reduced its employees from 38 to 34 lakh. The total bureaucracy comes to approximately one crore fifty lakh. The administrator-population ratio comes to around 1:60, which is the lowest in the whole Asian region. Every day you are announcing new schemes, new programmes and the machinery is the same. You are opening the door for corruption. We need more bureaucrats to make India’s growth engine more productive.”
Often, fingers are pointed at the bureaucracy for failing to cater to the poorer people. Hear what former Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar, who topped the 1963 IAS exam, said in an interview (August 2007): “…I call the past fifty years a period of shame for our governance. The basic concept of the Constitution, the right to live with dignity, has not been realized; 25 per cent of our population is still living below the poverty line. … The total orientation for development needs a change.”
By their own admission, bureaucrats have pinpointed the problems. They are eager to jump in. Alas, they can act only when backed by politicians. This is what BK Chaturvedi, ex-Cabinet Secretary and Planning Commission member, said in September 2007: “Districts cannot progress on their own without investments in the economy. It is only after major investments are made in infrastructure, education, health, transport, power and telecom that the country can develop. … I am Member in charge of UP in the Planning Commission. I often wonder, can India progress without UP progressing at a faster rate? I am a strong votary of some of the large states with lower income getting a strong push so that we progress rapidly as a nation and take our rightful place.”
Another take from Kripa Narayan Srivastava, a 1948-batch civil servant: “I often wonder why we have not been able to take the poor of this country along with us. We know the reason yet are helpless to do anything about it. The caste system has been exploited. I call upon the new generation of civil servants to shed the fear of transfers and say no to unfair diktats. In spite of many drawbacks, and ups and downs in the growth of the Indian economy, I see a silver lining. India is developing very fast in the right direction. We only need to be cautious and keep the welfare of the downtrodden at the centre of all our developmental planning and implementation.”
But somewhere someone would have to fix responsibility. One such organ was CAG. This is what VN Kaul, Comptroller and Auditor General, said (August 2007) about those who escape unhurt after being named: “The response from the Central and State governments has to improve. It is a lengthy process…. The problem with the government is that its response is often dismal.”
Vice-President Hamid Ansari said on Civil Services Day: “The difficulty lies in demarcating the fine line between political like-mindedness and political opportunism. It is rarely articulated coherently and inevitably surfaces in the day-to-day functioning of the administrative structure. … A distinguished former Cabinet Secretary has noted the tendency by political parties to use the bureaucratic machine as a substitute for the lack of active field cadres and it thus becomes an alternative cadre for the parties in power.”
Here a pertinent question is, what sort of pressure is exerted by politicians and what happens if the bureaucrat resists it. Read about Bikram Sarkar’s experience (March 2008): “After I assumed the post of Chairman, Calcutta Port Trust, on December 22, 1993 the Minister of State for Surface Transport asked me to meet him in Delhi for discussion regarding a CPT tender for hiring a despatch vessel. The Minister wanted me to select AKAM shipping company’s vessel (represented by one Captain Kamboj, who the Minister said was close to him). The Tender Committee, on examination of the “technical bid” of AKAM, rejected it as the vessel did not conform to the technical specification/ requirement. When I conveyed this to the Minister, he was annoyed. I expressed my inability to accept the AKAM offer as the Tender Committee selected another company’s vessel after the tender. Subsequently, in early 1994, CPT issued a tender notice asking for a pilot vessel on hire for transporting CPT pilots to the sandhead in the Bay of Bengal. AKAM participated in the tender but was again rejected as it failed to fulfil the conditions. On May 13, 1994 the Minister phoned me from Delhi at the Airport Hotel, Calcutta where the Secretary of the Ministry was holding a meeting with me and other port officers. He asked why AKAM was rejected again. I replied that its vessel would not serve the purpose. To this, he said angrily, ‘What are you doing? You can’t oblige your Minister. This time I am not going to listen to anything. See that AKAM’s ship is selected.’ The file was then referred to the Ministry for advice and direction. (The file was never returned to CPT.) While the port was recording an upswing in all respects (during my initial 10-month tenure, the revenue surplus of CPT registered a jump from Rs 44 crore to Rs 88 crore), I was told by the Minister to go on leave on July 20, 1994.”
This is an eye-opener. And, though such extremes are not always the case, here’s what SY Quraishi, Election Commissioner, said (November 2007): “The ruling and the opposition parties realize, especially when out of power, just how much they stand to gain from our interventions. …The bureaucracy is often linked to the government in power.”
BUREAUCRATS have been articulate and incisive in identifying the nature and depth of the problems eroding the entire system. They vary vastly in nature. More often than not, Ministers occupy their chairs without a smidgeon of knowledge about administration, governance or the mission of their Ministries. In today’s complex world, the problems are more often than not of a technical nature. Numerous senior bureaucrats have told gfiles, subtly, about the solutions. Only, they fall on deaf ears.
Nripendra Mishra, Chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority, in May 2007: “The problem with rural telephony is that there is no infrastructure like power, housing, liveable conditions. Even BSNL has a negative flow of funds in rural telephony in some areas. The government gives Access Definite Charge to those providing rural telephony. I recall that the Planning Commission would plan to finish the waiting list for new telephone connections in a particular area. But now the situation has changed, you go and get the connection at once.” When asked about number portability, he said, “We made a recommendation to DoT in 2005. They are yet to decide. Number portability requires a lot of investment in infrastructure.” It has not yet been decided.
MP Narayanan, former Chairman, Coal India (October 2007): “The paradox is that the triangle of businessman, bureaucrat and politician has a hold over the PSU. They enjoy power without responsibility, authority without accountability.”
Pronab Sen, Chief Statistician of India, said categorically in December 2007: “The employment exchange does not work in India. Rather, it works only for the government and public sector, it does not work for the private sector. …The Ministry of Labour is putting a lot of emphasis on vocational education. This is easier said than done. Finding teachers to teach vocational skills is difficult. For one, it requires people willing to adopt a hands-on approach. This is difficult to find in a government set-up. It would require the changing of mindset. If you want to teach carpentry, you would need to hire an experienced carpenter–someone around 45 years of age. But government rules forbid hiring anyone of that age.” We do not know whether anyone at any corner of the corridor of power ever discussed it in the past two years.
Pratyush Sinha, then Central Vigilance Commissioner, said (January 2008) about defence deals: “We need to have a system in place which encourages competition. We have persuaded the Ministry of Defence to lay down clearcut procurement procedures.” The question still remains, have they been implemented? Let the reader guess.
Satyanand Mishra, Secretary, Department of Personnel and Training, the nodal agency that virtually runs the civil service, revealed in February 2008: “It was realized that the process of consultation in three Ministries – Finance, Law, and Department of Personnel – is long and time-consuming. It was felt that we are risk-averse and, to overcome this drawback, we must try to reduce the process of consultation. There is a 10-tier structure of consultancy prevailing in the government. Starting from the clerk, we move vertically up to the Section Officer, Under-Secretary, Joint Secretary, Additional Secretary, Secretary, Minister and finally the Cabinet. The Prime Minister says we must simplify things and take decisions without fear. We are on the job. We have done it partly, in vigilance cases where the process of clearance has been simplified. We are creating a conducive environment for this. Since the dawn of public-private partnership (PPP) projects, the need to take bold decisions has arisen. We have empowered our officers to take decisions without fear. We are of the view that, even if the decision is wrong, the officer concerned should not be punished – unlike in the past. The government’s approach is that decisions should be fast.”
But has the government really taken any decision that has hastened the process of decision-making? Here’s the view of Shantha Sheela Nair, Secretary, Drinking Water Supply (April 2008):
“We have grossly neglected the natural water bodies. Water is available but it has been contaminated by defecation in the open and mishandling of the water bodies by the rural communities. …The problem needs to be looked at from three angles: government, village community and panchayat. By harvesting rain water, Khari village of Kutch, with an annual rainfall of just 350 mm and faced with two or three droughts every five years, has become self-sufficient in water. The village no longer needs water from the Narmada grid.”
VIJAY Shanker, while he was still CBI director, said in June 2008: “Police personnel are perceived as personal armies of State governments. … Unless the Constitution is amended, it is not possible to create a federal agency. It also needs a political consensus.”
Partha S Bhattacharya, CIL Chairman, has an interesting view (July 2008) on how an imaginative bureaucracy can achieve a lot, if not hindered by vested interests of the political class: “One major activity which used to be there before 2004 was getting coal at notified prices and selling it in the black market at higher prices, mainly to brick manufacturers. We observed that once we issued the delivery order, it used to change hands. We were losing the premium but we could not do anything as we used to sell coal at notified prices. We introduced the system of e-auction. Coal is available on the site and anybody can bid. That has put a stop to the coal mafia selling coal at higher prices.”
There is no field in which the bureaucrats running this nation lack expertise or a remedial vision. Take basic education. Why is the dropout rate so high in India? Here was a prompt response (August 2008) from Arun Kumar Rath, Secretary, School Education and Literacy: “A gamut of factors. More than parental apathy, it is lack of access. It is also linked to quality. If the school is not providing quality education. If the parents feel the child is going to school and coming back without learning, they consider it a waste of time. Take girls. We are taking a series of measures for girls’ education. The school must be gender-sensitive. The girl child must feel welcome in the school atmosphere. The national curriculum framework of 2005 insists on gender sensitivity of the curriculum. More and more women teachers should join as girls feel encouraged in their presence. Another initiative we are taking is toilets. A study has shown that if you provide separate toilets for girls, enrolment goes up and the dropout rate goes down.”
Rakesh Mehta, Chief Secretary of Delhi, talked about traffic chaos in the nation’s capital in October 2008: “Big cities solved this problem by two measures, restriction on car ownership and multi-mode transport system. There is no third solution.” Is anybody listening? Satyanarayana Dash, Secretary, Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, declared in December 2008 that his challenge was making the 16 loss-making PSUs profitable.
BK Sinha, Director General, National Institute of Rural Development, said in March 2009: “Grassroots planning has never been implemented.”
Just a month after his retirement, former vice-chief of the Army, Lt General Noble Thamburaj, said, “We should not prepare for the last war but for the future war. The dimensions of war are changing. The Indian military has to be ready for terrorism and fourth generation war games. We have challenges to face –cyber wars, media wars, psycho wars and the war against non-state players.”
What about India’s oldest and most cherished endeavour of empowering rural India and decentralising decision-making – a concept embraced by Gandhi and every politician who swears allegiance to the flag—Panchayati Raj? Listen, again, to ANP Sinha (September 2009), Secretary, Panchayati Raj : “Both the central and state governments have not built the capacity of the panchayats. Unless you provide them reasonable buildings, essential manpower, essential infrastructure, how will they really function?”
Collectively, this is damning indictment of the system by some of the most accomplished administrators at the helm of the nation’s affairs. They know what ails the country. They know what must be done. They know how to do it. They are aching to be heard. Is anybody listening?

—with inputs from Diptendra Raychaudhuri—