A rubber-stamp bureaucracy has collapsed in Gujarat: ex-Cab Secy

Communal carnages aren8217;t new to the country but the Godhra attack and the violence that followed it have exposed a new dimension of adm...

Communal carnages aren8217;t new to the country but the Godhra attack and the violence that followed it have exposed a new dimension of administrative inaction, says former Cabinet Secretary T S R Subramanian.

8216;8216;What has happened is something much more fundamental than Gujarat: The civil service is gone. There is no such thing left. Over the years, the civil service has turned from a steelframe to non-existent. And that is the shattering thought,8217;8217; he told The Indian Express today.

Two days after the Babri Masjid was demolished December 1992, it was Subramanian who was rushed to Uttar Pradesh as Chief Secretary following imposition of President8217;s rule in the state by the Congress government at the Centre.

His brief was to stamp out the communal fire that had started smouldering there. Though violence spread to Bombay and elsewhere, in Uttar Pradesh the backlash was nipped in the bud.

8216;8216;When the government wants something done it has the ability, it has the takat strength. It can do it in village after village, town after town. That it has not done in Gujarat is a telling indictment not only of the way of the present government, but also the collapse of the police and civil magistracy,8217;8217; he says.

The failure, Subramanian quotes serving bureaucrats, was because of a political direction from the state polity to the administrative machinery to let the retaliation go on and not intervene.

And the bureaucrats, hammered into submission by the politicians over the years, toed the line, he says.

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8216;8216;We now see another manifestation of politics ruining the country8230;They are now servants of the pujari priest, not of God. They are no more servants of the Constitution, its enshrined principles of equality and secularism.8217;8217; He fears that if unchecked, the communal frenzy whipped in Gujarat for political gains could spread and assume disturbing dimensions.

8216;8216;8230;If it continues, sooner or later it is bound to find a course elsewhere. Suppose the fire spreads to Uttar Pradesh, will the nation be able to contain it? Will the nation be able to handle the losses?8217;8217;

About 80 of the 100,000 villages in Uttar Pradesh have some proportion of minority community residing in local adjustments with the Hindus.

8216;8216;We have started a process again which after events of 1947 was contained. I am pained to think that in the new millennium, new century, we are back to Suhrawardi era8230;We are close to confrontation in the country. We are sitting on a powder keg.8217;8217;

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His advice therefore for any 8216;8216;good administration8217;8217; is to look at all possibilities and try to contain the marginal elements.