Jumbo bureaucracy

Which is why I was filled with admiration when I learnt that Minister of State for Small-Scale Industries Vasundara Raje Scindia had hired the consultancy firm, Arthur Anderson, to look into the operations of the Khadi and Village Industries Development Commission, where apparently not just clerks and section officers, but entire outlets listed in the books have disappeared. The prospect of a bunch of young, eager beaver MBAs let loose in a musty government office to cross-question the staff on their job descriptions, productivity, and updating of technical skills et al, an exercise which those in the private sector are fully familiar with, is tantalising. Would redundancy in a particular department be estimated at 25, 50, 75 or even 100 per cent?

Here are some intriguing examples. After the licence raj was dismantled in the early nineties, the Industries Ministry should logically have been wound up since its raison d8217;etre was no more. But, instead of contracting, the ministry has bloated. Earlier, there was one full secretary to handle the entire ministry, now we have a secretary for small-scale industries, a secretary for heavy industries and till recently we even had a separate secretary for industrial policy and promotion and another for industrial development these last two posts have now merged. Besides, there is a secretary for food processing and another for sugar and edible oils.

Is an entire secretariat for steel justified when the government controls only one steel manufacturing conglomerate, the Steel Authority of India Limited? Agriculture is a state subject and almost entirely in the hands of private enterprise. So why is Krishi Bhavan the largest Central government office in Delhi when at the most the ministry can only act as a catalyst? Women and Child Development, Rural Development, Animal Husbandry and Tribal Welfare are other newly formed ministries at the Centre, though their functional portfolios are essentially state-specific.

There is much derision every time new ministries are created by bifurcating and even trifurcating existing ministries in order to accommodate more and more ministerial aspirants. But hardly anyone notices when the bureaucracy does exactly the same thing to accommodate members of its tribe, since it smoothly rationalises the move with its own special jargon.

Two months ago, the government transferred the job of implementing the new family planning policy from the Health Ministry which had the family planning department, the expertise and had formulated the policy to the Planning Commission which lacked the expertise. The upheaval was merely to secure a suitable post for a recently promoted secretary to the Planning Commission who is the sister of a powerful secretary to the Prime Minister.

Last month, the entire telecom staff went on strike over the reasonable demand that an IAS officer should not head a highly technical department. Rather than back down, our top bureaucrats came up with the ingenuous solution that the communication department be bifurcated. That way the IAS secretary could keep his post and save face, while the technocrat heading the newly created department handled the specialised job.

Departments like programme implementation and animal husbandry were created as part of the IAS8217; jobs for the boys8217; programme. Likewise, chairmanships of PSUs are routinely handed out to senior IAS officers shopping around for posts, without any concern for their suitability for the job. Former Haryana Chief Minister Devi Lal once created the post of OSD, Morni Hills, a picnic spot, for an out of favour bureaucrat.

A favourite dumping ground for unemployed secretaries is the Planning Commission where there are at least half a dozen full secretaries officiating as advisers. To justify their existence, the advisers initiated the practice of overseeing the implementation of Centrally sponsored schemes in states, though the Centre8217;s actual work is simply to hand over the money. Some years ago, a detailed inquiry brought out the embarrassing fact that at least three-fourths of the 300 Centrally sponsored schemes should logically be transferred to the states to avoid duplication of work. But the implication of this recommendation was that several ministries would be practically wound up, leaving the advisers with no work. Predictably, the matter was swept under the carpet by referring it to the National Development Council for further study!

Today one-fifth of the country8217;s revenues are used to pay the salaries of Central Government employees. And another 10 to 20 per cent goes into the indirect costs of maintaining this army of underemployed and underperforming government servants in terms of goods and services. In the states, the proportion of revenue taken up by the salary bill is still higher. In the Northeast, for instance, 85 per cent of the revenue is spent on staff salaries and maintenance and there is hardly anything left in the kitty for development projects.

In 1998, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha promised a reduction of at least four full secretary-level posts by the year-end. Two years later, the number of secretaries has increased by two. A bureaucrat friend deplores the media8217;s tendency to blame the IAS when discussing the burgeoning salary bill of the government. After all, class one officers account for only 1.2 per cent of the total bill. He forgets, however, that every time you create a new secretary you have a ballooning effect all down the line. No full secretary to the GOI worth his salt can have less than one additional secretary, who needs two joint secretaries under him. Each joint secretary needs a minimum of two under secretaries and all those at the top of the pyramid need a suitable number of upper division and lower division clerks and the mandatory peons. Small wonder that no department agrees to downsize. To do so would be to acknowledge that there was very little work in the first place.