Tyranny of propriety

The Delhi High Court has given the Government a well-deserved respite by allowing T.S.R. Subramanian to remain Cabinet Secretary until February 4. The drama of the Cabinet Secretary’s continuation or otherwise in office would be a true farce if it were not such a sad comment on wrong-headed priorities and obsessions. Separated from the electoral context, the Central Administrative Tribunal may well have been right to forbid a second extension to Subramanian. In that event, its order that reappointment and not extension was the way to keep the same man in office might also make sense. It would have the merit at least of not keeping officialdom on tenterhooks for extended periods. As it happens, there is no separating this particular extension from the electoral context. The three-month extension was a simple step by a caretaker Government to avoid making the top bureaucratic appointment. It might have spared itself such fastidiousness. The most finicky of minds may have found nothing to fault in its conduct; the CAT thought otherwise.

The CAT was ill-advised to even admit a public-interest litigation. This was purely a government matter. The only ones entitled to complain, as the High Court has observed, were involved parties. As to reappointment, would the Government’s present critics have accepted the reappointment of the same man, or the appointment of a new Cabinet Secretary for a full tenure by a lame-duck Government? In fact, it does not help to be pedantic in these matters. Unless the Government had obviously embarked on a full-fledged and motivated appointment spree, there would have been little harm in its making one appointment, if it happened to come due during its tenure. It desisted because of a justified fear of “controversy”. But if people are bent on making a controversy, a controversy they will get. Indeed, they have already got it. The way caretaker governance is coming to be viewed, it could soon be time to argue that caretaker governments should not be allowed and some other constitutional procedure worked out to put in place an administration that was really allowed to govern in the run-up to elections.

The bottomline is that this is only one bureaucratic appointment. So much sleep need not be lost by so many over it. A Cabinet Secretary, no matter that he is the head of the civil service, is just one more bureaucrat. He is not a Prime Minister, a vacancy in whose office for even a day has real as well as symbolic consequences. Such a hue and cry about there being no Cabinet Secretary for two days only reflects the bureaucracy’s crushing grip on minds and administration. It is even more absurd that crucial government decisions should be held up for this reason. In the President’s absence, the Vice-President automatically steps into his shoes. If the head of the civil service is so crucial, the holder of another bureaucratic office should similarly be known to be second in command. Why should routine decisions become hostage to one bureaucratic vacancy, and that because a weak government and its over-assertive wings cannot see eye to eye on a question of relative insignificance? Surely government and people have more important things to do and worry about?