Whom does India need: karmacharis or karmayogis?

This having been said, it is worth asking the question: How do ordinary citizens — namely, those citizens who are outside the government apparatus — view heftier pay packets being given to government employees and officers? Members of the general public would not cavil at all if they were satisfied with the functioning of the bureaucracy, or if they thought that higher salaries would ensure better service. Sadly, the citizenry’s view of babudom is far from flattering. We call ourselves a democracy, but if democracy means that people are the rulers, that definition falls to pieces at the ordinary citizen’s first contact with the government machinery. More often than not, the aam aadmi is made to feel helpless and humiliated, as if the clerk or officer in a government office is doing him a favour by rendering a service (which sometimes is as simple as providing basic information) that ought to be considered the fundamental right of every citizen.

The government’s — any government’s — ways of functioning are largely opaque, unresponsive, insensitive and people-unfriendly. They are tailor-made to promote delays, unnecessary paper work, irrational file movements, bribery and corruption. I rarely watch non-news programmes on television, but the one popular serial that I have always liked is ‘Office Office’, a satire on how an ordinary citizen (Pankaj Kapoor playing the role of Musaddi Lal) is harassed at every turn in a typical government department. A satire, by its very nature, exaggerates the reality and overstates the flaws of those being parodied. However, I can say, on the basis of numerous personal experiences, that India’s bureaucratic machinery tries hard to prove that even its most imaginative satirisation can only be an understatement of the tyranny that an ordinary citizen experiences in overstaffed government offices.

Of course, if you happen to have enough money to grease greedy palms, or come with a sufficiently high-level shifaarish, the same machinery will accord you VIP treatment, often by bending the rules and flouting the laws — be it in a police thana, a court of law or the high-ceilinged ministerial offices in Lutyens’ Delhi.

The tragedy of India’s democracy is that no government and no political party has so far made a serious, sincere, sustained and comprehensive effort to reform our system of governance, in which the common man mostly figures in election manifestos but does not have any real place or voice. People’s participation is a nice-sounding phrase, but are people’s views really sought, let’s say on an annual basis, in a social audit of the functioning of government offices? Are our bureaucrats, who enjoy lifelong job security, accountable to the people in any way? Do senior officers work as change agents and result-oriented leaders, and are they in any way penalised if they don’t?

The fundamental question that ought to be debated in the context of the pay panel’s recommendations is this: Should our government employees look upon themselves merely as ‘karmacharis’, with nothing higher to motivate them than the size of their pay packets and periodic promotions, or as ‘karmayogis’, driven by a sense of service-orientation and feeling proud of being a part of the system of governance in the world’s largest democracy, one which still has gigantic unfinished tasks of development and nation-building? A karmayogi is one who attains self-growth and experiences the inner joy of contributing one’s little bit to a great national cause. In contrast are the karmacharis who routinely harass the hapless Musaddi Lals in our society, wound their dignity and self-pride as citizens, and themselves lead lives of little dignity and attainment. Whom does India need: karmacharis or karmayogis?

sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com