Ever since the elections of 2024, a cloud of uncertainty appears to have settled on the Government of India. As Alice of Alice in Wonderland fame would have put it, things are becoming curiouser and curiouser. Some elements in the government seem to be still under the impression that the old days of unrestrained authority and despotic exercise of power continue uninterrupted. The reality of a strong Opposition and the inability to rule without carrying colleagues who are not necessarily like-minded has not yet sunk in. We saw this earlier when the Finance Minister repeatedly referenced Andhra Pradesh and Bihar in her Budget speech. We saw it again in the Pooja Khedkar case when the confusion surrounding selections by the UPSC came to light. We see it again in the sharp turn the government had to make on lateral entries into government without reservation, as provided in the Constitution.
The government perceives lateral entry as a panacea for all administrative ills. In 2014, the then prospective PM said that the new government would be one of “maximum governance, minimum government”. The converse seems to have happened. Instead, there is every sign of bloating of the government, and there is the sudden realisation that there are too few civil servants to serve a burgeoning population. Not only is recruitment through normal channels expanding, the government feels that the answer to its woes lies in bringing bright new people at the middle level from the private sector, who will overcome the shortcomings of the dullards selected after a laborious process of examination and interviews by the UPSC.
Strangely, the government still cannot understand that public administration is far removed from corporate governance. The management of a corporate entity is based on clear and unchanging objectives. Maximising profit and increasing stock values are the objectives that corporate managers pursue. All the various organs of a corporate entity are directed towards achieving these objectives, which remain unchanged.
On the other hand, public administration consists of a medley of departments or organisations dealing with areas as diverse as education, health, internal and external security, science and technology, foreign affairs, agriculture, industry and many other sectors. Administration is intended to assist the political executive in implementing policies. The individual administrator does not have a single-pointed objective that does not change with time. Policies may change from time to time with every change of government. The public administrator also needs to learn to work with different kinds of politicians, while the contact of corporations with politicians is more on a random, issue-to-issue basis.
To believe that the flaws and inadequacies in the government sector are on account of officers and employees who operate the system is an unfair assessment. The assumption that the governmental system can be set right by importing corporate employees or appointing consultants experienced in corporate governance work is wholly misplaced.
S K Das, in his book, Building a World Class Civil Service for Twenty-First Century India, says that the civil service in independent India “has not merely continued the hierarchical, rigid, centralised nineteenth-century bureaucratic model created by the British but also deepened it in all the key aspects. If at all, the Indian civil service has become even more bureaucratic. The outdated, rigid and cumbersome rules and regulations continued to operate, and new ones have been added over the years. The overall result is a regulatory environment and an emphasis on process, which is inconsistent with contemporary management philosophy and acts as a major inhibitor to innovations and best practice.”
Therefore, the problem lies with the civil service system, not with individual officers constituting the system. The same officers, who have skill sets no different from those in sectors outside government, can achieve dazzling results if the system as a whole flips into an output and outcomes mode. Our problem has been that we fail to recognise the truth staring us in the face by keeping the overall system intact and without fundamental change. We have to understand that the governmental system is a conglomeration of subsystems. Within these subsystems, given support and flexibility, individual officers have achieved marvellous results; some continue for a long time, and most are short-lived, surviving only as long as the officer continues in that position.
Bringing talent from outside the system at appropriate levels to achieve well-defined objectives can lead to spectacular results. Bringing Nandan Nilekani to devise a networked system for identifying residents of India was a brainwave of Manmohan Singh. The Aadhaar card was the outcome of this exercise, serving multiple purposes today. Similar results were obtained by S Ramadorai, who was brought in to create a skill development system. It must be noted that both these individuals were given the rank of Cabinet Minister, which enabled them to exercise authority and achieve results. Bringing lateral entrants from the corporate sector at lower levels, such as the joint secretary or director, will not deliver the same outcome as the system is not such that they can fully display their skills and talents, a problem which civil servants with high academic credentials also encounter. The challenge lies in creating an overarching system with well-defined goals, within which we have subsystems also with their own goals.
If we want to make a systemic change at the national and state level, the following factors are necessary. One, political ownership at the central and state level — empowered authorities headed by the PM and CM. Two, as GST became a reality through interaction between the states, a large-scale administrative change is possible only with the acceptance of states. The NITI Aayog, which has all the chief ministers as its members, could be turned into a vehicle for bringing about this change. Three, study the Australian and New Zealand systems, the OECD systems, and their adaptation to our requirements. DAR&PG could do this. The Commonwealth Secretariat, which has been working on this, could assist. Four, the cabinet secretary and secretary, DAR& PG could hold periodic meetings with state chief secretaries and GOI secretaries. This will ease the problems of coordination.
Nothing will happen overnight. It will take time and effort to overhaul a deeply entrenched system. Indeed, it would be foolish to make the task even more challenging by ignoring constitutional provisions for reservation.
The writer is former Cabinet Secretary and author of As Good as My Word: a Memoir
