Opinion Indian bureaucracy: Efficient about the wrong things
The spat between the MoS for Health and the Health Secretary sounds personal.
The spat between the MoS for Health and the Health Secretary sounds personal. (https://indianexpress.com/news/Health-Secy-objects-as-MoS-says-babus-slow/641264) But it ought not to be so. The specifics of the web portal that was to be launched are also irrelevant. As far as one can make out,expenditure on the portal couldn’t be met fast enough,since clearances couldn’t be obtained fast enough.
Minister Dinesh Trivedi reportedly said there was red-tapism in the Health Ministry,the bureaucracy was slow,didn’t understand technology,and to rub salt into the wound,”If we get young graduates,they would work much better.”
These are tautological statements,and there is no reason to take umbrage. At best,Mr Trivedi is culpable for picking on the Health Ministry. Bureaucracy is no different anywhere else in the government system.
In response,Health Secretary K Sujatha Rao is reported to have said that the Indian bureaucracy “was among the most scrutinized in the world”. That’s neither here nor there. After having been scrutinized,the Indian bureaucracy has been labeled as one of the most obstructionist in the world. The World Bank’s doing-business indicators are only one instance.
However,and this is where the Health Secretary misses the point,this is no indictment of individual bureaucrats or of the senior civil services. It is more an indictment of the system.
Risk-aversion is built into the system in several ways,including in the Prevention of Corruption Act. For example,a benefit to a third party can be construed as criminal misconduct,unless it can be established that this benefit to the third party was in public interest. Since every decision benefits some party or the other,the implication is that no one wishes to take decisions. Ipso facto,any new idea will be subjected to these so-called checks and balances,and expenditure cannot be sanctioned fast.
Yes,if young graduates had been freed from these fetters,they would have taken decisions faster. And we do get young graduates into the civil services and kill their appetite for taking risks. It is quite tragic,the way idealism at 24 is transformed into cynicism at 44.
There is no dearth of reports on what should be done to alter incentive structures. Indeed,a web portal could be launched entirely on that. Unfortunately,beyond increasing emoluments,almost nothing has happened on civil service reform. Given this,it isn’t surprising that reforms get stuck. What is surprising is that the limited reforms that have happened,actually occurred.
Indian bureaucracy isn’t inefficient. It is efficient,but it does the wrong things.
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