I believe that within the larger crisis of governance, there is another crisis of the civil services that has been gathering over decades in our country. It is a recognized fact that we have an almost incorruptible system of recruiting our higher civil servants based entirely on merit. They undergo rigorous training in their disciplines and are given enormous responsibilities from the first day of their postings. It is also true that the civil services have acquitted themselves rather efficiently in country’s development. The uninterrupted march of democracy and stability of the Nation during the last six decades is not entirely without the contribution of our civil servants. I think that despite hiccups they have performed well in maintaining the stability of the nation and sanity of the system of governance.
But however much we may take pride in the quality of our civil servants, it cannot also be denied that they have suffered from a bias towards status quo, inability to learn from the future, working in compartments rather than trying cross-cutting initiatives and failing to be seen as people friendly. In fact, the media and public perception view the rusted ‘steel frame’ as a well-operated gang of corrupt and incompetent members.
That’s the crisis of the civil services.
The civil servant of the 21st century will have to be more accountable for his (or her) services to the common man. A high performing civil servant will be critical to good governance and to the effective delivery of public services. He will have to find his identity not only in his work but also in public perception. Yet I do not see a public debate about the future of the civil service either in public discourse or in the media. Instead the discussion has been confined to the more visible but relatively narrow issue of politicization of bureaucracy.
It is surprising that even after 66 years of the Constitution making provisions for the higher civil services; they have not found an identity of their own. Despite the privilege conferred on them by Articles 310-311, they have failed in developing a vision of their own. They have not fixed the benchmarks for their conduct and processes. There are no safeguards against failing to deliver services to the people.
While Indian politics has thrown up new paradigms from time to time, the civil services do not provide a single example of collective ethical leadership. We have seen a JP movement in the seventies for people’s governance, a VP Singh effect during eighties against corruption, a NTR storming the citadel of mal-governance by the Congress government, a Jayprakash Narayan in Andhra Pradesh. The latest example is the movement of Anna Hazare successfully rousing public sentiment against government corruption. In the civil services, there are many cases where civil servants have fought their individual battles against injustice, but these cases have failed to stir a larger mass of fellow bureaucrats.
Did the senior civil servants commit mistakes in not realizing their relevance to the game of governance? Have they made errors? I think they have.
The biggest mistake they committed was that there was no sense of urgency in the senior bureaucrats. Their complacency levels were very high, at least in the first three decades after independence. There was nothing that could displace the All India Services from the heights bestowed on them by the founding fathers of the republic. They reveled in the trust placed on us by Sardar Patel and kept repeating what he had said in his address to the probationers of the first batch of civil servants on 21 April 1947. They did not see the dangers and possibilities clearly. B K Nehru merely pointed out the follies of other colleagues and political bosses, but did not give a roadmap of what needed to be done. (Nice guys come second)
They failed to create sufficient urgency in their transactions with the citizen. For them, there was no need to force changes in the mode of administration from the pre-independence era. They underestimated their designated role in the system and were happy to live in their comfort zones. They did not realize that their actions reinforced the status quo. They did not see the crises that could develop by their lack of foresight.
Without a sense of urgency, people do not put in the extra effort that is often essential. They would not make the needed sacrifices. Instead they would cling to the status quo.
Another major mistake of the senior bureaucrats was to act alone. Most of the brilliant officers, who could have set the standards of service, were loners. GG Somaiah in his memoirs thinks that the honest always stand alone. Even the initiatives taken by them were not shared with their teams. The civil hierarchy did not work like a machine.
The individual alone, however competent and charismatic he may be, does not possess the endowments to overcome the inertia of the system. Team building is essentially based on shared perspective and shared goals. A coalition of leaders is more effective than a solitary leader. The aggregation of seniority, reputations, knowledge, abilities and expertise has the power to drive the bulk of administration.
RP Noronha was a little more candid about the risks of acting in the way they did. “One of most common criticisms of the Service was that we were snobs. I do not think we were. The fact of the matter is that isolation or exclusiveness is a necessary insurance for anyone who wields the kind of power a member of ICS or IAS wields... But what were we like as people? Very ordinary I think. Neither plastic saints not complete back guards, although some of us did try... An officer resists political pressure either because he is built that way, or because he knows that he will be protected if he does the right thing...” (A Tale told by an idiot)
Unfortunately, no one saw the importance of collective leadership. Individual leaderships attract countervailing forces. A forceful boss can be able to start an initiative but cannot bring about behavioural change in his followers. After his departure, the initiative is either forgotten or is replaced by the initiative of his successor
If a strong guiding coalition had developed in the initial years of administration, its continuance in spite of change in the incumbents would have reduced, if not altogether removed, the massive inertia inherited from the colonial administration.
The third mistake was to ignore the requirement of a sensible civil service vision. The vision helps the constituents to understand their value and inspire positive action to realize the vision. Its reiteration is a constant reminder to the new entrants of their place in the sun. Without a cogent vision, the bureaucracy as a whole ended in a confusing array of disjointed and incompatible projects, schemes and programmes destined to vapourise into nothingness.
The net result is that there exists no harmony within any civil service. Unlike the defence services, the civil services have not been able to create a brand image of ‘Civilian’ despite having virtually held sway over every nook and corner of a citizen’s life. The only dubious brand the civil servant carries is that of an arrogant ‘Babu’ who is also sometimes corrupt.
I believe that there are significant lessons to be learnt from the experience of the last six decades. Perhaps the civil servants of today need to subvert their personal aspirations and start seriously thinking about the civil service of tomorrow.
Or is it too much to expect?
- Prabhat Kumar
