Sunday, November 7, 2010

Bureaucrats are failing the nation


In the system of public administration that India has inherited from the colonial British and wholeheartedly retained all these 63 years after Independence, the top bureaucrats manning the various departments and levels of the Central and State Governments are expected to guarantee the sanctity of all official transactions and observance of the criteria of fairness and accountability. In a sense, they are regarded as the custodians of nation's interests.



The rationale of the protection given under the Constitution to the organised Services, such as the Indian Administrative, Police and Revenue Services, to the extent of making them immune from any punitive or vindictive action is that they will carry out their duties in a dispassionate and independent manner, without fear or favour, affection or ill-will, resisting pulls and pressures from whatever quarter that are detrimental to the well-being of the people.



The logic behind the requirement of specific sanction for starting criminal proceedings against officials above the Joint Secretary's rank is also the same: In the discharge of their functions in good faith they should not be subjected to victimisation in the form of proceedings based on frivolous, vexatious or malicious complaints.



In a parliamentary democracy, politicians have of necessity to face elections at regular intervals, and in order to win, make all kinds of promises, some of which may even be violative of norms of financial prudence and administrative propriety. Once they are elected and form part of governments, they are expectedly impatient to make good their commitments.



The paramount task of advising on their feasibility, giving them the appropriate legal backing and, if otherwise in conformity with the imperatives of public interest, taking suitable measures for giving effect to them, falls on the bureaucrats.



Sacrosanct role



In the process, the nation expects them to guide politicians in positions of authority and power along the right lines in regard to what is good for the health of the body politic, and if and when necessary, to courageously stand up to them and act as a second line of defence against adoption of impulsive and reckless policies and schemes that can eventually prove harmful.



Instances of bureaucrats abdicating this vital role have been multiplying in recent years and those having the strength of will not to buckle under any circumstances and being prepared to face the consequences have become rare.



They who fail the nation by abdicating their vital role can be grouped under three categories:



The timid, who wish to avoid any confrontation and give up after an initial remonstration (there are not more than a few of these);



the easy-going who are content to carry out the politicians' wishes, salving their conscience with the rationalisation that politicians, being elected by, and close to, the people, know what is best (this category forms the bulk); and



the unscrupulous, who actively connive, if not conspire, with the politicians in their misdeeds (their number, in popular perception, is rapidly growing).



It is the direct or tacit collusion by passive and pliant bureaucrats that is at the root of the unending series of scams and faked encounter deaths.



Actually, the sacrosanct role of the bureaucrats does not stop with maintaining the highest ethical standards; it also extends to their acting as whistle-blowers when any act of impropriety, illegality or malfeasance by politicians in power is perpetrated over their opposition or comes to their knowledge or notice.



If only bureaucrats, especially the top ones, in the Ministries of Communications and Sports, as also in the Organising Committee of the Commonwealth Games (CWG), had been alive to this principle, people would not still remain in the dark, or have dust thrown in their eyes, about the goings-on in respect of the scandals concerning 2G spectrum and CWG.

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