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Babus vs netas |
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The new media mandarins
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Babus vs netas
What
the US Presidential candidate Senator Barak Obama said about the bureaucracy in the United States is equally true of bureaucracy in India. The 20th century steel frame of Indian Administrative Service has rusted and is presently out of sync with the progressive 21st century era. A dedicated and dynamic bureaucracy sensitive to changing times is necessary for good governance. But that has not been the case. The bureaucracy has not been able to remodel itself in tune with the people-friendly environment of post-independent democratic India. It continues to be uppish, overbearing, intimidating and inhibits common man’s access to it. In this age of globalisation and liberalisation, it has failed to rise to the occasion. It is no more a question of revenue administration or law and order maintenance; the bureaucrat is now required to come to grips with the socio-economic and socio-political, people-friendly environment. Worse, the well meaning government policies are stalled or delayed unduly merely because the bureaucracy views them differently. It wields authority without responsibility, goes unpunished for its lapses and has become indecisive, inefficient and largely corrupt. Yet, it remains all powerful and domineering. Its upward mobility irrespective its performance remains unaffected. BBC serial Yes Minister telecast a few years ago reflected befittingly not only the state of the British bureaucracy but also of its successor in India. How clever bureaucrats can manipulate the unsuspecting, half-witted politicians was amazing indeed.
Despite 60 long years, the bureaucracy has not been able to shed its pre-independence persona as the masters of society. Power and pelf are the sole criterion that induces them all including the doctors and the engineers to join the bureaucracy even belatedly. It’s not service before self but self before service that seems to motivate them all. Obviously, there is an urgent need for expeditious reforms in the civil services. Entry terms and conditions, pre-induction training, continuity training whilst in service and the appraisal system, all need to be reviewed. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, himself a former bureaucrat, took the initiative in this regard. The Second Administrative Reform Commission headed by M. Veerappa Moily has been examining various aspects of reform since August 2005. It is mulling over some very far-reaching and path breaking reforms in the bureaucracy. Since change is always resisted, the bureaucracy is bound to raise its voice against these recommendations, but it is for the government to show its will for reforms.
Since the Prime Minister has been very keen to rein in the bureaucracy for better governance for some time now, he should show his resolve by implementing the ARC recommendations without dithering. Though some committees like the P.C. Hota Committee on civil services reforms have made some well-meaning recommendations, successive governments have not followed up. The Hota committee came out with a slew of recommendations, including lowering of minimum and maximum ages at the entry point, with a view to inducting clean, unadulterated and fresh minds into the service. But it continues to gather dust in the coffers of the Cabinet Secretary. The reasons are obvious: the ministers come and go whilst the bureaucrats stay put in their seats. The advantage of lowering the entry age is that the young mind is malleable and can be moulded as desired. Requisite value system and attributes like honesty, integrity and sense of responsibility can all be gradually inculcated. But as the age advances, a person develops a personality of his own, a fixed mindset and moral value criteria. He is then all set as a bureaucrat to achieve his pre-conceived ideas and vision which may not be in consonance with what is needed of him in the service. Proper indoctrination and tailoring of mind is essential to produce the future administrators who will be in harmony with the present-day environment. Apparently, the Moily Commission is considering some path-breaking reforms. There are proposals for early recruitment at the 10+2 stage on the pattern of the National Defence Academy. The French administrators are also recruited young for training at Ecole Nationale d’Administration. The boys in the age group of 16 ½ to 19 years, with 10+2 academic qualification are inducted into National Defence Academy for a three-year BA/BSc degree course, followed by another two years at respective army, navy and air force academies for specialised training before being commissioned as officers. In the case of the armed forces, the government had even gone a step further by establishing Sainik Schools all over the country to act as feeders to NDA. By putting young 10+2 candidates through a 5-year course before passing them out as full-fledged administrators, we may be able to have a bureaucracy that would be responsive to the needs of the time. As in the case of the armed forces, the first three years could be devoted to academics and character building, followed by two years of specialised training in areas like public administration, finance, business management, industrial relations,disaster management et al. Simultaneously, adequate emphasis on character building must continue right through the five-year training period. Any one failing to come up to the expected level of performance or the core value criteria must be weeded out at the end of each semester, as is done in the armed forces training institutions. These recommendations are bound to be resented by the bureaucracy, for these require it to function in accordance with the people-friendly ethos to which it is not used to, besides placing a heavy premium on efficiency, decisiveness and accountability. If there is genuine political will, bureaucratic resentment notwithstanding, implementation can be ensured to a requisite degree. Normally, the success of any government programme depends upon the bureaucracy itself. Hence, its cooperation will have to be ensured. Senior bureaucrats who are responsible for policy implementation will have to be co-opted in this effort. Even an internal participative debate can be held and views taken note of. The aim is to pick up the best brains that the country offers. For effective implementation of the scheme, proper infrastructure will have to be created, on the lines of the National Defence Academy (for composite three-year training), Indian Military Academy, Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy (for respective two-year specialised training). The present training system at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussourie, is too inadequate to produce multi-skilled modern administrators required to function in a democratic environment.
Political interference must stop, if we want upright and honest bureaucrats in the service of the nation. Today’s bureaucrat is unable to stand up against an unscrupulous politician for fear of retribution at his hands. Loyalty links, caste clout and carrot dangling for post-retirement lucrative assignments are unethical though purpose serving weapons in the hands of the politicians that bend the civil servant to abide by the wishes of his political boss. Since the politician has to also depend upon the bureaucrat, both have leant to live in harmony with each other.
Unless this nexus is broken and the politician debarred from manipulating the bureaucrat, the state of affairs in general and corruption in particular will remain
unaffected. |
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What will people do with rice alone? They need rasam, sambar, curry and Bomb blasts are not a cricket match where I should give a running commentary. I am working for the image and branding of Gujarat. I don’t have time to think about my own image. You are looking so gorgeous. Now I know why the whole of America is
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The new media mandarins
Recently
in a seminar on “Impact of globalisation on media and our traditions” in New Delhi, an electronic media editor suggested, as a solution to the growing degeneration in media, particularly electronic media, that the nomenclature of designation should be changed from Editor to CEO. In his view it was not the editor but the all-powerful CEOs who call the shots even in the news room. He also blamed the reporters for having given up the urge for public concern. “Today, do you find a single reporter who has concern for public cause?” he asked the audience in an attempt to extricate himself from the guilt. Another speaker, who was director of a news channel, put the blame on globalisation. This reminds one of Jawaharlal Nehru’s visit to Lucknow in early 1960s. He was addressing a public rally in Beghum Hazarat Mahal Park opposite the building of the National Herald — a respected newspaper owned by the Congress. M. Chalapati Rao was its editor. Rao did not move out of his office. It was Nehru who came to meet Rao in the latter’s office. Even when Nehru was walking up to Rao’s office on the first floor from the gate, the staff and security people rushed into Rao’s room to herald Nehru’s entry. Rao’s cool response was, “Yes, let him come”. Finally, when Nehru got into his room, Rao welcomed him saying, “Hello Nehru, how are you?” Rao used to take a very meagre salary and used to come to office in a paddle-rickshaw. When he dropped dead in a Delhi street while walking on the pavement, for many hours he could not be identified. He was one of the greatest editors of his times. He never aspired to become CEO or MD of the National Herald. The above mentioned two speakers who are editors of two big channels and their suggestions and arguments only indicate that rot has set in and situation is beyond redemption. Instead of accepting the guilt, the editors are seeking to brazen it out on faulty premises. Reason: Most TV editors draw astronomical salaries ranging from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 10 lakh a month. Ironically, they are no match to their counterparts in the print media commitment to the social causes, knowledge and observance of values. With this kind of undeserved salary, it is obvious that they will develop a false sense of insecurity. It is not without reason that every Friday evening when TRP ratings come, it becomes D-day for these editors for fear that owners of the channel might question their raison d ’etre in the organisation, should TRP drop. That is how the degeneration in news coverage started. Today we have few P. Sainaths. There is a subtle but well-planned move engineered as a fallout of current corporate democracy in which the media has been sought to serve the corporate interest by changing the very thought process of human beings. The first step in this direction was to change the very definition of news. People have been reduced to depoliticised entertainment-seekers. Their power to think has been snatched away by loading them with trivia in the name of entertainment. Dumbing down of Indian society — this is how someone had summed up this phenomenon. In corporate democracy, the space available for public discourse on issues of social concerns is filled by light, nay, vulgar entertaining soap operas. In pre-globalisation democracies, this “public space” was available independent of both state and business control, which permitted citizens to interact, study and debate on the public issues of the day without fear of immediate reprisal from political and economic powers that be. Peter Chernin, the president of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation said recently, “there are great arguments about whether content is king or distribution is king. At the end of the day, scale is king”. That shows the mindset. Murdoch’s Star TV dominates in Asia with its 30 channels in seven languages today. A whopping three-quarters of total global spending in advertising ends up in the pockets of a mere 20 media houses. Ad spending has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade as it has been opened to commercial exploitation and is growing at twice the GDP growth rate. In next five years, the total ad revenue across the world may cross $ 1 trillion. That precisely is the reason why media leaders have been offered astronomical salaries so that they kowtow before the CEO or the owners. The editors under the new arrangement have forgotten the definition of news and are, instead of “telling stories”, “selling products” as P. Sainath put it. Robert Mc Chesney, in a recent article, has pointed to the worst fear. “The attack on professional autonomy of journalism that has taken place is simply a broader part of neo-liberal transformation of media and communication. All public service values and institutions that interfere with profit maximisation are on the chopping block”, he said.
One basic reason why the present-day electronic media cannot afford to give a go-by to TRP is the high cost operation. The cost of a reporter with his team coming with a normal shoot ranges between Rs 4,000 and Rs 40,000. The cost of airing that story after its post-production exercise would run up in Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh. It is all because of high salaries, excessive emphasis on quality of broadcast (rather than on quality of content) and seeking new story zones (lifestyle and cricket matches) which themselves are a high-cost affair.
The owners devised a new method to cut costs. They went in for partnership with corporate houses.
This partnership not only tilted the balance but also changed the definition of news. Today, channels have sponsors not only for bulletins but also for headlines. The “corporate hijack”, according to P. Sainath, results in private client treaties with a company — the company acquires a stake into the company…and subsequently the marketing of its products is sold as news.
“Naturally, these treaties privilege the right of giant corporations’ surrogate selling above the rights of viewers to be informed”, rues Sainath. Had editors firmly turned down selling of the space/time slots/headlines, had they identified poverty-stricken rural India, health, education and state institutions’ role in ameliorating the lot of the hapless, story cost would have been far less and more productive. But for that, that editor will also have to refuse astronomical salary and opulent lifestyle. A study by the Centre for Media Studies shows today health, education, environment and agriculture are on the back burner in the media. While there is hardly any reporter for covering these areas on a regular basis despite 72 per cent of the population living in rural India (2001 census), we have fleet of reporters for covering fashion shows, secondary car markets and launch of new products. News channels are devoting better part of time in showing entertainment-related programmes on the ground that people are interested in them. They have forgotten that public interest is not what people are interested in. Vulgar entertainment can interest them, but news channel cannot and should not show that and if they do, the editors will have to pave the way for experts in this area and/or re-orient themselves in this art. Are they ready? |
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Profile Lately, it has become a fashion for a diplomat to take to writing after retirement, become a columnist or write memoirs. Some venture into politics. Memoirs, often, disclose hitherto unknown information which become controversial and hit newspaper headlines. The late JN (Mani) Dixit became a prolific writer. Shashi Tharoor, who was an international civil servant with the UN, went beyond politics. He recently wrote a book which is considered a revaluation of Jawaharlal Nehru. Few diplomats have written novels and fewer while in service. An Indian diplomat Navtej Sarna is, possibly, the lone exception who writes novels. A suave diplomat, Sarna recently published his fictional book on the life of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of Punjab. The book hit the stands soon after he completed his six-year-long term as the spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs. He established a record having served as the MEA’s longest serving spokesman. He is now India’s Ambassador in Israel. Sarna’s book was released in London amidst mounting interest in the life of Duleep Singh in Britain. He had to travel to Paris, Moscow and Lahore to undertake research for his historical novel. Sarna has been quoted as saying he was drawn by the story of a man who was taken to England as child after the defeat of his father Maharaja Ranjit Singh by the British. Sarna is the son of an eminent writer in Punjab, Mohinder Singh Sarna. Before he penned his first novel, Navtej wrote for The Literary Supplement, The London Magazine and The Little Magazine. He was posted in Moscow, Warsaw, Thimpu, Geneva, Tehran and Washington DC. His first novel deals with the life of one named Aftab. As he turned 40, his wife left him for another man, taking their son with her. And now he is on a train to Dehradun, the town of his childhood, doing the one thing he feels he is still good at — running away. He has broken with his imperfect past. With rare sensitivity, Sarna’s debut novel details a life of missed opportunities and approximate love. Aftab does this introspective self-confession in the course of a journey from Delhi to Dehradun. And, while doing so, the reader gets fleeting and, at times, witty glimpse of Indian life as it passes by. All along, while seeing his own life in retrospect, he describes with acute observation the life of bureaucrats and others and ordinary familiar haunts such as Khan Market and other well-known places in Delhi. It is such detailed, many sided observations of life in the Capital and what lies behind its façade in so many areas that gives life to the novel. We sometimes see ourselves as our friends and neighbours in it, which is the ultimate test. Perhaps, because people in the novel are people like us. What draws us most to this remarkable first novel is the flow of the narrative, which is effortless, in simple and elegant language though it is not easy when describing the life and emotions of a self-confessed failure in life. His description of human emotions are deeply felt and, at times, touching. The tall, turbaned and imposing figure of Sarna for past six years will now be missed at Shastri Bhavan that houses the office of the MEA Spokesman. Sarna became the MEA spokesman in 2002 when the BJP-led NDA was in power. But he continued with the job even after the Congress-led UPA formed the government in April 2004. |
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On Record
Slowdown in the West and the flight of funds from India has resulted in cancellation of export orders and the rupee depreciation. The situation could only worsen for the rupee as allowing trading would lead to volatility, says Federation of Indian Exports Organisations (FIEO) President Ganesh Kumar Gupta, in an interview to The Sunday Tribune. He says, the good export performance was in the face of high inflationary pressure at home and recession in Europe and the US. Much of the value-wise increase is due to increase in the prices of inputs which have also accentuated the trade deficit by doubling it from Rs 2,300 crore in April-July 2007 to Rs 4,600 crore in April-July 2008. The FIEO President hopes that with decline in oil prices, imports growth might be brought under control in the next few months. However, he reiterated his demand to continue with the export assistance extended to exporters particularly to traditional sectors which were still not showing much growth and the recent drawback reduction has already dampened the spirit. Excerpts: Q: Will the rupee depreciation bring cheer to the exporters? A: This question should be put to the Union Finance Minister and the bureaucrats in the Finance Ministry. In January 2008, when the level of the Re/ dollar was 38-39, they said that exporters should learn to live with a strong rupee. And now at 46-47 level, who is to be asked and who is to be blamed? Exporters were given a signal in January and the exporters hedged their production for the next year till March 2009 at 39-40 level. Only a handful of importers are happy because they hedged at 38-39 level and have not really covered their position till date because they expect further depreciation. Today as we talk we can’t predict if this level will maintain in the next 15 days. Q: Why is so much fluctuation in the rupee and exchange rate in all currencies? A: The opening of currency trading is the culprit. India is not such a mature market that you can allow currency trading, exporters are still vulnerable in India. We don’t have such a great mature export economy. Opening the currency trade has led to fluctuation in the last fortnight with the rupee having depreciated against the dollar from 42-46 level. Such fluctuation has never happened in a short time. Q: What other reasons will you attribute to this fluctuation because currency trading is a recent introduction? A: Slowdown in the US and European markets is also partly responsible for the depreciation. Add to this is the withdrawal of huge funds by Foreign Financial Institutions (FIIs) of around $9 billion. There is pressure on the liquidity in the currency and stock market. Forward premium has gone down from 6 per cent to 1 per cent indicating that the rupee will be strong in the near future. At the domestic level, exporters will have to face high cost of finance due to high interest rates by the banks. There is also a lot of cancellation of orders from the US and European buyers in the fabrics, jewellery and garment industry as some importers in the West have filed for bankruptcy and cannot afford to pay the Indian exporters. Some large exporters in India are dependent on big companies and a cancellation or bankruptcy would mean a near closure or huge losses in business. If this trend continues, it is not good for the country and the people, more so, for the exporters. The rupee’s volatility is cause for concern for the small exporters who are barely coming to terms with the substantial losses in the derivatives market. Q: Can the $200 billion target achievable as is being estimated by
the A: If the current exchange rate continues, we will grow by 35 per cent and the total exports would exceed the target of $ 200 billion. But read the fine print which area is seeing exports growing — Oil (rising from $ 60 level to $ 140 level). Gold which has risen from $ 500 level last year to $ 900 level this year. Steel prices have shot up from $ 22000 per tonne last year to $ 45000 per tonne level. So it will show in the value of exports, but the ground reality is different. Consider what is happening in the textiles and handicraft sector. Since last year, textile exports have slowed down by nearly 7 per cent, handicraft industry which is labour-intensive, has seen a dip of nearly 61 per cent, leather has shown a moderate growth of only 3 per cent. Where will the labour that works in these factories go? What solution does the government have for them? |
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said about the
bureaucracy in the United States is equally true of bureaucracy in India. The 20th century steel frame of Indian Administrative Service has rusted and is presently out of sync with the progressive 21st century era.
Profile
On Record
It is very easy under our system to delay trials in India because the accused challenges every order of the trial court in the high court and fights it up to the Supreme Court.
If you want farming to be a success, raising prices is part
of the process — this is also the real inflationary cause.
People from outside will keep coming to Mumbai. After all, Mumbai is a part of
India. So you can’t stop people from other states coming in. True, a lot of people
have migrated to Mumbai but how can you stop them? We can’t say that nobody
should come here.
A sportsperson is also like a soldier who does his bit for the country, but the contribution and sacrifice of those in uniform is beyond
comparison.