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Building A
World-Class Civil Service For Twenty-First Century India
This, of course, is a caricature and not a faithful and realistic portrayal of the civil servants even though some rotten apples are sometimes giving a bad name to the noble profession. Clearly, there is a perceptible change in the IAS officers’ role today. Specialisation and domain competence are the buzzwords these days. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a reputed economist and administrator, has evinced keen interest in administrative reforms to help civil servants face the challenges. A commendable decision he took during his first term was setting up of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission under the chairmanship of Dr M. Veerappa Moily, currently the Union Law Minister. This commission has brought out many reports on how to rejuvenate the administration at various levels. For greater responsibility or power to be entrusted to the administrators, steps must be taken to improve the quality and calibre of the civil servants. Writing early in this century, German sociologist Max Weber hailed the advent of the bureaucracy as an instrument of administration because it replaced arbitrariness in government, which the will and whim of the rulers often resulted in, by a system of decision-making based on an application of principles which were widely known. Political scientists emphasised that a good civil service could provide the expertise and experience, which in a democratic set-up elected ministers may not always have. However, in order that civil servants may perform their rightful role, constant attention has to be given to methods of their recruitment and training as well as to ways in which their performance and accountability can be ensured. Promotion is, certainly, an incentive to better performance. Though seniority is important, merit cannot be overlooked. With security of tenure and protection from punishment, except through cumbersome procedures, which give rise to prolonged litigation, poor performance cannot be easily punished either. There are neither carrots nor sticks to make civil servants go ahead with the kind of speed that is needed. Rethinking on these issues is imperative. Undoubtedly, the civil servants must be paid well to attract talent as also prevent their exodus to the private sector, which gives them the best compensation packages. They should also be trained in tune with the changing needs of society. The new techniques of administration must replace the old traditions of authoritarian administration. The civil servants must be taught to persuade and not merely to pressurise. The administration must make greater use of the accelerator and less of the brake if the pace of development is to be speeded up. The writer of the book, a former Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Space, has done full justice to the subject by examining the whole gamut of administrative reforms. He says that globalisation has imposed greater responsibility on the government to redesign the governance structures and prepare the IAS officers to improve the quality of the day-to-day administration. He writes that India cannot afford to have a "rigid, centralised and process-driven" bureaucracy today. Instead, what the country is looking forward to is a civil service that is "truly world class and compatible with today’s strategic, economic and technological requirements". The book has 20 chapters, which cover such areas as policymaking, result orientation, delivery of public services, performance and risk management, the creation of a Senior Executive Service at the Centre, fixed tenures for each assignment and domain competency. The book lays stress on a management framework that focuses on outcomes, outputs and indicators for improving the quality of governance. It makes a strong case for a "careful modulation" of the reform experiences of countries like the UK, Australia, Sweden and New Zealand to suit India’s requirements. Interestingly, it makes a case for attracting the best and eschewing the practice of post-retirement placements for the IAS officers. It is a must for all students, teachers and practitioners of public administration. It provides a wealth of information for those involved in policymaking and decision-making at the highest level.
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Over
the years, people’s perception of the Indian Administrative Service
(IAS) officers has been such that they do not speak of civil servants
or administrators but of bureaucrats. The late L.K. Jha, an able
administrator, once said in a lighter vein that "the bureaucrat’s
public image is of a creature who sits on files, sleeps over
reminders, turns a deaf ear to complaints, cannot see beyond the tip
of his nose, smells a rat in every proposal and, at times, eats his
own words."