Babus vs Babu

- Dasu Krishnamoorty

An elite gaggle of IAS babus is giving sleepless nights to the CEO of Andhra Pradesh Inc. The honeymoon between the two seems to be shedding its charm. The babus could not have chosen a more inappropriate timing to display their impatience. Characteristic of all the workforce in the country, they complain of overwork and want the working week to be slashed to five days, regardless of the growing mountain of undisposed files, slowing down development to the pace of a reluctant snail. However, any concession to such demands will generate similar demands from the lower ranks of the bureaucracy. All this will lead to administrative breakdown considering that the state government employees now can legitimately stay at home for a total of 144 days. And, if the five-day week is conceded, this period will be 184 days, more than half of the year. Several committees set up for administrative reforms turned down the idea of working only five days in a week, a target pursued persistently by the civil services. That the core committee of IAS officers in the State which is spearheading the pressure for less work nevertheless made some useful suggestions is some consolation. It is debatable whether they were aimed at taking away the sting from the main demand.

The rule-flaunting bureaucrat is not a great favourite with the public. He is affectionately referred to as the babu. The babus in AP suggested to the government a week earlier that policy-makers should mind policy matters and should not waste time tinkering with transfers and appointments and that a special board should be set up under the aegis of the chief secretary to oversee service matters relating to IAS, IPS and IFS officials. These pressures, building up at a time when Chandrababu Naidu has little time to cope with the impending by-elections and the assembly session, may not help the cause of the bureaucrats. A casual look at daily media contents reveals a picture, which is not very complimentary to administrative performance. In the last one week, bureaucracy grabbed the limelight for the wrong reasons in the media. India Today came out with a cover story, second in two decades, on the bureaucracy. The language press is full of material critical of the damage bureaucrats are doing to public life in the country.

How do we explain the country's poor performance in the area of development, asks the country's senior most journalist Kuldip Nayar (Eenadu, 22 November 2000) and answers it himself saying that it is the bureaucracy which obstructs the pace of development. Their fanatic loyalty to meaningless rules and regulations has hurt public interests. Governments suddenly wake up to harsh realities and declare pious intentions of downsizing the bureaucracy. Who will bell the cat? Can we trust the bureaucrats to hurt themselves? What happened to last year's Union Finance Ministry report does not infuse much faith that there ever will be any downsizing. Quoting a report of the Staff Inspection Unit (SIU) which conducts a regular survey to check the efficacy of the administration, Vrinda Gopinath (The New Indian Express, 12 September 2000) says that in 1999, the SIU studied 14,068 sanctioned posts and examined proposals for the creation of 257 posts in 29 offices. The study found that 2,547 posts were anyway surplus in the sanctioned posts while the creation of 179 posts was unnecessary and unacceptable. The SIU which has been conducting these studies since 1964 found that 1,00,383 out of 6,72,658 posts covered by them were found to be surplus and the demand for the creation of 97,145 posts was found unjustified.

The babus (the Civil Services Board) who have awarded themselves arbitrary salary hikes in the fifth finance commission recommendations now want the government to permit them to go on deputation to the private sector, including the MNCs. This is an improvement over the earlier tradition of the bureaucrats to do favours to the private sector corporations during their office and accept berths on these corporations' boards of directors after retirement. This galaxy includes:

Dr. D.V. Kapoor, formerly Industry Secretary, who joined Reliance Power Ltd., as chairman D.P. Gupta, earlier Director-General of Surface Transport, who became advisor to Reliance Infrastructure Ajay Choudhury, formerly CMD of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd., now CEO, Koshika Telecom Suresh Mathur, earlier Industry secretary, now consultant to AT&T, GE and others Rathikant Basu, earlier Information and Broadcasting Sceretary, later moved to Star TV Gopi Arora, Principal Secretary to late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, moved over to ANZ Grindlays S.Rajagopal, former Cabinet Secretary, became advisor to Enron B.M.K. Synghal , another CMD, VSNL, now with Reliance Telecom The list is endless because by 1999, around 150 senior civil servants joined the corporate sector.

This concept of deputation to private sector even while the bureaucrat is a government servant is very close to the decontrol of prices whereby black market prices become legal. Sailesh Kottary writing in the New Indian Express (21 August 2000) is so despaired of the bureaucracy that he writes: "Even when revolutions take place and entire classes are wiped out, the bureaucrats survive and effortlessly serve the new masters. It happened in Bolshevik Russia in 1916 and also in Communist China in 1946. And it is happening in a reforming India in 2000. For four long decades, the bureaucracy -- with a band of self-serving politicians -- successfully trussed up the spirit of enterprise in fetters and threw out the key. No one has any doubt that the only marketable asset a bureaucrat will bring along will be his contacts in the labyrinthine bureaucracy."

The babus' reputation has spread far and wide. A survey by an independent think-tank called Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) revealed that the country's bureaucracy has the dubious distinction of being the worst in Asia with the country being placed at the bottom of a list of efficiency and integrity of government servants in the continent. India scored 9.1 on a scale of zero to ten, with ten being the worst. A Canadian guidebook for potential investors in India advises Canadian industries wishing to collaborate with Indian enterprises to submit 16 copies of the foreign collaboration application to the Government of India. It lists the complicated Indian bureaucratic maze in a neatly drawn flow-chart to familiarise Canadians contemplating technical collaboration with Indian firms. The booklet warns prospective Canadian collaborators of the following hurdles to cross before they can do business with their counterparts in India: An industrial licence, a licence for the import of capital equipment and machinery, approval of the Reserve Bank of India, formalities for the issue of capital, a certificate of incorporation and approval of the Central government.

In a second tribute to the civil servants, India Today says that "India's bureaucracy is a blight on the nation. It now exists not to serve the people but to feed itself." Its phenomenal growth is evidence of its self-serving nature. "In 1951, the IAS was constituted with a strength of 957, including 356 officers from the Indian Civil Service. Today, there are 4,943 serving IAS officers. In 1979, there were 724 officers of the rank of secretary, additional secretary, joint secretary and deputy secretary/director. Today, the number has nearly doubled to 1,222. In 1997, the fifth pay commission suggested a 30 per cent cut in Central government jobs over 10 years. It also recommended that the seven-step executive ladder of the government from secretary to undersecretary be shortened to only three. Yet, the seven rungs persist and salaries and perks have increased dramatically after the fifth pay commission report."

If the cry against bureaucrats reaches the maximum decibel count, the government can be counted upon to appoint a committee again of bureaucrats to make the civil servants accountable to people. After denting the treasury hard, this committee can be depended upon to ask for more time and at the end of it will engineer the birth of another committee to do the same. The nation has lost count of such committees. One has no idea when the nexus between the politician and the bureaucrat was forged and this has a lot to account for the brazenness with which bureaucrats tick off ministers who have yet to learn the tricks of the trade. The bureaucrats are today squirming with impotent rage under Chandrababu Naidu who is impatient with the pace of and dedication to work of the bureaucrats. In short, the civil servant today is as much a national problem as poverty or illiteracy.

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