George Orwell’s satirical allegorical novella, Animal Farm (1945), featuring a successful uprising by animals against a tyrannical farmer, ends with pigs emerging dominant, and adopting mannerisms of their erstwhile masters. At the climax, to defend their egregious conduct, the pigs coin a new doctrine: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Most revolutions of the twentieth century had a similar denouement, with newly dominant classes acquiring privileges of the old ruling classes. Thus, in India, we have parliamentary privileges, judicial privileges and administrative privileges, and caste privileges, to name a few.

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Accustomed to life in the hard lane, the common man, himself devoid of any privileges, has to suffer the inconvenience of carrying the load of the large number of privileged people. A familiar occurrence is the stopping of all traffic for passage of VIPs, never mind that many students miss their classes, many professionals reach office late, and sometimes, an ambulance cannot take a critically ill person to hospital in time.

However, such issues are only occasionally discussed, because most people are willing to look the other way when powerful persons are involved. Recently, the Governor of Karnataka was to catch a commercial flight from Bengaluru to Hyderabad. The dignitary reached the boarding gate after the scheduled departure time of the aircraft, by which time the flight had already left. In such a situation a common man would have been called a ‘no show,’ and brusquely told to book another flight.

But Governors are privileged people; the Governor’s minions filed an FIR against the airline and its staff, and also complained to the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The airlines, which initially defended the action of its employees, soon knuckled down and apologised to the Governor and suspended its manager, who had only followed rules.

The list of such incidents is not tiny. In 2017, a Shiv Sena MP assaulted a sixty-year-old Air India staffer with his slipper. A viral video shows the unrepentant MP claiming that he had hit the poor man twenty-five times. Initially, the MP’s action was condemned by those in authority, a flight ban was imposed on him, and an FIR was lodged against him. After the controversy died down, the flight ban was lifted. Last year, a Delhi court discharged the MP from the criminal case filed against him. Again, recently, a fire-brand BJP MP, opened an emergency exit door of the aircraft, while it was taxiing for take-off, following which all passengers had to be deboarded. The aircraft could take off only after a thorough inspection, entailing a delay of almost two and a half hours ~ much longer than the actual flight time.

Both the Civil Aviation Minister and DGCA confirmed the incident but termed the MP’s action as a “mistake,” taking no further action. Such incidents are not confined to politicians or the aviation sector alone; a High Court Judge felt so offended by not being attended to by the catering staff and his train running late, that he ordered the Registrar to write to the Railway’s General Manager ~ asking for the explanation of the concerned staff members. It goes to the credit of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) that after the incident came to his notice, the CJI wrote to all Chief Justices asking them to advise judges against such unbecoming behaviour.

A frequent and serious misuse of administrative privilege is the practice of the Government not granting sanction for prosecution of its employees, even when charged with serious offences like custodial torture or murder. More commonly, Government officials and their families bypass long queues at all places while lesser mortals wait their turn. PM Modi did the right thing by abolishing red lights for all vehicles ~ which had demoted all other vehicles to second-class status.

Yet the lal-batti culture of hierarchy, codified by the Warrant of Precedence, is too deeply ingrained to die down easily. A colonial relic, the Warrant begins with a disclaimer: “(The Warrant) is only used to indicate ceremonial protocol and has no legal standing…… It is not applicable for the day-to-day functioning of the Government of India.” But the Warrant of Precedence is the root cause of most of the inter-services rivalries, and causes much friction and heartburn in the day-to-day functioning of the Government.

TN Seshan, as Chief Election Commissioner, went to the Supreme Court to improve his ranking in the Warrant of Precedence. There are recorded instances where the Governor of a State refused to talk to the Departmental Secretary on urgent matters, because the Governor felt that he should be addressed by the Minister. Inter-services rivalry is a post-Independence problem, because the colonial administration could ensure that the military and the various components of bureaucracy worked in close co-ordination. Friction between members of services started building up soon after Independence ~ to fill up the large number of senior posts that had fallen vacant after the exodus of British officers. Promotions, too, became much easier in the new regime. An IAS officer could now aspire to be a Divisional Commissioner in sixteen years. Senior posts proliferated for the IAS; instead of eight or nine Divisional Commissioners forty years ago, UP now has around thirty Divisional Commissioners. Similarly, for the IPS, as against one Inspector-General of Police, most large States now have ten posts of Directors General of Police. Also, transition from a predominantly agrarian society to a highly complex modern one led to new challenges; old sources of Government finance like land revenue gave way to income-tax and central excise; the need for generalist administrators declined and domain experts came into demand.

Not surprisingly, services like Income-tax and Customs gained prominence and started demanding parity with the IAS. A bonanza of promotions ensued for the top men in the civilian bureaucracy; bombastic nomenclature was often invented for mundane jobs. Thus, departments have new apex grade posts like Principal Chief Commissioners and Principal Chief Controllers who are doing the same things as their less ostentatiously named predecessors.

Rampant inter-services rivalry has sometimes resulted in important senior level posts remaining vacant, because people in competing services have not been promoted to an equivalent level. Also, unashamed empire building has increased the number of VIPs manifold, destroyed the time-tested administrative structure and increased the burden of privilege on the common man. Even otherwise, the number of VIPs, which is in double digits in most countries, runs in lakhs in India. Combined with the Government’s inability or unwillingness to fill up vacant lower-level posts, the civilian bureaucracy is on the verge of becoming an inverted pyramid.

An insane quest for promotions has resulted in adding levels to the bureaucratic hierarchy, with a deleterious effect on governance. Simply put, there are too many people to give directions but very few to obey. Armed forces have similar, but different problems. After Independence, the Commanderin-Chief of the Indian Army, who ranked just after the Governor General, was put down substantially, and so were other army officers. The post-Independence bonanza of promotions enjoyed by their civilian counterparts was largely denied to the armed forces, leading to a feeling of deprivation and hurt.

Therefore, not surprisingly, an armed forces cadre review committee recommended, in 2018, that every army officer should retire at a rank of Major General or above, a recommendation that went against the basic principle of military ranks being conferred according to the number of troops commanded; armies of many small nations are often led by Major Generals or Lieutenant Generals. However, the Committee did not consider the possible effect on army discipline, rather, it made no bones that this radical proposal emanated from a desire of army officers to attain parity with their civilian counterparts. A better way to satisfy the Army’s demand for equivalence could be to resolve the anomalies in the civilian bureaucracy that would also improve the quality of governance, which boils down to the larger question of limiting privileges of all kinds of dignitaries ~ parliamentarians, judges and bureaucrats ~ a task more easily proposed than attempted.

A quote from Dr B R Ambedkar’s speech in the Constituent Assembly sums up the tyranny of privilege: “What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights.” Sadly, with time, inequality and discrimination of the social and administrative system has only increased.

(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)