Washing away badly constructed bridges, flooding illegally constructed basements, causing potholes in newly inaugurated roads, and revealing non-existent drainage of so-called smart cities, the rain gods mercilessly exposed the shamefully poor construction and maintenance of expensive infrastructure. Delhi had more than its fair share of rain-related woes. The first heavy rainfall of the season led to waterlogging in the entire city, immobilising traffic, and causing the collapse of an airport canopy, which sadly, resulted in the death of a cab driver. Interestingly, airport canopies in several other cities also collapsed; leaving air passengers wondering why they had to pay fees like Passenger Service Fee, User Development Fee, Aviation Security Fee etc.

Later on, shocked by the dea ths of three IAS aspirants who were studying in the illegal basement of a coaching centre, the Delhi High Court came down heavily on civic and police authorities. A strange fact emerged; building code violations were in the knowledge of the Municipal Corporation and Fire Department, but both chose to look the other way. Moreover, instead of acting against civic officials who had turned a blind eye to the illegal construction, the police arrested a car driver who had happened to pass by the coaching centre. Still more strangely, the lower court, initially denied bail to the car driver. The High Court observed about the Municipal Corporation: “You have suspended the junior-most officer. What happens to the senior-most officer who has to supervise? … This is a case of neglect. It is a case of criminal neglect.”

About the Police, the High Court said: “There is some sort of strange investigation which is going on. No MCD officials have been hauled up till now… Police have arrested some bystander, a driver who was driving a car there.” The High Court also took the Delhi Government to task, observing that they were permitting multi-storeyed buildings in places which had no proper drainage, more importantly, the Government were not collecting taxes, leading to bankruptcy of civic bodies. This was not the first time that the Delhi Government, Delhi Police and civic bodies had faced the High Court’s ire for the city’s monsoon woes.

In April 2024, while hearing matters related to the 2023 floods, the Delhi High Court made umpteen observations to control water logging, management of drainage systems, improvement of water bodies and ensuring coordination between different departments. However, various tragic incidents, during the recent rains, including the drowning of a mother and her son in an open and unmarked drain, conclusively demonstrate that the High Court’s directions had not been carried out. Corruption, evasion of resp – onsibility, and non-adherence to institutional norms, have seen the reputations of many august institutions crumble.

The UPSC, a revered examining body, was hard put to explain when claiming poverty and multiple disabilities a smartlooking lady riding an Audi car qualified for the IAS. Later on, many similar cases emerged, leading to resignation of the UPSC Chairman, five yea – rs before his term was to end. Similar shortcomings have been noticed in a number of institutions. Presently, the Government and the Opposition are engaged in a war of words over the veracity of conflict-of-interest allegations, made against the SEBI Chairperson by Hindenburg, a US short seller. Instead of appointing a respectable person as a neutral judge, the Government is alleging a plot to destabilise the Indian economy, with the Opposition making equally outlandish insinuations.

No branch of governance is free from such maladies; lower courts and even High Courts pay scarce heed to the Supreme Court’s exhortations to uphold personal liberty, before anything else. The nadir was reached when a Surat magistrate sent a person who had secured anticipatory bail from the Supreme Court to police custody. In another case, peeved by a stay on his order by the Supreme Court, a High Court judge questioned the authority of the Supreme Court. The Election Commission of India, once an institution that generated awe in the minds of other electoral bodies, now generates allegations of partisanship. Alarmingly, the venerable offices of Speakers and Governors are now usually occupied by persons whose neutrality is continuously under a cloud. Looking for immediate gains, the political executive fails to understand that robust institutions are the foundation of democracy, which survived in India only because our founding fathers had created such institutions manned by men and women of impeccable integrity.

Sadly, with time, politicians started appointing pygmies to exalted positions, who cared nothing for constitutional proprieties, and only did the bidding of their masters, while making money on the side. Acknowledging the contribution of civil servants in nation building, Sardar Patel had stated in the Constituent Assembly: “I wish this to be recorded in this house that during the last two or three years if most of the members of the services (ICS) had not been serving the country efficiently, practically the Union wo uld have collapsed.” Contrast this with what PM Modi said in Parliament, about IAS officers, almost seventy-two years later: “Babus will do everything? Because they became IAS (officers), they’ll run fertiliser factories, because they are IAS… What is this big power we have created? What are we going to achieve by handing the reins of the nation to babus?” Clearly, the same bureaucracy that was credited with rendering stellar service to the nation some 75 years ago now stands accused of non-performance and inefficiency.

The reason for the change in perception is obvious; post-Independence, a new generation of bureaucrats with totally different values are in office. Under the guise of Indianisation, timeless values of honesty, integrity, and responsibility have been discarded ~ to be replaced by a culture of brazen commercialism and avarice. This malaise is all pervasive, and not limited to the Civil Service; a Chief Minister is in jail on corruption charges, and another has been granted bail recently. The number of cabinet ministers in jail is in double digits at any given time. Even if we accept at face value, the Opposition’s allegation of selective targeting, a grim picture of the integrity of politici ans emerges. Similarly, many highly placed officials, Government doctors, engineers etc.

are in jail on corruption charges. Pragmatists and pessimists may come up with myriad justifications for this sorry state of affairs e.g., ‘it was always like this’, ‘what harm has resulted from this’, and other similar excuses. But the issue at hand is: “Can India hope to become viksit Bharat with such deficient institutions?” The similarity between all developed nations, be they communist or capitalist, is that they all have robust institutions, and live by the rule of law.

We may attain a high GDP, shining trains, magnificent buildings, and other indicators of development, but if our institutions are not strong enough, we will find that wealth is concentrated in some few hands, trains do not run on time, and the magnificent buildings leak. So, the challenge before us is to rejuvenate our dead and dying institutions, which is easier said than done. The main problem is the opaque system of appointment of judges and top officers. While a collegium of judges, which appoints judges of higher courts, has come in for a fair amount of criticism, the process of appointment of top civil servants by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) is no less opaque.

For some other key appointments, like that of Central Vigilance Commissioners or Election Commissioners, a committee comprising the PM, Leader of Opposition and a Union Cabinet Minister is constituted. This procedure came in for serious criticism by the Supr eme Court, when it was revealed that while appointing ECs, hundreds of bio-data were sent to the Leader of Opposition, only an hour or two before the meeting. Probably, a better alternative could be to follow the US system of open Congressional hearings for top appointments, so that a candidate’s adequacies and inadequacies are discussed threadbare. As Charles Babbage, the nineteenth century mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, often called ‘father of the computer’ had said: “Those from whose pocket the salary is drawn, and by whose appointment the officer was made, have always a right to discuss the merits of their officers, and their modes of exercising the duties they are paid to perform.”

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