Recently, there has been a serious debate about what needs to be done for India to take her place in the sun; or become a Vishwaguru as PM Modi would like it to be. However, one factor that has always held us back, and which is seldom mentioned, is the poor quality of our human capital. Indian history is replete with powerful rulers and generals who were able but morally corrupt, the Mir Jafars and Jaichands, who sold the country for pieces of gold. We also had emperors, rajas and nawabs who whiled away their time in poetry, music and dance, as enemies overran their territories. After Independence, when the British had left and the myriad rajas and maharajas had been pensioned off, the country expected that able men and women would take over the reins of administration, and lead India to glory.

Imbued by a sense of patriotism and the heady feeling of independence, the first batch of Indian politicians and bureaucrats tried to do just that. However, with the passage of time, new generations, with totally different values, came into power. Under the guise of Indianisation, timeless values of honesty, integrity, and responsibility were discarded ~ to be replaced by a culture of brazen commercialism and avarice. With the political executive not willing to take any decisions ~ except motivated ones ~ officials at the cutting edge, too, avoided hard decisions, even when absolutely necessary. Ultimately, a policy of masterly inaction came to permeate the bureaucracy. In fact, the problem of bureaucratic nonperformance has become so deep-rooted that in a longish speech in Parliament, on 10 February 2021, PM Modi questioned the capability of IAS officers to do justice to their jobs.

Since the aforesaid speech was in connection with the promotion of private enterprise, it would appear that Mr Modi was praising private entrepreneurship, in contradistinction to State run businesses. However, the meaning was abundantly clear to everyone, including those to whom Mr Modi had referred. The bureaucracy definitely needs to introspect on the cause of the PM’s displeasure, because throughout his political career the PM had reposed immense trust in bureaucrats, tasking them with the job of running their departments, with minimal supervision by ministers. Most of Mr Modi’s advisors and key functionaries are bureaucrats, serving or retired, yet the quantum change promised by Mr Modi is yet to be seen. In the eight years that Mr Modi has been at the helm, changes have been, at best, incremental, and in some cases negative, despite the carte blanche given to the bureaucracy.

Thus, Mr Modi’s public dressing down of IAS officers could only have been prompted by a deeprooted feeling of disillusionment. The lack of trust of the political leadership in the bureaucracy has led to a situation where top posts are manned solely by persons close to political leaders, who may not be best suited for the job at hand and who continue in their jobs for years via extensions granted to them. Indeed, good bureaucratic leadership is very important to further the Government’s agenda. Conversely, corruption and incompetence at the top levels of bureaucracy and police, which is being increasingly reported in newspapers, can put paid to any initiative of the Government. In the last month alone, senior IAS officers from places as wide apart as Jharkhand, Punjab and Karnataka have been arrested for corruption.

Not to be outdone, in the same period, an ADGP of Karnataka Police and a former Mumbai Police Commissioner are in jail. The existence of bad eggs at the top levels of the Government is hard to digest because appointments to all posts above Joint Secretary level are made by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), a committee chaired by the Prime Minister and having the Home Minister as a member. More sensitive appointments have to be okayed by the Central Vigilance Commission; in some cases, approval of a committee having the Leader of Opposition as a member is necessary. Sadly, politicians are far ahead of bureaucrats in corruption. As on today, cabinet ministers of various States, including Maharashtra and Delhi are in jail for corruption. A Cabinet Minister of the West Bengal government was arrested by Enforcement Directorate in connection with their investigation into the school jobs scam, after a sum of Rs 20 crore was seized from one of his associates.

A charge of political vendetta and selective targeting by Government agencies is often made by Opposition parties, but the basic question remains as to how politicians, most of whom were men of modest means, acquired wealth and business interests, once they occupied electoral office. One can be sure that if the focus of enforcement agencies is directed to the other side of the divide, similar results would emerge, though victims would be different. However, the solution for political corruption lies with the voters and not with anyone else. Providing clean and effective administration is not easy, given the corruption that permeates the bureaucratic monolith, from top to bottom. In a famous speech, Rajiv Gandhi had said that only 15 per cent of the Government’s funds were used productively while the rest were eaten away. Things have not really changed since then; Transparency International ranked India at 85 out of 180 countries in terms of honesty, with a score of 40 out of 100.

The Government has tried to leverage technology to rein in corruption by eliminating discretion, but with little success. Rather, technological solutions have promoted centralisation which has hamstrung bureaucratic initiative at the operational level. A rigid, centralised, ‘one size fits all’ approach, currently in favour, blunts the initiative of officials at the operational level, leading to delays and worse. A decidedly better approach to curb corruption could be to streamline the procedure to book delinquent officers by getting rid of the convoluted rigmarole that makes action against bureaucrats virtually impossible. This would apply particularly to lower-level functionaries, who in addition to service rules are protected by their unions, which come out with all guns blazing to shield their members. Apart from corruption, the quality of governance has suffered inestimably because reporting has become more important for bureaucratic appraisals rather than actual performance. The District Collector who was supposed to tour his district for fifteen days in a month is mostly found in his office.

Field-oriented positions like the Inspector in the Income-tax Department, have become desk jobs. Resultantly, almost all Government employees have become desk-bound file pushers, seldom bothering to work at the ground level. Most Government schemes fail because they are not implemented on the ground by lower-level functionaries who treat Government employment as a sinecure. Governments come and go but the public, which deals with grass-root level officials, hardly perceives any change in governance. The much-reviled Emergency was the last occasion when the bureaucracy performed its assigned role e.g., of running trains on time and of being on time in office, leading to the conclusion that one needs to wield the stick to make bureaucrats fall in line. The bureaucracy can perform better only after a thorough review and revamp of the public administrative system.

All Governments, even the present one, are lacking on this score; nothing much has been heard about the much-vaunted Mission Karamyogi, launched a couple of years ago. Even reports of the First and Second Administrative Reforms Commission (1966 and 2005) have been only partially implemented. Fearing job losses, optimisation and automation of work processes is perpetually on hold. Routine measures that would improve governance with little effort, like giving proper training to Government employees and formulating SOPs in light of recent technical advances, are hardly attempted. Only a Hercules like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel can clean the Augean stables of Indian politics and bureaucracy. Or we can try the alternative suggested by the Turkish playwright, novelist and thinker Mehmet Murat ildan: “Instead of politicians, let the monkeys govern the countries; at least they will steal only the bananas!”