There is an outrage in the social media over the sacking of a 29-year-old IAS officer for challenging Noida’s multi-crore sand mafia. The Uttar Pradesh IAS Officers Association has amplified this anger. Rightly so!
But support for Durga Shakti Nagpal, the suspended civil servant, needn’t remain short lived or episodic.An institutionalized solution is possible once the Supreme Court accedes to the demand for Civil Services Boards in the Centre and each State.
Presently, the unholy trinity comprising Mafia Inc., netas, and a pliant and supernumerary set of top babus, decide who the most compliant SDM will be, so that they can get away looting `100-crore worth of sand in the Yamuna, barely 20 km from the office of India’s Prime Minister.
The plunder adds up to zillions as we factor sand, stone, and water from all our rivers, timber within our forests, minerals in our mines, not to belabour the trinity’s entire menu card, auctioned police stations, rigged spectrum, and dubious vendors who they select to serve mid-day meals. This can stop once a sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ percolates in the selection and continuation of civil servants.
The trigger came two years back via a petition by former Union cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian and 82 public-service veterans, pleading for urgent reforms to stem the decay, by depoliticizing management of transfers, postings, inquiries, promotions, reward, punishment and disciplinary matters relating to civil servants.
For dummies, the co-petitioners possess a cumulative administrative experience of 2,500 man years. They include former ambassador to US Abid Hussain, strategic affairs commentator B Raman, ex-chief election commisioners TSK Murthy and N Gopalaswamy, former Manipur Governor and police commissioner Ved Marwah, ex-secretary and environment panel chief Bhure lal, National Advisory Commission member NC Saxena, former special assistant to PM on international affairs Keki Daruwalla, former ambassador to United Nations Arundhati Ghose, former telecom regulator Nripendra Misra, ex-Intelligence Bureau director Arun Bhagat, ex-finance secretary Ajit Kumar, former Maruti chief Jagdish Khattar, ex-Central Bureau of Investigation director DR Karthikeyan and ex-National Security Guard chief BS Sial. Hussain and Raman are no more.
“Our young officers have high motivation and purpose. This is being defeated by crass and corrupt leaderships that don’t allow the honest to flourish. Given the right structure, a hundred ‘Durgas’ will emerge within the system,” Subramanian assured this columnist.
“One can expect that the honourable judges are reading what happened to Durga,” he said, reminding how he himself was suspended in UP for 10 months before emerging unscathed!
The proposition is simple. An independent Civil Services Board or Commission, both at the Centre and State level, comprising the head of the civil service, two senior-most civil servants and two non-bureaucrats with domain knowledge -- not the present group of puppets -- must make an offer list for all jobs. The Prime Minister/Chief Minister must have the right to reject, but only after recording the reason on file.
Related submissions:
* The selected bureaucrat would have a fixed tenure, say 2-3 years in field postings, and 5 years in the secretariat, thus ensuring stability and insulation from political pressure.
* Punishments, like the one sprung upon Durga by U.P. chief minister Akhilesh Yadav Monday, would have to pass through such a board.
* All instructions must be in writing and the civil servant concerned formally recording all instructions received from administrative and political bosses as well as any extraneous quarters. With Right to Information provisions, this is expected ensure that unholy oral instructions are curtailed.
* Over 50 administrative commissions and studies have studied the siege within, but zero on-ground implementation has perpetuated poor service delivery, excessive regulation, whimsical interference guided by personal benefit, uncoordinated and wasteful public expenditure, inadequate transparency and lack of accountability.
“Transfers are instruments of reward and punishment, with officials being frequently transferred on the whims and caprices as well as the personal needs of local politicians and other vested interests,” the petitioners have said with KK Venugopal and Menaka Guruswamy appearing for them.
Not surprisingly, some states have been dragging their feet on filing replies. Which CM wants to stop treating India’s public servants as personal servants!
(The columnist is CEO & Co-Founder, India Strategy Group, Hammurabi & Solomon Consulting. Tweets @therohitbansal).
