For the civil services to deliver, its officers need to be insulated from murky political machinations
To the weak and wavering Prince of Denmark, ‘to be or not to be' was the vexing question. To the bold and dutiful in the Indian civil services, ‘pension or suspension' is the crucial option. If you are willing to stand and stare, the civil services will take you through a silken bureaucratic path ensuring a seamless career, leading to its logical conclusion of a comfortable pension. If you, however, dare to do your job, you will in all probability receive a shower of brickbats with a few bouquets thrown in.
The latest addition to the list of civil servants victimised by the political elite is Ms Durga Shakti Nagpal. The 2010 batch IAS officer, who took on Uttar Pradesh's powerful sand mafia, was handed a charge-sheet for demolishing an under-construction wall near a mosque without following ‘due procedure' and that too during Ramzan. Consequently, an administrative action has been communalised and politicised. The charge-sheet to a discerning observer appears as a heady cocktail of political chicanery, communal guile and administrative ineptness.
Ms Nagpal's case has once again drawn public attention to the role of the bureaucracy within India's changing political milieu. As the country becomes more federal and less unitary, often regional parties come to power and they have questioned the role of IAS officers in state administration. While those questions have had strong political overtones and been shaped by a conflict of interest between parties ruling the Centre and particular States, the real issues underpinning the role of civil services should not be papered over.
The situation which prevailed in the country when Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel created the All India Services still remains relevant. About the All India Services, Sardar Patel said in the Constituent Assembly: “You will not have a united India if you have not a good All India Service which has the independence to speak out its mind, which has a sense of security…”
The All India Services speak the same administrative language, follow similar procedures and exude similar ethos throughout the country. The semblance of unity in the administrative system from Arunachal Pradesh to Andhra Pradesh is maintained mostly by the shared heritage of the All India Services. Should we now discard it at the drop of a hatIJ For the civil services to deliver, its officers need to be sufficiently insulated from the murky political machinations at the Centre and State levels. Preventing daring and dutiful officers from performing their roles will do precious little for the country.
To avert such situations, the career progression of IAS officers should be overseen by an independent body, not by State Governments. In the case of Ms Nagpal, there were many legal and procedural matters that deserved close scrutiny. For instance, she has been placed under suspension but as per the All India Service conduct rules, an officer can be suspended only if a major penalty is being considered against her. Here, the charges do not lead to the imposition of a major penalty. So there has been a procedural lapse in the suspension itself.
Further, the call for withdrawal of All India Service officers from State Governments reminds one of the position that was taken by the first Communist Government in Kerala under Chief Minister EMS Namboodiripad. He too made a fervent plea to the Union Government to not send IAS officers to the State. However, good sense prevailed and Kerala has since seen a good crop of IAS officers taking key positions every year. There is no gainsaying that in a democracy the political executive is supreme. The Constitution of India has been created by ‘we the people' and given to ‘ourselves'. Therefore, the civil servant should have no doubt that his duty is to the people. And the will of the people is represented by those they vote to power.
Under democratic governance, the civil servant has to distinguish between political action and political interference. Political action takes place when the elected representatives put pressure on the bureaucracy to ensure that the laws of the land are implemented with fairness and justice, and there is no distortion in the execution of Government policies.
Political interference happens when the people's representatives put pressure on the bureaucrats to see that the laws of the land are compromised to meet their vested interests. The subtle distinction between these two is to be kept in mind by the civil servant. It is a thin line that divides political action from political interference. The million dollar question now is: What is the role of the civil services in relation to India's changing political contours and dynamic socio-economic transformationIJ The Government will do well to constitute an independent body to study this matter. Also, there should significant public debate on the role of the Indian bureaucracy so that one may gauge the popular expectation from the civil services.
(The author is a former IAS officer and Fellow at the lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie)