MANDARIN MATTERS | civil services | opinionNow is the time for Manmohan Singh to radically transform the civil services and prove his critics wrong
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by RAHUL SINGH
by RAHUL SINGH
SINCE becoming an adult, I have interacted extensively with civil servants. In the milieu that I grew up in, they were considered the elite of the country. Two of my parents’ closest friends were distinguished civil servants, Prem Kirpal and EN Mangatrai. The first became Education Secretary, even though he had not qualified through the competitive civil services exam. And the second served as Chief Secretary in Punjab and Kashmir. In fact, when I was still in college, I went on a trek in the Lahaul valley with Mangatrai and his wife, Champa. Along with us were some young IAS officers, including SS Grewal, Sarla Grewal (the two were not married then, they fell in love during the trek), Kapila (whose first name I forget) and Thakur Das. All four went on to become outstanding civil servants.
Bright, hard-working and idealistic –those were the qualities I associated with the civil service. Many of my collegemates joined it and even I made a halfhearted attempt to get in (I did poorly in the interview). In the early 1980s, when terrorism in Punjab was at its peak, I moved from Mumbai (then Bombay) to Chandigarh as editor of The Indian Express. Chandigarh was a Union Territory and also the capital of both Punjab and Haryana. So it had civil servants from three cadres, probably more civil servants per capita than any other city in the country (or perhaps the world)! I got to know many of them.
PH Vaishnav, a Gujarati who spoke fluent Punjabi, was the most endearing. He became Chief Secretary of Punjab and it was under his administration –Surjit Singh Barnala was Chief Minister and “supercop” Julio Ribeiro, who had been “imported” from Bombay, the head of police – that the terrorists were put on the backfoot. NN Vohra (now Governor of Kashmir) was the Punjab Home Secretary and Prem Kathpalia the Financial Commissioner. Manohar Singh Gill (now Union Sports Minister) was also a Secretary.
There’s a proposal from Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys, both simple and radical: abolish the IAS and replace it with a professional service.
Lower down, there were Ajit Kumar, Anil and Rajni Razdan, Amitabh Pande, Rajan Kashyap, Krishnamurthi, Sunil Ahuja, Kamal Nain Singh, Rupan Deol Bajaj (famous for her battle with another “supercop” over bottom-pinching). They all became good friends of mine and most of them went on to occupy senior positions at the Centre.
They all had one characteristic in common: complete integrity. There was not a hint of graft or nepotism surrounding any of them, though civil service salaries were ridiculously low. However, corruption had begun to creep in. I heard of wily IAS officers who knew that land was going to be developed and infrastructure put in place. As a result, the value of that land was bound to go up steeply. They would buy plots, often in the names of their wives or close relatives. This was just one of the many ways in which civil servants were enriching themselves. When Bhajan Lal was Haryana Chief Minister, one of his most senior bureaucrats, who had already acquired a dubious reputation, held his daughter’s wedding in grand style. He invited hundreds of the State’s leading industrialists and businessmen. For days, Chandigarh was abuzz with talk of the lavish presents and envelopes that had been handed over as wedding gifts.
Since those days of the 1980s, there has been a precipitate decline in moral standards in the civil services. This is not just my observation, it is a general feeling among the informed public. Here is a sampling of what I have read in recent days in the newspapers: Headlined “Babus admit to corruption in the ranks”, an item in The Times of India said that a “perception” survey showed 80 per cent of IAS, IFS, IPS, IRS, and six other top Central services officers agreed that “corruption takes place because there are always some civil servants willing to collaborate in it”. They also said that corrupt officers got away without being punished, adding that successful candidates in the UPSC exams, even after qualifying for a place in the IAS and IFS, often opted for the revenue services like Customs and Income Tax for obvious reasons. Writing in The Indian Express, Ribeiro said, “Corruption has permeated every aspect of public life.... Most police officers do not care to follow the rules because they know they will get away with the help of their political patrons.” He was commenting on a report of how senior IPS officers were setting up their wives and sons in the private security business. “This is a reflection of the rot that has set into the police force in Maharashtra in the last two decades,” he added. But it is not just Maharashtra where it has happened.
In The Tribune, Shailaja Chandra, a former Secretary at the Centre who was also Chief Secretary of Delhi, has this to say: “There was a time when joining the civil services was a matter of prestige. Increasingly now the public looks upon the entire gamut of civil services as self-seeking, greedy and corrupt.” She calls for a “Corruption Eradication Commission” like the one set up in Indonesia which prosecuted and jailed more than 100 high-ranking officials over five years. Those jailed included a Minister, Members of Parliament, heads and key officials of the Central Bank (the equivalent of the Reserve Bank of India) and of the Election Commission, Governors, mayors and senior police officials.
Finally, there is a proposal from NR Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys and one of the most respected entrepreneurs in the country. And it is both simple and radical: abolish the IAS altogether and replace it with a professional service.
We inherited the civil service from the British. It was called the steel frame and it did a wonderful job in administering and uniting the country. But it has long outlived its role, and even in Britain the civil services have been completely transformed. The time has come for such a change in India. And it must take place fast. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been criticized for being weak and indecisive. Now is the time for him to prove his critics wrong.
(The writer has been editor of Reader’s Digest, The Indian Express and The Sunday Observer)
