By Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN
Mauryan Rulers were the first to develop a well-knit bureaucracy to manage their vast empire, one of the largest in the history. More than 2000 years ago, they had laid the foundation of bureaucracy, which carried out oral instructions of the King and satraps on administration.
The tradition continued through the Delhi Sultanate period and the Mughal era. But, it was during the East India Company that the bureaucrats, who were ruthless in implementing the superior's dicta - oral or otherwise, became plunderers.
British attempted to streamline the bureaucracy by ending patronage based recruitment. In 1854, the Macaulay Committee report said: "henceforth, an appointment to the civil services of the Company will not be a matter of favour but a matter of right. He who obtains such an appointment will owe it solely to his own abilities and industry."
After 1855, the selection to Indian Civil Services became merit based. But, the British had a fetish to restrict recruitment to graduates from Oxford and Cambridge, which gave it the snooty, snobbish and elite attitude to civil servants. Doors of recruitment opened to Indians much later. From 1922, the examination was held in India too.
After independence, departure of British saw reorientation of the civil services but changes remained skin deep. Bureaucrats still applied gloss to their heavily nurtured elite classification yet remained servile to political bosses, who too liked subservient civil servants.
Good governance provides efficiency in a democracy. And good governance is possible when it has well-oiled civil service machinery. Subservience among bureaucrats is anathema to good governance.
In India, civil servants' character and productivity had for years remained directly proportional to the traits of political bosses, who preferred to get their work done without being caught in the act or held accountable for the decision. The trend of issuing oral instructions to bureaucrats emerged from this cozy relation between politicians and bureaucrats.
The Narendra Modi government has issued an office memorandum asking the bureaucrats to ignore oral instructions. This will go a long way in bringing accountability in the upper echelons of governance, especially among political bosses and top bureaucrats.
But, this decision of Modi government was only part implementation of the Supreme Court's October 31, 2013 judgment. The judgment came on the petition filed by retired top bureaucrats and eminent persons who after superannuation thought of approaching the SC to get rid of the malaise that had haunted bureaucracy for centuries.
In the judgment in T S R Subramanian case, the SC had said: "We are of the view that the civil servants cannot function on the basis of verbal or oral instructions, orders, suggestions, proposals etc and they must also be protected against wrongful and arbitrary pressure exerted by the administrative superiors, political executive, business and other vested interests."
"Further, the civil servant shall also not have any vested interests. Resultantly, there must be some records to demonstrate how the civil servant has acted, if the decision is not his, but if he is acting on the oral directions, instructions, he should record such directions in the file... Recording of instructions, directions is, therefore, necessary for fixing responsibility and ensure accountability in the functioning of civil servants and to uphold institutional integrity," the court had said.
The year-old judgment had another important direction apart from the ban on oral instructions to bureaucrats, both of which were to be implemented within three months that is by January 31, 2014.
The other direction was to liberate the bureaucracy from the fear of whimsical transfers for vested reasons by political executives for not following certain instructions, which were not according to the constitutional scheme of governance.
The court had ordered setting up of Civil Services Boards, both at the central and state level, which would guide and advice the political executive on transfers and postings as well as disciplinary actions against bureaucrats. It ordered that the bureaucrats must have a fixed tenure and could be transferred mid-term only after the transferring authority recorded the reasons in writing.
It specified the reasons for its decision. "We notice at present the civil servants are not having stability of tenure, particularly in the state governments where transfers and postings are made frequently, at the whims and fancies of the executive head for political and other considerations and not in public interest."
"We therefore, direct the Union, state governments and Union territories to issue appropriate directions to secure providing minimum tenure of service to various civil servants, within a period of three months," it had ordered.
More than a year has gone by, but the SC judgment is not yet implemented. Bureaucrats like Ashok Khemka, Haryana cadre IAS officer who objected to DLF-Robert Vadra land deal, and Durga Shakti Nagpal, UP cadre IAS officer who was targeted by the state governmentfor removing encroachment by a Mosque, continue to suffer the whims and mood-swings of political executives.
Source:-The Economic Times
No comments:
Post a Comment