The Hindu Business Line : Civil service reform

THE recent happenings in the UK have led to a general sense of dissatisfaction with the calibre and quality of the civil service, ascribed to the erosion of the age-old canons of anonymity, neutrality, impartiality and professionalism which once distinguished it. The widespread practice of Ministers "importing" political cronies as special advisers is also seen to be a ruse to bypass the permanent bureaucrats who are prone to take themselves seriously and cause embarrassment by giving unpalatable advice.

The rungs of the bureaucracy appear to have lost confidence in the traditional power of Permanent Secretaries to defend the status and ethics of the civil service. There is serious concern about the undermining of the collective responsibility of the Cabinet by the "increased reliance on informal and non-accountable processes". The old fashioned systems are also out of tune with the revolutionary impact of the information technology and the worldwide web.

All this has given rise to a call for civil service reform in order to speed up its working and to make it responsive to the aspirations of the people at large. In particular, the inefficiency and lethargy of the delivery mechanism has been the target of critics for a long time. There has also been a demand that there should be a law to make the civil service accountable to the Parliament as a whole, instead of to the Crown, which essentially means the Government of the day.

Of course, civil service in the UK, as everywhere else, has always been the favourite whipping boy of the academia, media, the civil society and anti-establishment lobby which can never have enough of measures to get the most and the best out of the civil service justifying the protection and privileges it enjoys.

But the difference this time is that Parliament, the First Division Association (FDA), a union-like conglomerate of very senior mandarins of the elite corps of the bureaucracy and retired heads of the civil service have all joined to pressure the Government to enact legislation which will provide inviolable statutory footing to the values and principles governing the functioning of the civil service, and especially to the relations between civil service and government.

In fact, a Civil Service Bill is already included the list of Parliamentary business and can come up for debate any time now. It may be well worthwhile to think of a similar legislation for India to arrive at a suitable blend of independence and accountability.