The Hindu Business Line : `Battered punch-bag'

"THE civil service is an ideal punch-bag for the political classes, of all parties. Civil servants can be blamed for ministerial misjudgments,.. for poor government policy,... for botched policy implementation. They are the standing scapegoats for all governments, the excuse for systematic political buck-passing...Today, the civil service is nothing more than a hapless political football, to be kicked and punched by every feckless, passing political master... Excessive political interference is producing bad legislation... (There is) aggressive encroachment in policy-making by ministerial aides and party hacks... (Politicians have declared) open warfare against the very independence of the civil service ethos..."

Although this reads like an accurate depiction of what is happening in India, the picture drawn is actually from a recently published article on conditions in the UK. It is poor consolation that India is not alone in being witness to the politicisation and demoralisation of its civil service.

Developed countries have the resilience and buffers built up over time to withstand onslaughts on established institutions, whereas a country like India, already struggling desperately to make good with scarce resources, cannot afford to have its efforts undermined by a civil service that has been perverted and subverted from within.

After all, an efficient, impartial and independent civil service is the essential pre-requisite for the successful implementation of policies and schemes for public weal and, conversely, to reduce it to a state of impotence, and worse, to make it a political stooge, is to strike at the very root of good governance.

A large part of the ills afflicting the polity today can be traced to the straying of the bureaucracy of whatever grade and under whatever appellation from the time-honoured traditions of public service, propriety and ethical conduct. It is axiomatic that the greater its slippage from its once-cherished values, the lower will be the level of progress and development.

The remedy for this lies in the hands of the members of the civil service themselves. If only they decide to resist pressures and blandishments and present a solid front, while at the same time, extending their full cooperation in carrying out tasks assigned to them in public interest, they can easily put the political class in its place.

B. S. Raghavan