The Hindu Business Line : Get babudom on the treadmill

Despite the constant refrain that the country's flabby bureaucracy needs trimming, efforts towards this end seem to lack sincerity. The over-manned establishment, besides adding to the disguised employment, acts as a huge drain on resources, says Raghu Dayal.

UNTIL a mere hundred years ago, one of the imperatives of maidenly beauty in China was the possession of dainty, petite feet. The girl child had to have her feet bound to prevent them growing large. The bound-feet is a thing of the past in China. While India has had no such cruel practice, there is this unique bureaucratic apparatus which has our hands and feet rigidly bound.

Though the occasional avowals to break the bonds have been made, there has been no sincerity about unshackling the system. The country has followed the familiar "law of inverse relevance", observed by Sir Humphrey Appleby in the BBC Serial `Yes Minister', according to which the less you intend to do or are capable of doing, the more you have to keep talking about it.

The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, has an image of unquestionable honesty and sincerity; his avowed intentions hold out a hope that things might work out. To grapple with deeply entrenched interests is a huge task. But as a former Finance Minister, he would be aware how the solemn assurances of the Narasimha Rao Government for substantial reduction in senior level bureaucracy fell through and how, on the contrary, a number of new departments and Secretary-level posts were created.

Mr P. Chidambaram, in his earlier tenure in the United Front Government, had to agree to implement a watered-down version of the Fifth Pay Commission recommendations. The constraints imposed by the UPA Government's Common Minimum Programme (CMP) are more awesome.

One of most important aspects is the size of government which militates against efficiency and productivity. It may be plausible to fathom how and why the bureaucracy has acquired deadly fangs. The state encompasses the whole panoply of social and economic life.

An unbridled expansion of the civil service started with the socialistic pattern and the urge to occupy "commanding heights". In the 20 years from 1971, the total strength of Central government employees nearly doubled, from about 2.1 million to 3.9 million. The number of senior-level posts increased almost four-old. In some States, there was a three-fold increase in the two decades. Subterfuges by senior civil servants have led to a steady growth in the number of ex-cadre positions mulcted by them, with perks and promotion prospects. Hundreds of attached offices and agencies have been created, most of which are redundant.

The over-manned establishment, besides adding to the disguised employment, acts as a huge drain on the country's resources. The bloated bureaucracy, wasteful and ineffective, clogs the channels of communication, leads to delays and diffusion of responsibility. Having gradually become susceptible to pulls and pressures, bureaucrats at the higher levels have often been bending backwards. Tendering honest advice to political masters is now a forgotten role. The bureaucrat panders to the politicians' whims and practices often to have his own peccadilloes condoned.

There is a constant chatter that flabby bureaucracy needs trimming. Proposals to start the pruning process from the vast base of the pyramid immediately get scuttled by politicians and the unions who see their empires threatened.

Departments can be merged and their numbers drastically reduced. Citizens in an area, for instance, can deal with just one office locally for all tax matters and payments to utilities such as electricity and water. Even with regard to different functionaries at the village level, they could be so organised as to reverse the traditional pyramid. The Government had imposed a 10 per cent across-the-board cut in the number of sanctioned posts as on January 1, 1992. Instructions were also issued in January 2000, directing a 10 per cent reduction in the number of posts created during January 1992 to December 1999. The Expenditure Reforms Commission covered 36 ministries and departments and submitted ten reports. It recommended a further 10 per cent cut in the sanctioned staff strength as on January 1, 2000, to be carried out for each ministry/department by 2004-05. The Commission recommended a two-year ban on creation of new posts, be they in an existing or new organisation. The staff rendered surplus could be kept in a pool to be redeployed as and when vacancies arise.

Any deliberations on terms and incomes of State employees must be preceded by the Government first implementing all the recommendations of the Fifth Pay Commission and other similar bodies. That would involve, reducing government jobs by 30 per cent over a 10-year period; making the structure horizontal; pruning the current 5-6 layers to not more than two; increasing productivity in government offices by curtailing holidays; and reducing the number of secretary-level posts from 90 to 30.

The posts of under secretary/deputy secretary/director could be combined. And it would make sense to merge the posts of section officer, senior and junior assistants, upper and lower division clerks into two categories of assistants.

The features which render the Indian bureaucracy an enemy of change include: life-long job security; no accountability for work not done or done badly; dearth of innovative ideas; chronic suspicion of any suggestion made by outsiders. In bureaucracy, the higher the seniority, more the vulnerability. The Government may do well not to grant extension of service to anyone or assignment to any superannuated officer at least for two years of his/her retirement.

The Government needs to seriously consider filling senior positions through short-term contracts, enabling lateral entry of technocrats, professionals and entrepreneurs. Specialists are needed to supplement and strengthen the system. Lateral entry of experts in their domain should no longer be restricted.

The UK, for instance, introduced some important innovations in civil service — setting up executive agencies for specific services, such as prisons, coast guards and passport offices, which function as corporate business entities under a CEO responsible to the minister, is but one. Several CEOs have been inducted from the private sector.

The task, no doubt, is daunting and difficult, but not impossible. Several countries have addressed it, to cut the monster of bureaucracy to size.

Thomas Jefferson articulated a vision of a smaller, less centralised government. He wanted a government that worked better and cost less, and one that taxed lightly. Mrs Margaret Thatcher in 1979 brought in the then Chairman of Marks & Spencer, Derek Rayner, as an efficiency adviser to undertake a scrutiny programme by posing certain basic questions: Can it be done better, cheaper, and need it be done at all?

By 1987, 300 checks were conducted and over a billion pounds in spending saved. The UK Government laid down a drill to be followed before filling in vacancy at the senior level: Is it necessary to fill the vacancy at all? If so, what is the nature of the job now and in the future? What qualifications, qualities, skills, experience and achievement record will a future jobholder require? What are the requirements of the top team in which the individual needs to fit? Are there sufficient candidates already in the department, or is it necessary to extend the search to the wider civil service or to fill by open competition?

In China, Premier Zhu Rongji axed two million government jobs as a part of administrative reforms. In South Africa, a Presidential Review Commission appointed by Dr Nelson Mandela found inherited bureaucracy "fundamentally flawed" and recommended far-reaching proposals for reconfiguration and abolition of a number of ministries.

As late as 1960, the Korean civil service was widely viewed as a corrupt and inept institution. By the late 1970s, the bureaucrat became reputable. General Park Chung Hee reorganised the civil service and replaced the spoils system by a merit-based system.

The world today deliberates the Henry David Thoreau dictum: "That government is best that governs least". Tom Paine, a major voice of the American revolution, declared that "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its mixed state, an intolerable one". Emerson, some years later said, "The less government we have, the better".

We do not need more or less governance, we need better government and better governance. The job of government is to steer, not row the boat. Peter Drucker argues that we need more governance, not less. In The Age of Discontinuity, he maintains: "We do not face a withering away of the state — but we do face a choice between big but impotent government and a government that is strong because it confines itself to decision and direction and leaves the doing to others.

So often has the permanent need for wide-ranging reforms and restructuring of the country's civil service been analysed, deliberated and acknowledged. An imperative need is obvious — of a steady and systematic implementation. What the country does not need is yet another committee or commission to study and report. The enormous task it entails has to be initiated, involving consensus, wherever feasible, and coercion, where unavoidable.

The Prime Minister has taken up the gauntlet, but he will need all the support required. "Canst Thou draw out Leviathan with a hook", God asked of Job. Perhaps the question which Indians have yet to answer clearly is not only "Canst Thou", but "Will Thou, truly"?

(The author is a former Managing Director of Concor.)

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