The Hindu Business Line : Time to crank up the administrative machine

The proposal for a unified civil service holds out hope of greater flexibility in the civil services, providing scope for vertical and horizontal movement of personnel across the spectrum. There would also be a repository of talented and trained manpower that could be tapped readily.

G. Srinivasan

At a time when the Indian economy is opening up, with the steady entry of private players into the crucial infrastructure segments, the role of public administration at the Central and State levels must undergo a paradigm shift to meet the growing expectations of people. With India wooing foreign investments, projecting itself as an attractive destination to do business and taking part vigorously in trade negotiations under the WTO umbrella, the extant bureaucratic stru cture also needs to be beefed up in terms of talent, expertise and domain knowledge to engage with foreign companies and other trade partners. After a delay of over four decades, it is to the credit of the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, that he set up last year the second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) under the Chairmanship of the former Karnataka Chief Minister, Mr M. Veerappa Moily. Even as this Commission has spun off innumerable sub-groups to deal with issues at the micro level, the foremost issue is how the civil service structure, dating back to the days of Warren Hastings and Lord Cornwallis at the end of the 18th century, with only minor alterations over time, can be remoulded to meet the present day realities of an emerging economy.

It is a sad reflection on the current administrative set-up that the system of district administration, with the office of the collector as the district’s chief executive, persists even today and the Secretariat of the headquarters of the provinces has morphed into the headquarters of the State governments. Ironically, even as the Prime Minster has set up a commission at the national level to infuse new thinking into the functioning of the administrative ‘steel-frame’, the Secretariat of the Central Government today is pretty much as it was in 1899, with its cadre-based structure, warts and all. It is also a travesty that the Government of the day is under political compulsion to expand reservation of jobs on caste basis when it has done precious little to jolt the cadre-based system of administration that has needed root-and-branch reform for at least two decades.

It is, however, encouraging that the Sixth Pay Commission, under the Chairmanship of Justice Mr B. N. Srikrishna, talks about a Unified Civil Service (UCS), blending all Central (technical and non-technical) and All India Services, allowing vertical and horizontal movement of personnel.

Prevailing structure

A little digression is warranted here to put the issue in perspective. Currently, the various Group A Services, constituting the mainstay of the Central Government, are organised along cadre lines, with recruitment for most services being done through the Common Civil Services Examination (CSE) of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). For other technical services, such as engineers and doctors, the UPSC recruits through separate examinations.

Every such Service constitutes a Cadre that functions under a parent Ministry, which also dons the mantle of the Cadre Controlling Authority for that Service. Each Service has a sanctioned strength of posts at various levels and the officers move up the the ladder only within the cadre, save when they go on deputation. The officers are promoted en bloc, batch-wise, with scarcely any say for performance. This holds good for all the Services, including the Administrative Service.

What is galling is that all prospective placements and career avenues are not linked to actual performance but based on one single examination at entry level that the officer would have sat through to clear admission. Where a cadre lacks upward mobility owing to stagnancy, Cadre Review is undertaken by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), under which posts at various levels in the lower echelons of the administrative apparatus are abolished to take care of promotion on a short-term basis! This triggers resentment at the lower level. Also, the process itself is marked by time-consuming talks among the contending partners, such as the parent ministry, the DoPT and the UPSC.

Glaring anomaly

Yet another glaring anomaly is that officers of the All-India Services in many smaller States and far-flung areas such as the North-East get promoted faster than their counterparts in other bigger States, though the officers may be of the same batch.

So, after completing the State tenure, when they move on to the Centre on deputation, they get pay protection, while their contemporary IAS officers in other cadres, and also other Services, lag behind in getting higher scale — a cause sufficient enough to demotivate officers of probity and professionalism. Since the accrued benefits and perquisites of a serving officer are pay-determined and not post-linked, this leads to further discrimination in entitlements such as government accommodation, qualifying for advances such as housing or vehicle purchase.

To compound their vexation further, what with reservation of over 50 per cent and above, meritorious officers from the general category have often to bear the demoralising spectacle of officers of inferior rank in terms of performance getting to the top faster. No wonder, the entire recruitment to all the Civil services in the country today has fallen to only around 300 per year, as against over a thousand a decade ago.

Holding out hope

Against this disturbing development, the proposal to have a unified civil service holds out hope in that it confers countless benefits not only on the bureaucrats, a section of whom are stoutly opposed to any reform from within, but also on the economy, in particular.

These include: right person for the right avocation, higher echelons of administration held by persons of ability, domain knowledge and integrity, less latitude for rent-seeking practices by high performers, drastic pruning in file movements for cadre review and concomitant decline in service-related litigation.

Moreover, the current practice of filling the higher posts at the Centre and the States based on one’s cadre, and service affiliation resorted to by en bloc promotion of juniors in the Cadre, would give way to merit, performan ce and efficient delivery of public services. Under a unified civil service, a vacancy for senior level should be notified, drawing up relevant eligibility criteria. If a post of Secretary (Revenue) is to be filled either, at the Centre or in a State, it should be notified so that applicants, regardless of their service and cadre, should apply and get selected based on field-level experience and exposure, performance and general reputation.

This would eliminate the grouse of a person of the Indian Revenue Service or Customs and Central Excise Service, with domain knowledge and exposure to the various nuances of revenue, who now stands a fair chance, which otherwise goes to the administrative service officer who might be junior to him in terms of services in the specialised area.

This way, there would be scope for vertical and horizontal movement of personnel across the spectrum. There would also be a repository of talented and trained manpower that could be interchanged instantaneously, wherever it is required, without hassles, unlike now.

With the UPA Government contemplating the Public Services Bill, allowing even private sector people to join the government, a move the Vajpayee Government experimented with in the Power Ministry, when a private sector power company executive became the Secretary, Department of Power (as did Dr Manmohan Singh during the Narasimha Rao Government, when he appointed Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia as his Finance Secretary), the time is now right to phase out the cadre-based system as the first step in real reform of the gargantuan government machinery so that it delivers much-needed results for consolidating the growth story.