Unshackle the bureaucracy

The Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Bill has a notable feature, aimed at allowing government functionaries to work without fear while deciding on coal projects. It says that as long as government officials act “in good faith under this Act” they will be immune from prosecution. When placed in the right context, this provision is not as sweeping as it seems. Coming as it does after at least one senior Coal Ministry functionary in the UPA regime was implicated on decidedly flimsy grounds for favouring an industrial house, this legal assurance will help bureaucrats break out of their ‘play-safe-do-nothing’ mindset — one of the principal factors behind the ‘policy paralysis’ in the UPA. Power Minister Piyush Goyal’s statement in Parliament on this issue seems like a follow-up of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assurance given in May that he would back bold, decisive decision-makers in government.

But what is just as important is that the proposed move, in a way, challenges a draconian provision in the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 — namely, Section 13 1 (d), which implicates a public servant for criminal misconduct if he or she “obtains for himself or for any other person any valuable thing or pecuniary advantage without any public interest”. Many an honest bureaucrat has been harassed by this astonishingly vague law, prompting even former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to speak out against it and getting his government to work on an amendment. Singh had rightly argued that the law does not call for establishing guilty intent or mens rea on the part of the bribe-taker. This government should take Singh’s initiative to this rightful conclusion. Besides this law, the socio-political environment in recent times has also played a role in creating a climate of diffidence. The Right to Information Act, with the potential to point a flashlight at each stage of decision-making, posed a welcome challenge to the opacity to which the bureaucracy had grown accustomed; but with laws such as Section 13 1 (d) in place the chances of innocent individuals being trapped only increased. The Anna Hazare movement demanding the creation of a Lokpal added to the overall fear. The anti-establishment anger of 2011 was hardly conducive to a discussion on introduction of reasonable checks and balances.

One of the possible safeguards, as former Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu rightly noted in his much-discussed paper on bribery, is to punish those who make wrong accusations. But, as Basu argues, “we cannot have an efficient market economy unless human beings are endowed with a minimal amount of integrity”. For that, we also need laws that reward, not disincentivise, both integrity and efficiency in the bureaucracy. With the coal and 2G scams still fresh in public memory, pushing reforms on this front would be a test of Prime Minister Modi’s political dexterity. In trying to get on with policymaking, he cannot be seen to be riding roughshod over civil society concerns. He should initiate a wider debate on what the ‘new normal’ in governance ought to be.

COMMENT NOW