Allow non-performing bureaucrats to leave at the age of 40, says Chidambaram

The country needs to re-imagine and reinvent its administrative machinery as its capacity to deliver has diminished, said former Finance Minister P Chidambaram.

He felt some radical measures were needed to transform the bureaucracy in order to improve the outcomes as India was dealing with multiple transitions.

“I think the only way we can reinvent the bureaucracy is to allow the non-performers to leave the civil service when they reach the age of 40,” he said, responding to questions during a lecture on “Will India get uninterrupted economic growth?” organised by The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy.

“Because at that age, a non-performing civil servant can find another career and another job. And allow the lateral entry for performers to enter at the age of 40,” he added.

He also said that though it was natural for older people to occupy higher positions, many of them were simply incapable of delivering.

Citing examples, he said the government machinery’s capacity to deliver was limited and hence there was a need to re-imagine and reinvent the bureaucracy.

Earlier, he said uninterrupted economic growth was not a given, and one must work hard to earn it.

“Economic growth is assured by a mix of big measures and small steps. Transiting from a government-controlled, government-driven closed economy into an open, competitive and globally-integrated economy was never going to be an easy task.

“It will require bold, structural reforms, not by a few legislative or administrative changes. It will always be work-in-progress as the economy faces new internal and external challenges,” he stated.

He said the Congress government had undertaken 11 big reforms since 1991, but after 2014, only GST can be counted as a true reform.

He felt that the Indian economy must transit from consumption-driven to investment-driven and from services-led to manufacturing-led. “We must manage the migration from rural areas to towns and cities,” he added.

Chidambaram stated that in a democracy, governance was a complex task and it involved consultation, negotiation, tolerating dissent, accommodating conflicting interests, building consensus, making legislations and designing plans and programmes and implementing through administrative machinery that has the capacity to deliver outcomes.

“If we fail in any one of the above steps, the outcome will be a failure,” he added.

He discussed four key areas to drive reforms and trigger sustained economic growth. They included getting government out of gratuitous interventions in the markets, getting government to address notable market failures through regulations, building capacity in government to do the things it must do and expanding freedoms – economic, social, religious etc — for the people.

“My assessment is since 1991 while we have done reasonably well on the first two with some glaring failures, we have failed miserably on the third and struggling to find our way on the fourth,” he said.

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