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The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, has asked civil servants to avoid the tendency to not take decisions out of fear that things might go wrong.
He also advised them to ensure that their judgment and advice were not affected by the nature and colour of the political leadership.
Speaking on the occasion of Civil Services Day here on Saturday, Dr Singh said, “We cannot have a bureaucracy which is hundred per cent risk-averse. In fact, we should encourage boldness in decision-making, provided the decisions are well considered and as per the law of the land.”
A civil servant who does not take decisions might always be safe, but at the end of the day, “he or she would have contributed nothing to our society and to our country,” he added.
Dr Singh's statement is being seen as a response to the remarks made by the Chief Economic Advisor, Dr Kaushik Basu, in Washington on Wednesday.
Dr Basu had said that decision-making and the reforms process had slowed due to a series of scams that had unnerved the bureaucracy and major reforms were unlikely before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
In this context, Dr Singh said: “It should be our endeavour that there is no witch-hunting in the name of fighting corruption. It is our Government's commitment to put in place a system and create an environment in which our civil servants are encouraged to be decisive, and no one is harassed for bona fide mistakes of errors of judgment.”
He said his Government was committed to protecting honest and well-meaning civil servants who might have made genuine errors in their work.
“And I sincerely hope that these intentions of our Government are shared by the State Governments, too,” he added.
The Prime Minister said, “The decisions that civil servants take must be fair and objective in nature, based on sound evidence and deep analysis and designed to serve the best interests of our country. Their judgment and advice should not be affected by the nature and colour of the political leadership.”
Dr Singh further added that if this does not happen, the impartiality and fairness of the decision-making processes in public administration would get compromised and the quality of our output would be sub-optimal.
He advised bureaucrats to constantly maintain this kind of vigil.
The Prime Minster said he believed there was a growing perception in the public that over the years the attributes of objectivity in work had been diluted.
He left it to the civil servants to ponder over to what extent this perception was true and what they could collectively do to remove it from the public mind.
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