Those in the civil services and in the political establishment will not like it but, then, who cares, because the vast majority of average Indians will fully agree with the contention that the administrative structure of the nation has become enveloped in a political cocoon which, among other things, has hit the standards of fair play in executive decisions for a huge six. Even the Prime Minister conceded the other day that there is a “growing perception (among) the public that over the years the attributes of objectivity in work (among bureaucrats of all sorts) had been diluted.”

He appealed to the bureaucrats to ponder over the extent to which this dilution had taken place, “and what they could collectively do to remove it from the public mind.” The short answer to this legitimate concern on the part of Dr Manmohan Singh is, precious little, because of two things which have happened over time in our country: first, the quality of candidates entering the civil services at all levels has plummeted; secondly, the tribe of politicians has grown increasingly assertive in gathering all power in its hands; the result being that, today, it has no time or inclination to allow the niceties of the “separation of powers” theory to play themselves out.

Acquiescent executive

In other words, the executive at all levels (barring a handful of laudable exceptions) has surrendered completely to the politician in power, which is today manifested in the growing arrogance of the Governments of the day in the States and also at the Centre. The Prime Minister hinted at much the same thing when, speaking on the occasion of Civil Services Day in New Delhi recently, he advised civil servants “to ensure that their judgement and advice were not affected by the nature and colour of the political leadership.” Clearly, Dr Singh had to harp on this theme because things are not what they should be, which should be a point of serious concern with all right-thinking Indians.

Naturally, a decline in the standards of the bureaucracy at all levels has led to an increase in corruption in its ranks. The silver lining today is that the drive against corruption has not lost steam with the result that, periodically, exposes are being made (the latest being the Tatra deal which is still in the process of being probed), some of which are rocking the nation given their extent and brazenness.

Theoretically speaking, the Prime Minister was right when he said that it should be “our endeavour that there is no witch-hunting in the name of fighting corruption.” The problem is that corruption has become so endemic to the system that there is no need for a witch hunt to nail culprits: the doors of all the cupboards are rattling loudly because of the army of skeletons inside them.

When Dr Kaushik Basu, Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, said (as reported) 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,” he was not speaking through his hat but merely referring, implicitly, to a general decline in the standards of governance egged on by a faltering executive and an increasingly rapacious political class (with notable exceptions).

That the Cornell professor sought to clarify his remark by referring to the European debt crisis is of course a different matter, perhaps underscoring the home truth that someone like Dr Basu should never have left the portals of his university to dabble in the political world of economic decision-making in India.

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