Introduction
Concern
about reforming public administration in India is not something new.
What is new is the context in which it is being talked about today. The
period beginning from 1991 is marked by the emergence of a liberal
economic regime that is attempting to dismantle the centrally directed
framework of economic development. It is also the beginning of the
period when the international multilateral agencies have begun attaching
conditionalities while giving aid. These conditionalities initially
were limited to prescriptions on how the aid would be administered but
have gradually broadened their scope by suggesting reforms in overall
framework of governance itself. This is happening all over the world.
Reform is in the air and no country is left out of this global
discourse. Changes in the intellectual climate that provided a new
understanding of the role and scope of public administration propels
this discourse while ‘Reinventing Government’ summarises and celebrates
this new understanding.
When talking about
the failure of the planned strategy of development, particularly in the
achievements of the various 5-year plans, the discussion usually veers
around the impediments created by the inherited bureaucratic and
administrative system of the British colonial days. The planners were
quite conscious of the need for a different system to implement the
planned objectives of development and wrote so in chapters of several
plan documents. The government responded to this concern by appointing
many committees to suggest changes in the system. In this expression of
concern for administrative reform, public administration emerged as an
academic discipline in India and provided the intellectual background
for suggestions to improve public administration in practice.
Intellectual analysis of the problems of public administration and
nature of efforts at administrative reform are closely linked. The
purpose of this paper is to examine the efforts at administrative reform
in India and analyse the context in which they were made. It is
debatable whether these efforts made any substantive impact on the
practice of public administration in India. The second part of the paper
will attempt to discuss some reasons why these efforts merely chanted
the same litany of complaints against an ineffective administration
without making any headway on the ground. Finally, the paper will focus
on the challenges facing the government in the post economic reform
period to see whether the experience will be different from the earlier
one.
The Colonial Legacy
The
building blocks for the study of public administration in India were
provided by the contribution of many British administrators mainly
belonging to the Indian Civil Service. Many of these contributions were
in the nature memoirs and apart from being descriptive of the customs
and manners of Indian society were rich in detail of the working of the
British Indian administration. One of the major outcomes of these
writings was the creation of what has come to be known as the ‘ICS
mythology’ and a romantic view of field administration. One of the
premier representatives of the most romanticised version of the role of
the ICS is ‘The Guardians’, the second volume of Philip Woodruff’s well
known study ‘The Men Who Ruled India’ (1954).
Even though Woodruff asserted that the term guardians was his own,
several writers (ex-civil servants) joined him in perpetuating the myth
of the altruistic characteristics of the ICS in which platonic
guardianship and men being of superior virtue dominated. The love of
outdoor life, commitment to the district and the welfare of its
population, courage and daring in decision making, independence and
integrity were among the many other virtues that the ICS seemed to
possess. The Indian members of the ICS helped in perpetuating these
myths through their own writings in the post-independence era (see
Chettur 1964; Panjabi 1965).
A
number of scholars particularly British also joined in this chorus. A
rhetorical question like the following was asked: “How is it, that 760
British members of the ruling Indian Civil Service could as late as
1939, in the face of the massive force of India national movement led by
Gandhi, held down 378 million Indians?” (quoted in Spangenburg 1976:4).
Such a question implied that the British had the skills to govern
India. This assertion was based on three essential myths: a. the myth of
the popularity of the civil service as a profession that attracted the
best minds; b. the myth of efficiency in administering India; and c. the
myth of sacrificial esprit de corps of the ICS which ostensibly infused
the government with the primary concern of working for the welfare of
the people.
For the British, the
perpetuation of this myth served many functions. It came as a defence of
British imperialism in the court of world public opinion. Teddy
Roosevelt, at the end of his second term as President in 1909, cited
British administration in India as a prime example of overwhelming
advancement achieved as a result of white or European rule among the
‘peoples who dwell in the darker corners of the earth’ (Spangenburg 1976:7).
It also helped assuage internal opinion in England reassuring the
British ruling classes that the British rule was beneficial to India.
This
myth not only survived but also prospered many years after
independence. The basic framework of administration continued as if the
colonial administrators had not departed at all. As an Indian journalist
later remarked, ‘this would be unbelievable were it not true’, but
Nehru and his colleagues sought to build ‘a new India, a more
egalitarian society…. through the agency of those who had been the
trained servants of imperialism—it is as if Lenin, on arrival in Russia,
had promptly mustered the support of White Russians he could find’
(quoted in Potter 1986:2).
What is paradoxical is that this myth has persisted well on to the
1980s and has resulted in the general posture adopted by the civil
servants and professionals in dealing with politicians and development
processes.
The inability of national
leadership to bring about change in the early 1950s set the old system
of administration in firm saddle. Nehru writing much before independence
had said, ‘I am quite sure that no new order can be built up in India
so long as the spirit of the ICS pervades our administration and our
public services. That spirit of authoritarianism…cannot exist with
freedom…. Therefore, it seems essential that the ICS and similar
services must disappear completely as such before we can start real work
on a new order’ (Nehru 1953:8).
In the spring of 1964, Nehru was asked at a private meeting with some
friends what he considered to be his greatest failure as India’s first
Prime Minister. He reportedly replied “I could not change the
administration, it is still colonial administration’ (quoted in Potter 1986:2).
The
essential point is that the British administration upheld by its many
myths survived and entrenched itself well into the post-colonial period.
However, the introduction of Community Development Programme first
raised the demand of a new type of administrator who would be unrelated
to the colonial one. The administrators began to be told that a
programme of social change like that of community development could not
be implemented successfully through colonial administrative structures,
procedures. The administrators were exhorted to identify with rural
life.
The Reform Effort
The
emphasis on the schism between the old and the new gained scholarly
attention really after Paul Appleby, a Professor at Syracuse University,
was invited by the Government of India to report on Indian
administration. He expressed the view that there was a dichotomy between
bureaucratic dispositions and development needs in India (Appleby 1953).
Some Ford Foundation experts reinforced this view when they recalled
their work in community development programmes, commented that ‘…the
inadequacies of the Indian bureaucracy are not due to the fact that it
is bureaucracy but due to considerable fact that it carries too much
baggage from the past’ (Taylor et al. 1966:579). This view gained further support when scholars like La Palombara (1963:1)
wrote ‘Public Administration steeped in the tradition of the Indian
Civil Service may be less useful as developmental administrators than
those who are not so rigidly tied to the notions of bureaucratic status,
hierarch and impartiality’.
Simultaneously,
the development administration movement was gaining momentum within the
discipline of public administration. This thrust had several dimensions
among whom at least two dominated. One was of professionalisation of
administration through the acceptance of a management orientation. It
was argued that management techniques and tools could be used
successfully to improve the implementation of development programmes and
administrators must spent significant time and effort in learning these
techniques and applying them. Improved education and training became
the core efforts at professionalisation.
Another
dimension of this movement had to do with change of behavioural
orientation of public administrators. This focus was aptly summed up by a
leading contributor when he suggested that only by becoming less
oligarchic, less technocratic, less stratified, closer to the
administered and the managed, more deeply rooted in the aspirations and
needs of the ordinary people, only by such changes can public service
become a force with which the people of a developing country may
identify and they may have justified confidence (Gross 1974).
It
was this message that the academics and consultants from the West,
particularly the United States, brought to India and through financial
and technical aid influenced the theory and practice of public
administration in the country. The Ford Foundation alone spent
US$360,400 in grants to institutions and US$76,000 in providing
consultants and specialists to improve public administration in India
during 1951–62 (Braibanti 1966:148).
An important consequence of this financial and technical aid as well as
the intellectual thrust of development administration was that it began
to be believed that change in the colonial administrative system lies
in changing the behaviour and the professional capacity of the
individual bureaucrat. This was possible through education and training
programmes. Training institutions proliferated and studies that
supported this broad argument multiplied. Large number of scholars was
attracted to the field of development administration, motivated not only
by scholarly reasons but also by the belief that administration was the
instrument of change and administrative behaviour could be transformed
without structural changes in the colonial administrative structure and
procedure.
During the period 1952–1966,
policies of administrative reform were heavily influenced by the
developments in disciplinary understanding of public administration in
the United States and the perceptions of these academics and consultants
of the problems of administration in developing countries, such as
India. It was at the request of the Government of India that Ford
Foundation readily made available Prof. Paul Appleby of Syracuse
University to suggest changes in the administrative system in the
country. He presented a Report in 1953 that set the tone of much of what
was done later. What is important to note is that until 1966, no other
committee was appointed to have a broad look at administration. As a
consequence of the Appleby Report Organization and Methods, divisions
were established in each government department to take care of the
everyday issues of procedural efficiency. Another recommendation of Paul
Appleby to establish an Indian Institute of Public Administration was
also accepted. This Institute was supposed to take up reform measures on
a continuous basis but based on research studies.
In
operational terms, the effort at administrative reform during this
period was based on education and training programmes for civil
servants. The international aid was extensively utilised for this
purpose. Large number of training institutions was established at both
the central as well as state levels. The pattern of recruitment to the
higher civil services was changed, and the training system was also
reformed.
A comprehensive examination of
the Indian administrative system was undertaken with the appointment of
Administrative Reforms Commission in 1966. It was patterned after the
Hoover Commission of the US having a political and civil servant
membership with experts coming into write reports after study and
research. The Commission worked over a period of four years making a
total of 581 recommendations (Maheshwari 1993:116).
Little impact of the Commission was felt; no recommendations of
consequence were accepted. The politicians who became members did not
command prestige and influence with the government of the day. As a
matter of fact, the government itself was in a flux. Lal Bahadur
Shastri, the Prime Minister, who had appointed the Commission in 1965,
suddenly died and Indira Gandhi took over. For the years up to 1971, she
was fighting for her political survival, attending to crises and did
not find time to reflect on administrative change. When the Commission
finished its tasks, the country was facing a war for the liberation of
Bangladesh and subsequently was caught in the turmoil of national
emergency. The ruling party was comfortable working with the existing
administrative system and reforming it was not on the agenda of the
political parties in opposition. The Administrative Reforms Commission
just faded away leaving behind a pile of reports and frustration at the
national inability to reform a colonial administrative system.
If
during the early period of India’s independence, administration was
seen as instrument of change, the period after the Third Plan 1961–66;
it began to be to be seen as an impediment to development. Plan
performance had been poor and the policy makers saw lack of effective
administration as major contributing factor. As a matter of fact, in
1969, the Congress party itself raised the issue of the inability of a
neutral civil service to implement goals of development. It pleaded for a
committed civil service. The question ‘committed to what’ was left
open. A fierce debate followed in which retired and serving bureaucrats
participated freely (see Dubhashi 1971; Chaturvedi 1971; Committed Civil Service 1973).
No formal change took place but the practice of shifting bureaucrats on
demands of political leadership began a characteristic that is spread
widely in the system today. The period of emergency when loyalty became
an important criterion for holding a pivotal position in government was
replicated when Janata Party came to power defeating the Congress and
Mrs. Gandhi. The return of the Congress and defeat of Janata Party in
1980 signalled the beginning of the process again. The practice has
spawned what is colloquially known as ‘transfer industry’ and the
central government has begun to reflect what was confined to states only
(Banik 2001).
Formal acceptance of this idea would have transformed the role of the
civil service but this did not happen. What could not be formalised was
openly accepted in practice.
Failure of Reform Effort
One
possible reason that administrative reform failed to make a dent into
the inherited administrative system was the weakness on the conceptual
front. No alternative was offered. What was offered was ways to improve
the existing system. In addition, these ways were too inconsequential.
Intellectually, adherence to the Weberian model and Taylorian norms of
work considerably constrained the generation of alternatives.
Overwhelming academic response to administrative problems was through
analyses of structural attributes that caused bottlenecks in
coordination or communication, or of the behavioural irritants that led
to friction either in a team of bureaucrats only or one of bureaucrats
and politicians. The prescription was already decided and not
questioned, and therefore, when the problems persisted, the solution was
to increase the dosage of further division of labour, and
specialization or tighten controls through improved lines of
communications and authority.
The problem
was that the empirical insights did not reflect the dominant concerns in
the intellectual study of public administration, where Weberian
influences held the attention of most scholars who explained variations
in administrative performance by examining issues of neutrality,
training and professionalism, structure of hierarchies, and processes of
work and behavioural orientations. Another source of explanation was
the emphasis on the abilities and qualities of an individual and the
belief that it was an individual who made the difference whatever be the
structural constraints. A development oriented bureaucrat implemented
programmes well in spite of the prevailing administrative system. The
memoirs of the civil servants are replete with illustrations that show
how they as individuals dealt with new political issues (see for a
recent example, Dar 1999).
Little
concern for administrative reform was expressed in the 1970s and later.
Severe indictment of the civil service was made by the Shah Commission
of Inquiry, which reported that they carried out instructions from
politicians and administrative heads on personal and political
considerations. There were many cases, where officers curried favour
with politicians by doing what they thought the people in authority
desired. In short, the evidence showed, as a journalist remarked, “(the
Emergency was) the high water-mark of the politicians victory in the
long drawn out struggle against the civil service” (quoted in Potter 1986:157).
In
the last two decades, the story of administration as an impediment to
development has taken a drastic turn. If the beginning of the Plan
period saw an effort to strengthen state intervention as recipe for
triggering development, the 1980s ended with disastrous accounts of
failures of regulatory and interventionist states and with strong pleas
to dismantle state machinery and its roles. Neo-liberal economic theory
tended to build its case on how rulers extract resources and invest
them. It argued that rulers in interventionist states tend to use
resources for their own benefit to the detriment of the development of
their societies. The argument of state failure was based on how monopoly
rents are created through the imposition of regulation and control of
the economy. Political pressures dominate economic policy formulation
and execution. A consequence of this system is that government machinery
is used for personal interests. The policy recommendation that follows
from this diagnosis is to minimize state intervention and to rely
increasingly on markets for resource use and allocation.
Renewed Efforts
The
above diagnosis of the failure of government in development led to
rethinking about the structure and role of public administration. A kind
of revolution occurred and the focus shifted from control of
bureaucracy and delivery of goods and services to increasingly privatise
government and shape its role as an entrepreneur competing with other
social groups and institutions to provide goods and services to the
citizens. The book of Osborne and Gaebler ‘Reinventing Government’
(1992) was a landmark in the growth of ideas that have sought to build a
New Public Administration. Public administration was admonished to
‘steer rather than row’ for ‘those who steer the boat have far more
power than those who row it’ (Osborne and Gaebler 1992:32).
Since then, these ideas have swept across the world and the
international/multilateral agencies have used them to influence public
management of their economic aid programmes. The common theme in the
myriad applications of these ideas has been the use of market mechanisms
and terminology, in which the relationship of public agencies and their
customers is understood as based on self-interest, involving
transactions similar to those occurring in the market place. Public
managers are urged to steer not row their organizations and they are
challenged to find new and innovative ways to achieve results or to
privatise functions previously provided by government (Denhardt and
Denhardt 2000:550).
In this new world, the primary role of government is not merely to
direct the actions of the public through regulation and decree, nor is
it merely to establish a set of rules and incentives through which
people will be guided in the proper direction. Rather government becomes
another player in the process of moving society in one direction or
another. Where traditionally government has responded to needs by saying
“yes, we can provide service” or “no, we cannot,” the new public
service suggests that elected officials and public managers should
respond to the requests of the citizens by saying “let us work together
to figure out what we are going to do, and then make it happen”
(Denhardt and Denhardt 2000:554).
Operationally,
these ideas have advocated: a. managerially oriented administration; b.
reducing public budgets; c. downsizing the government; d. selective
privatization of public enterprises; e. contracting out of services; f.
decentralization; g. transparency and accountability; and h. emphasis on
civil society institutions and non-governmental organizations to
deliver goods and services.
When India
embarked upon an ambitious programme of economic reform in 1991, the
ideas about public administration reform had already entered the package
of aid that was promised by the World Bank and the IMF. It will be fair
to say that they were reflecting a change in the disciplinary thrusts
of public administration too. Country after country was deciding to
change and reform their governments. There is little doubt that this
change was being triggered by the wave of policies of structural
adjustment and liberalization prompted by a new globalization set in
after the collapse of Soviet Union. Therefore, while administrative
reforms are profoundly domestic issues, the fact that they are being
seen as part of package of the ‘new deal’ makes them open to external
pressures and influences. Reform is stylish today, and there is more
than a single reason why it is so. Technological changes are calling for
managerial changes. The information technology with its computer base
has caught the imagination of both administrators and politicians.
Demands for greater decentralization are being met because of change in
the political scenario. People’s groups are becoming more aware of their
rights and demanding improved government services that are transparent
and accountable to them. This is apart from the influence that the
international financial agencies are exercising on government to reform
to be eligible for more loan/aid and directly funding NGOs to implement
development programmes.
The effort at
reducing the size of government began with successive budgets presented
by the Union Finance Minister from 1992. The imperative need was to
reduce the fiscal deficit and cut down on unproductive expenditure. In a
bid to bring about fiscal prudence and austerity, the Centre imposed a
10% cut across the board in the number of sanctioned posts as on January
1, 1992. The Fifth Pay Commission that submitted its report contained a
recommendation for a whopping one-third cut in government size in
10 years. The downsizing exercise was later taken up by the Expenditure
Commission, which further recommended cut in the number of sanctioned
posts as on January 1, 2000. As a matter of fact, instructions for
cutting sanctioned posts were renewed in 2000 directing a 10% reduction
in the posts created between 1992 and 1999 (Raina 2002).
Statistics maintained by the Ministry of Finance show that pay and
allowances bill of the central government was Rs. 33,977.79 crores for
the year 1999–2000 showing a hike of Rs. 31,560.19 crores over the
previous year. The number of central government civilian regular
employees was 38.55 lakhs on March 1, 2000 down from 39.07 lakhs on
March 31, 1999. There had been a decrease of 51,605 posts or of just
1.32% (Mishra 2002). As one can see, there is very little impact of these efforts.
In
1996, a Chief Secretaries Conference reiterated the popular policy
prescriptions for a responsive and effective administration. The
Conference recognised that the public image of the bureaucracy was one
of inaccessibility, indifference, procedure orientation, poor quality
and sluggishness, corruption proneness, and non-accountability for
result (Government of India 1997a:1). The Fifth Pay Commission (Government of India 1997b)
took the concerns of the Chief Secretaries listed among many of its
recommendations the need to downsize the government and to bring about
greater transparency and openness in government.
Two
developments of significance took place. A Chief Minister’s Conference
endorsed the issue of transparency through citizens’ right to
information in 1997. In addition, the concept of Citizen’s Charter took
shape. Both were a follow-up on the recommendations of the Pay
Commission, which in turn was in a way responding to grassroots demands
in villages of Rajasthan.
A people’s
organization in Rajasthan, known as Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan
(MKSS), has been in the vanguard of this struggle and forced government
to respond to the demands of information and accountability. As
documented in Roy et al. (2001),
the people began to understand that their livelihood, wages, and
employment depended a great deal on the investments made by the
government as a development agency. If these benefits were not coming,
then they had the right to know where the investment occurred and how
much of it was actually spent. The right to economic well being got
translated into right to information. As Roy et al. (Ibid) point out,
the struggle became for ‘hamara paisa hamara hisab’.
In other words, accountability became a critical issue in the public
hearings organized in five blocks of four districts. Four demands were
made: transparency of development spending, accountability, sanctity of
social audit, and redressal. This campaign began in 1994 and gradually
gained momentum spreading to the most parts of the state. It reached to
the level, where assurances had to be provided by the Chief Minister.
The essence of the campaign that steamrollered into a movement for right to information was the jan sunwai
(public hearing), where villagers assembled to testify whether the
public works that have been met out of the expenditures certified by the
government actually exist or not. The first Jan sunwai
was held in a village of Kot Kirana in 1994. Since then, they have
caught the imagination of the MKSS that has held them at several places.
Beawar was the scene of a major event in April 1996. It was followed by
a 40-day dharna in which activists were fed and sheltered by the
public. Another 53-day dharna was organized at Jaipur (see Bunker Roy,
The Asian Age 30 May 2001).
The Rajasthan government responded reluctantly, but the Chief Minister
ultimately announced that the people had the right to demand and receive
details of expenditure on development works in their villages.
Three
months after the event in Beawar, politicians, jurists, former
bureaucrats, academics, and others joined in demanding right to
information legislation at a conference in New Delhi. A committee under
the chairmanship of Justice PB Sawant was authorised to draft a model
bill. The central government too came under pressure to introduce
legislation in the Parliament that could be followed by the states.
Government
of India sets up a Working Group on Right to Information and Promotion
of Open and Transparent Government in 1997. The terms of reference of
the Group included the examination of feasibility and need to introduce a
full fledged Right to Information Act so as to meet the needs of open
and responsive government. The Working Group placed its tasks within the
broad framework of democracy and accountability and emphasised,
‘democracy means choice, and a sound, and informed choice is possible
only on the basis of knowledge’ (Working Group Report 1997:3). It also
argued that transparency and openness in functioning have a cleansing
effect on the operations of public agencies and approvingly quoted the
saying that sunlight is the best disinfectant.
The Working Group accepted the following broad principles to the formulation of the legislation:
- (a)Disclosure of information should be the rule and secrecy the exception.
- (b)The exceptions should be clearly defined.
- (c)There should be an independent mechanism for adjudication of disputes between the citizens and public authorities.
A
draft bill has been prepared which was put to public debate and now the
proposed legislation is lying with the Parliament for approval.
Transparency
in government also became an issue on the agenda of the Conference of
Chief Ministers held on 24 May 1997. The conference issued a statement
that provided an Action Plan for Effective and Responsive Government at
the Central and State levels. In this statement, the Chief Ministers
recognised that secrecy and lack of openness in transactions are largely
responsible for corruption in official dealings. The government set for
itself a time limit of three months to ensure easy access of the people
to all information relating to Government activities and decisions,
except to the extent required to be excluded on specific grounds, such
as national security. The statement also gave an assurance that the
Report of the Working Group on Right to Information would be quickly
examined and legislation introduced before the end of 1997. Political
events have taken over, and the Act has yet to come into existence.
It
is clear from the above that this dimension of administrative reform
that stresses transparency and right to information is an issue that has
been spearheaded by the people. It is not a change attempted by a well
meaning and benign government. However, the struggle has not yet been
enough to get legislation passed by the Parliament or the state
legislatures. There has been resistance not only from the political
leaders who swear by the name of democracy but also from the bureaucrats
whose norms of work had been dictated by secrecy and confidentiality.
The Rajasthan experience has shown that even the local level
administrators have found ways to thwart attempts at opening the
administration closest to the people for scrutiny.
The
reason of resistance is not far to seek. Much of the corruption that
occurs in official dealings takes place under the cover of state
sanctioned secrecy. The norm has been to keep information away from the
people on the pretext of guarding public interest. Large number of
national scams occurs, because no one knows what is happening in closets
of government. At the local level, even the information on muster rolls
is deemed to be confidential. Therefore, the movement for information
has as its genesis the fight against corruption and demand for
accountability. The muster rolls carried false name in Rajasthan
villages and this could be identified only by the local people and not
by the audit parties sent by the government. It is for this reason that
the proposed bill does not provide the full opening of the file of
decisions to the public. Who advises what will not be told. The recent
incident, widely reported in the press, when the Urban Development
Minister’s order for placing a particular file on land deals for public
scrutiny was reversed by the bureaucrats shows the fear of open decision
making (see Statesman 1998).
Information
then is also associated with power government exercises. By restricting
information, people in government become more powerful than those who
are outside it. Thus, demand for transparency and information is also
about sharing of power. It is possible to misuse power when it is
concentrated rather than when it is shared among a broader stream of
people. As information grows, the arbitrariness of government tends to
reduce. However, the resistance from the local level functionaries is
growing in response to the Jan sunwais held by the MKSS is Rajasthan. A
recent newspaper report of The Hindu (March 13, 2002) mentions how over
240 sarpanchas have organized themselves and waited on the Chief
Minister to resist further sunwais.
It is
this kind of resistance that has delayed the actual passage of the bill.
It is necessary for the parliament to take early steps to pass the law
on the right to information. Godbole (2001:1423)
rightfully fears that longer the delay in the passage of the Bill, the
weaker and more anemic, it is likely to be. Each successive draft bill
on the subject prepared by the central government is a watered down
version of the earlier bill and is a bundle of compromises affected to
accommodate the stiff opposition to the proposed measures at the
political and bureaucratic levels.
The
citizen’s right to information has been coupled with the idea of
Citizen’s Charter. The aim of the charter is to make available to the
citizen the information to demand accountability, transparency, and
quality and choice of services by the government departments. It was
first introduced in Britain in 1991 to streamline administration and
make it citizen friendly. A Core group has been set up under the
Chairmanship of Secretary (Personnel) for monitoring the progress of
initiatives taken by Ministries/Departments with a substantial public
interface. So far, 61 charters have been formulated which include 27
Charters for public sector banks and 4 Charters for hospitals (Agnihotri
2000:126). For lack of effective monitoring, this has remained a paper exercise.
Concluding Remarks
Some
lessons can be drawn from the experience of administrative reforms in
India. Those who resisted change have derived great inspiration from the
support that Sardar Patel, India’s first Home Minister, gave in saving
the ICS and the steel frame. At the time of India’s partition, he warned
that chaos would result if the Civil Service were removed from the
scene. Nehru agreed and civil service reform was not on high priority at
the time when riots and uprisings had to be handled to maintain the
integrity of the country. Since then, one crisis or the other has taken
precedence and administrative reform commanded little attention. When it
did, it was an administrative matter to be handled by the
administrators themselves. The committees and commissions that came to
review administration had administrators themselves as members. The
administrators for purposes of feasibility of implementation processed
even the recommendations of the Administrative Reforms Commission,
1966–1970, that had a wide range of consultations with people from
various professions. One reason could be that the understanding of
public administration was heavily influenced by a paradigm that was
inward looking and perceived bureaucracy as a more or less autonomous
instrument of implementing development policies and programmes.
Another
could be that political leadership saw advantage in maintaining the
status quo while continuing to articulate the need for radical reforms
for public rhetoric. Mrs. Gandhi and her group quickly saw that civil
service could be ‘committed’ while continuing the public posture of
neutrality. The Emergency period and the subsequent years of ‘transfer
industry’ are ample evidence of keeping to form rather than substance.
Even in questions of downsizing the government, a mantra from 1992, the
same evidence is forthcoming. The A level positions continue to remain
largely untouched, while all reforms—reduction of positions or
contracting out principles—are targeted at lower levels. The IAS or the
IPS that has held critical positions in government has never been under
scrutiny for reforms in spite of public outcry against their role and
behaviour. The only time that a serious attempt was made was when the
Administrative Reforms Commission made the recommendation of delimiting
areas of specialization in the secretariat and manning, these areas from
personnel drawn from all sources through a mid-career competitive to
include more specialists in the higher positions was made. This
recommendation was scuttled and not accepted by the Government when the
IAS itself sought specialization through training and postings.
In
the ultimate analysis, civil service reform in India has neither
enhanced efficiency nor the accountability of the civil service in any
meaningful manner. As far as the common citizen is concerned, it has not
been effective. If Maheshwari (1972:55) commented that India’s effort at reform have amounted to correction slips to the inherited system, Das (1998:213)
himself an IAS officer, has gone a step further to indict the reform
effort, around a quarter of a century later, by saying that they were
not even correction slips—they were more in the nature of endorsement
slips. Probably, the present time of structural adjustment,
liberalization, technological imperatives, and grassroots pressures may
provide the best confluence of forces that can break bureaucratic
resistance and promote political will to make the administrative system
more open to reform and change.
The impact
of such a confluence of forces is not without risks, however. The
global advocates of reform have assumed that one size fits all and any
government could be improved by the magic of market, privatization,
participation, and efficiency. However, the expectations of people of
their governments are different in different societies and they are
critical in redesigning reform activities. Reinventing government in US
is based on different assumptions and these may not even hold in UK.
As
Peters (2001:167)
points out, “the central problem for implementing public management
reforms in developing countries is that their success to some extent
depends on the existence of public service values and practices that
support accountability and effective management”. Deregulation and
granting autonomy may mean that the empowered decision makers may use
the new found freedom to serve themselves rather than the public.
India
faces the major challenge of redesigning an administrative system can
sustain itself in an environment of globalization and economic reform.
The earlier efforts were partly failures, because they assumed an image
of the administrative system that was divorced from reality. It was
rigid for most people but very flexible for the privileged among them.
Rules were flouted with impunity, privatization of public office was
common, and procedures were discarded at many personal pretexts. The
classic Riggsian formalism was at work. It is the common citizen that
lost confidence in administration and this has to be restored first.
This cannot come about only through tinkering with administrative design
but challenges the basic issues of governance itself.
Last Pages
As
we have attempted to show administrative reform movement in India has
not been lacking in ideas and suggestions. Numerous committees and
commissions have been set up with experienced public affairs experts and
technocrats at their helm, but little forward moves have been
undertaken.
The paradox is that all Prime
Ministers taking office have expressed concerns about bureaucratic
rigidity and archaic procedures that cannot fulfill people’s aspirations
and their developmental needs. However, reform has not followed.
The
first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had expressed some strong views
even before independence when he wrote in his autobiography “I am quite
sure that no new order can be built up in India so long as the spirit of
the ICS pervades our administration and our services. That spirit of
authoritarianism…. cannot exist with freedom…”.
Successive
Prime Ministers have expressed similar concerns when they have assumed
office. Nehru has already been mentioned above. Assuming the highest
office Mrs. Indira Gandhi said in 1966 what India needed today was a
‘revolution in administrative system’ and a year later declared that ‘if
a large proportion of the investment we have made under the plans
remains unutilized, the cause is to be found in administrative
shortcomings’. Rajiv Gandhi was more blunt and forthright when in a
speech in Bombay, he said that ‘we have government servants who do not
serve but oppress the poor.. they have no work ethics, no feeling for
public cause, no involvement in the future of the nation..’ (quoted in
Mathur 2014:198).
AB Vajpayee addressing the National Development Council in 1999 voiced
similar sentiments when he said that’ people often perceive the
bureaucracy as an agent of exploitation rather than provider of service.
Corruption has become low-risk high reward activity (ibid:198). Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh complained on assuming office in 2004 that ‘I am
convinced that government at every level is not adequately equipped and
attuned to deal with it (social and economic change) and meet the
aspirations of the people. To be able to do so we require the reform of
government and of public institutions’ (quoted in Mathur 2005:56).
Possibly, it was this comment that led to the appointment of the Second
Administrative Reforms Commission by his government in 2005.
The
newly elected Prime Minister (2014) Narendra Modi had entirely a
different approach towards bureaucracy. He has not commented on its
failings but has sought its support in implementing his developmental
agenda. In a meeting with 77 top bureaucrats (Secretaries to Government
of India), the Prime Minister expressed ‘full faith in their commitment
and competence to build a better future of the country’ (Times of India 4
June, 2014). He exhorted them to take decisions without fear or favour
while continuing the practice of appointing chosen bureaucrats to
critical positions in government. He also encouraged them to have direct
links with his office and not necessarily through the Minister who
headed their ministries.1
In
keeping with this overture, the Prime Minister now keeps himself in
direct touch with civil servants in states and central ministries
through monthly meetings conducted in tele-conferencing mode. He reviews
projects, gives directions to remove obstacles, reduces red tape, or
improves coordination. The ministers in charge of the relevant
portfolios are kept out of these meetings. This monitoring platform has
been named PRAGATI (Proactive Governance and Timely Implementation).
Projects are treated on a case by case basis, and no effort is made for
systemic change. It is this process of interacting directly with senior
members of civil service and empowering the Prime Minister’s Office that
has led to the charge of centralization of powers by the Prime
Minister.2
In
the last 2 years (2014–2016), there has been little discussion of
reform within government. There is increasing reliance on private
management practices and technology to raise efficiency in the delivery
of public services. For introducing this change, the government is
relying on the bureaucrats themselves, and thus, the effort is of
training and capacity building. Strong belief in liberal market economy,
the government is placing great faith in outsourcing of services,
public–private partnerships and external private consultants to guide
the implementation of many policies.
Thus
what is happening is that administrative reform as such is on the back
burner which means that the role of bureaucracy particularly the role of
its higher level members has increased and not diminished in the new
dispensation. Higher level bureaucrats are beholden to the Prime
Minister’s Office for reporting their achievements and accomplishments
and it is this Office that holds them accountable and the political
heads of the ministries or departments that they serve.
The
emerging challenge is how this effort to improve the delivery of public
services through technology and private management practices can be
sustained in an ossified administrative system that has been repeatedly
characterized as unresponsive to state goals and new policy environment.
It is administrative system that still continues to set the terms of
negotiations with the private sector or rules for settlement of
disputes. If these procedures, among many, are not reformed to keep pace
with the private sector managerial thrust, the country faces greater
prospects of administrative failures.
Article courtesy: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41111-017-0053-3/
