Guest Column

Just because the UPA Government is hopelessly entangled in the Gordian knot of its rolled-back and held-back big-ticket economic and political reforms – FDI in retail and the Company Affairs Bill, being only two – doesn’t mean that it has not been busy working out the smaller stuff – chipping away some of the rust that encrusts that fabled “steel frame”. Underneath the only too apparent policy paralysis, the wheels of the Indian bureaucracy seem to be stirring, feeling the flow of change, even if many babu-watchers feel this pace is rather too slow for the circumstances we are in.
Times are indeed changing for the Indian babu. No one would deny that it’s a humongous task, given the Indian bureaucracy is a sprawling behemoth groaning under its own weight. At last count, the total number of Central Government employees stood at a staggering 3.36 million, not counting those employed in the defence forces (compare this to 2.10 million in the US). Reinventing government, you may recollect, was one of the main planks of the Manmohan Singh sarkar, and despite its current preoccupations with surviving the remainder of its tenure the department in charge of administrative affairs has been quietly working to change the system.
Certainly, babuswho are inefficient, lazy and corrupt can no longer afford to be lax because the Government has decided that officers who have not earned their spurs honestly will be weeded out after completing 15 years of service. It does sound like the thin edge of the wedge, doesn’t it? And if conducted diligently this exercise probably would spell the end of babudom as we know it! A couple of years ago the performance appraisal system had already been revamped, to enable a more objective performance appraisal of bureaucrats and reward merit rather than mediocrity. This new decision seems to be a natural progression from that basic reform. Interestingly, the provision to weed out inefficient babus has always existed in the Civil Service rules (a babu can be removed after the age of 55 or after putting in 30 years of service) but it’s one that is hardly ever invoked. So, how far will the government be able to carry this new sense of determination forward remains to be seen!
While weeding out corrupt and inefficient babus is a laudable goal, it should also be emphasized that this is not the ideal way to downsize and devolve the government. One of the problems with the Indian bureaucracy is that there are too many babus. While we require more qualified professionals at the top ‘A’ and ‘B’ decision- making levels of the bureaucracy (which currently account for just five per cent of government jobs) providing a competent, responsive, more transparent and more accountable government, the lower levels of the government are what urgently need to be pruned. In other words, what we need are fewer, but more competent, well-paid babus. Related to the issue of pruning the bureaucracy there is another new age reform that needs to be speeded up. Much has been said about the conflict on the issue of generalists versus specialists. Surely this needs to be resolved too sooner than later.
It should be recalled that transformative changes in the Civil Services are being conducted continuously across the globe. Calls for trimming a bloated bureaucracy have regularly resounded in Whitehall and along the banks of the Potomac. While the Margaret Thatcher era in the UK and the corresponding Reagan Administration in the US are remembered, among other things, for an overstaffed Civil Service, much has changed in these nations since then and the results are there for all to see. Apparently, his inability to reform the Civil Services was among Jawaharlal Nehru’s great regrets way back at the very start of the new administrative system. More than four decades later, will it turn out to be Manmohan Singh, himself a babu of the highest calling, leaving with that regret as well?