Mid-term Performance-Review of Bureaucrats: (English)

  Mid-term Performance-

Review of Bureaucrats: (English)

In its latest decision the Central Government has decided to retire all such Officers of Indian Civil Services viz IAS, IFS, IPS, IAAS, IRS, IRaS, IPoS, IIS etc who are found inefficient upon review after 15 and 25 years of service. They will however be entitled to pension as earned by them on such date. The exercise is aimed at increasing efficiency in the bureaucracy besides bringing down corruption in the administration.

Previously officers were permitted to seek voluntary retirement with a similar view to weed out the dead wood but the scheme proved counter productive as it was the efficient officers who sought retirement because they got better offers from the private sector companies while dishonest and inefficient officers stayed put.

In order to understand the implications of the present scheme we have to analyse as to how the Indian bureaucracy absorbs and develops new talent and functions in our democratic set up. Traditionally, in our society first preference is given to medicine and engineering degrees for which one has to qualify pre-medical or pre-engineering examinations with very high merit. Whoever are left, try to obtain graduation degrees in various disciplines and some of them appear in Indian Civil Service examination. However in the case of children of  Government Officers who taste perks of bureaucracy early in their life, the career charting is different. Most of them are groomed for the civil services from childhood itself. Consequently, the bureaucracy turns out to be a jugglery of mediocrity who pose as know-alls in all fields, fill positions from District Collectors to Secretaries, go on deputations to Public enterprises and manage PSUs as diverse as Steel giants, textile manufacturers, drug companies and fertiliser corporations. Nevertheless, with liberalisation of economy the scenario has changed and bright people now look towards multinational corporations for better career prospects. On the contrary the civil services have started attracting maladjusted engineers and doctors of late. But then India is a country of 120 crores and therefore despite this change of preference long queues can still be noticed for getting into Indian Civil Services. As already mentioned the children of erstwhile bureaucrats continue to prefer the Services while the Politicians tactically prefer matrimonial alliances of their children with such officers who would help them in the long run. It can be seen that most of these officers come from particular colleges and from specific locations like Delhi, Allahabad etc. The alumni of these colleges help each other in networking, lucrative postings, deputations, foreign assignments and even promotions.

It is no secret that most of the bureaucracy in India is corrupt. A few who are exceptions only prove the rule. One may recall the in-house voting conducted by UP bureaucrats some years ago to find out the most corrupt officers in the cadre. The results were startling. The bureaucracy has inherited corruption from their forerunners in the British establishment but it received a new impetus from the socio-political set up of the country. The politicians and bureaucrats form a vicious circle, one promotes the other. The bureaucrats who help politicians to achieve their nefarious objectives subsequently get party tickets for elections and become ministers after their retirement. Under these circumstances the bureaucrats lose no time to implement illegal orders of their political bosses and fill their coffers both in India and abroad.

With the implementation of the announced scheme, it needs to be noted that evaluation of Officers after completion of 15 or 25 years of service will entirely depend upon the performance appraisals of such officers recorded year after year. Who will write these Annual Confidential Reports (ACRs)? They will either be written by their political bosses if the officers are senior enough or by such superior officers whose bridle will be in the hands of politicians. Both of them will be prejudiced against honest and conscientious officers. Given the fact that honesty is inversely proportional to efficiency in a country like India, this too will work as a handicap against the honest officers while the dishonest and smart officers will have smooth ride throughout their career.

The performance of officers also depends upon the places they work, the environment they are set in and the prevailing work culture. The officers with better network and effective godfathers have no difficulty in getting postings of their choice at places where they do not face any problems whatsoever. They enjoy their postings as also manage excellent ACRs while their counterparts work under adverse conditions and face militants, naxals, labour unions or political hooligans and resultantly are not able to show as good tangible results. I remember the case of an officer who was brought on deputation to Delhi, his home town, from a militancy infested state to become a member of the team set up for organising an international exhibition while his counterpart in the militancy infested state was asked to look after double charge i.e his own job as also the job of the deputationist. The officer on deputation worked in his home town, his children continued to receive education in Delhi's elite school, he expanded his network by including more politicians in it, got an outstanding ACR, received an award and managed his posting to Delhi after the end of the exhibition while the period of exhibition was shown as having worked in  the militancy infested state. The other officer whose life was in danger could only get an average ACR because none of his bosses ever visited the state during the period where they could have appreciated the good work he had done. Such are the ways of bureaucracy!

The most important tool for evaluation of work of officers is through targets assigned to them, both quantitative and qualitative, and achievements against them. While it may be easy to fix targets for the officers in the field, it is not so easy to fix targets for those officers who work in the Ministries and Secretariats and deal with files only without getting exposed to practical difficulties. Even if such targets are fixed arbitrarily they remain only an eye wash and therefore are prone to the subjective evaluation of their bosses. Such officers have a definite edge over the former and therefore secretarial jobs provide a shelter for the blue eyed boys who manage postings in such places.

The proposed system will work against the interests of the officers belonging to reserved categories such as scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, other backward classes and minorities who do not have many godfathers in higher echelons of bureaucracy. Given the fact that they are admitted to Civil Services with lower merit, they are not expected to be as intelligent as their higher caste colleagues and produce similar results. Therefore, their weeding out will be facilitated surreptitiously. Even today if seniority lists are analysed thoroughly it will be noticed that the percentage of officers belonging to these categories dwindles gradually as they go up the ladder in their career and may be negligible at the end of the road due to the subjectivity and prejudice. Many officers of lower castes are stiffled and stunted enroute during their journey towards superannuation. The proposed scheme will further put hurdles in their path of progress.

Last but not the least it may be seen how sincere the government is for ensuring efficiency of the bureaucracy at present. There are innumerable complaints which have not been even acknowledged not to speak of taken up for investigations. The cases whichever taken up for investigations are not completed for number of years wilfully so that the officers quietly superannuate. Wherever cases are investigated the agencies ensure that these remain week with loopholes in evidence so that these fall by wayside during trial. It would be high time to investigate the mortality percentage of cases handled by the investigating and vigilance agencies of the central and state governments to see how efficient these agencies are. Let us hope the government does not make laws that make cure worse than the disease.