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Growth & Speed: Say No To Non-Performance, Negligence & Corruption
How does the Prime Minister get a bloated,
self-indulgent Government to deliver? Remember, in its political train, there
is a gargantuan Semi-Government establishment, the Public Sector, and a wider “quango”
universe too. Plus a country-wide bureaucracy that runs to lakhs of employees.
The case for permanent tenure, long a thing of
the past in the private sector, has worn thin in Government as well. Directors
make poignant films on the plight of erstwhile “Company Men” now, and not just
in Japan.
And for good reason. In the face of persistent
abuse of “permanency”, by Babus, covenanted Academics, Government Hospital Doctors running private
nursing homes on the side, absent but salary-collecting teachers and
administrators in Primary Schools etc. what can be done?
Is there is an urgent case for reform? But
where does it say in the Service Rules that going slow or lacking diligence is
a sackable offence?
There is a vague provision, little used, that
those in the Central Government may be compulsorily retired at age 50, provided
the target joined service before the age of 35. This, after a prior review, and in the “public interest”. The All-India
Service Rules also work on the same lines.
But in practice, mostly what would get a Government
Servant fired, is proven corruption, entered on his service record, because
words like “integrity” and “conduct” are the chief markers.
Non-performance, willful negligence, flouting
of deadlines etc. are probably seen as abstractions too difficult to measure
objectively. Annual reports from superiors rarely cite such issues, lest the
blame spill over. And politicians, till the strict Modi Government took over,
were often in cahoots.
Even the Indian Judiciary has seen to it that
it has become an insulated and nepotistic Cabal of the increasingly corrupt.
The uniformed cadres, save the regular Armed Forces in the main, are also
affected.
Bastar in Chattisgarh and the Kashmir Valley have
demonstrated, time and again, CRPF
personnel ambushed and massacred
by Naxalites and Terrorists, partially due to flouting of standard procedures,
slack oversight, discipline issues, all leading
to grievous loss of life.
And the regular Police are given to abuses of
power in imaginative ways. These include rape, intimidation, extortion, illicit
trades, falsification of evidence, and endemic graft.
The service rules for the Indian Administrative
Service (IAS), the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), the Indian Police Service
(IPS), let alone the lesser all-India cadres, do not actually have specific
provisions that focus on non-performance.
Corruption too, as defined in the Service
Rules, does not embrace the province of subtle external empire building,
facilitation of post retirement careers, all but the most obvious benami acquisitions, gratification in
kind, influence peddling to facilitate vested interests and so on. It sticks
pretty much to unearthing “assets disproportionate to known sources of income”.
Zero
tolerance for non-performance and negligence must become the new normal. Suspicion of corruption too has to be looked
at on an enlarged canvas, so that it does not stay so hard to prove, except
against the most cavalier officials.
Recent reports indicate that the Modi
Government, as part of its “Perform or Perish” mantra for a “New India”, has
taken “action” against 381 civil service officers inclusive of
27 from the IAS. This, for being corrupt, redundant and/or
“non-performers”. Some of these officers
were dismissed via forced resignations and prematurely retirements, others had
their pensions cropped.
The action, against just 381, came as a result
of a review of the records of 11,828 Group A officers, including 2,953 from all
India services, such as the IAS, the IPS and the Forest Services. The service
records of 19, 714 Group B officers were also reviewed. The three digit total
of those actioned came from an examination of as many as 31, 542 officers!
This sarkari excavation, with its attempt at
objectivity, contrasts quite sharply with another recent report that said out
of 52 CEOs appointed in 2010 in the private sector, 24 were shown the door
within 5 years. These highly paid executives were dismissed for non-performance,
just for not meeting stated objectives in the view of their governing boards.
The Prime Minister’s “Probity & Performance”
drive probably needs to incorporate much more stick. His Government will have
to fire people for incompetence, non-performance, negligence, dereliction of
duty etc. on par with corruption.
Right now, shirking of duty, gross negligence,
sloth, apathy, passing the buck, absence without permission, etc. go routinely
unpunished. This often results not only in low morale amongst the better class
of officer, but losses to the public exchequer, and all too often, needless,
and callous loss of life.
Cases in point are the recent stampede that
took 22 lives and injured 30 at Mumbai’s Elphinstone Road-Parel station
overbridge, unimproved since it was erected in 1972. This even after then Union
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu sanctioned Rs. 12 crores odd to revamp it in
2016. But local officials concerned did not even put it out to tender.
Then there are the scores of avoidable deaths
from lack of ICU Oxygen in Government hospitals, the series of railway
derailments and deaths, bridges and flyovers collapsing, planes and helicopters
crashing, hit-and-run road accidents, murders, rapes, pilgrimage disasters, all
slothfully handled by the unscathed authorities concerned.
There is actually no real accountability of
people whose job it is to ensure safety, compliance with normatives, and implementation
of time-bound objectives.
Yes, Commissions of Enquiry and probes are
ordered, mea culpas recited, and compensations
announced, if not paid, every time. But the eventual reports from tardy
investigations usually find a minor player or two to act as scapegoats.
A Government that has succeeded, with enormous
determination and in the face of considerable obstruction, to push through
matters stuck for decades, such as the GST, the Armed Forces Pensions, the
Bankruptcy Law, a new Benami Law with bite, can indeed reform the bureaucracy
too.
The standing bureaucracy is however, truly formidable.
Not only does it do little effective work, but incredulously want to add lakhs
of jobs to their number, claiming there are vacancies that need to be filled.
Many of the lakhs of Government servants,
appointed and sustained, even pampered by tax-payer money, to “work” on matters
of public weal, simply don’t. Great numbers in their ranks, high, middling, and
low, use their positions to blatantly ignore the interests of the citizenry,
even while being very alive to their own.
Of course, the near unaccountability of elected
representatives, their overlords - in Parliament, in the State Assemblies, also
acts by way of an evil role model.
The public does have the Right To Information
(RTI), and there’s public interest litigation, and of course, peaceful street
agitations and demonstrations, but it all seems to bounce off the thick-skinned
political class.
It is clear however that, even at the top, they
cannot allow themselves to continue with their brazen lack of public
spiritedness and abuses of privilege in this age of 24x7 TV news coverage
bolstered by the Social Media.
The credibility of this present Government’s
ability to deliver is at stake. Even as
it contemplates a range of stage-two structural economic reforms, such as long
pending changes to Labour Laws that would attract investment, domestic and
foreign, towards new and expanded industries, creating much needed jobs.
But first, and perhaps on an ongoing basis, Modi
must change the chalta hai culture of
this country. He is certainly working on it. Swachh Bharat promotes civic
cleanliness and toilets for everyone. Our foreign policy and engagement with
other countries has been revamped to a new high. This, along with a new
attitude towards our national security paradigms that has not only attacked
terrorism in the Kashmir Valley but
held China and Pakistan at bay. Corruption in high places is non existent. There
has been an unprecedented war on black money ongoing. The General Sales Tax
(GST), implemented on an Information Technology (IT) backbone, makes it
difficult to evade.
The
linkage of Aadhar with PAN, driving licences, mobile numbers, bank accounts,
Income Tax returns, subsidies, and so on, is already preventing tax evasion and
vast pilferage of welfare benefits to the poor via identity theft.
But the deeper malaise to tackle is in how this
country sees itself. While that is a
multi-faceted and complicated thing, it is certain that if we are to join the
first rank of nations within ten years, promptly sacking Government Servants
who don’t deliver will be salutary.
For:
The Sunday Guardian
(1,397
words)
October
3rd, 2017
Gautam
Mukherjee
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