There are now reports that senior secretaries to the Union government have expressed their concern over the manner in which the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been probing decisions taken by officers in key policy matters. Such investigations have already led to the arrest of a former secretary to the Union government. Many other former secretaries now under the CBI lens fear arrests any time. The current batch of secretaries has noted that these arrests and the fear of more arrests have led to a paralysis of action at the secretary level. No officer wants to push for a decision for fear of some investigation implicating her in a corruption case later.
This is bad news for a government that needs to move on a long list of pending policy actions in a variety of areas. The bigger problem, however, is that many senior government officers have come round to the view that bureaucrats should not be held responsible for decisions that they took under specific advice, not always documented in a file, of the ministers they served. Several of them are also arguing that in the current system, a government official is likely to violate a rule or two if she has to be prompt with decisions. So, if you want decisions in the government, you must also be prepared to accept the violation of a few rules.
In defence of this argument, they point out that the legislation for preventing corruption by public officials has several draconian and impractical provisions. For instance, a public official can be booked for an offence under this legislation if the investigating agency can establish that an action by the officer has led to financial benefit for a private party. Now, government officers note that many of their decisions, though perfectly legitimate, can fall foul of this specific provision of the anti-corruption law.
A chairperson of a public sector undertaking will be involved in the award of a contract to a private party. Such decisions, it seems, can attract the provisions of the anti-corruption law and the investigating agencies can ask the chairperson concerned to explain her conduct. Since the launch of economic reforms, there has been a greater need for senior officials in economic and even non-economic ministries to take many decisions that benefit a private person or entity. However, the anti-corruption laws have not taken note of these ground-level changes. Thus, it is argued, if the Manmohan Singh government wants to prevent a slowdown in decision-making, it must pay greater attention to the need for removing such legislative weaknesses and bring the law up-to-date.
The new committee that the government has set up to put in place a new legal framework to govern public procurement of goods and services is perhaps an outcome of such thoughts. The chairperson of the new committee, former Competition Commission chairperson Vinod Dhall is expected to outline a transparent system that officers must follow in awarding contracts for procurement of goods and services. The objective is to prevent bureaucrats from using discretion while taking such decisions. Now, this will certainly help prevent both the misuse of bureaucratic power and corruption. However, the larger point this has raised is whether the government is trying to reinvent the wheel or whether the government system has been so weak that the Cabinet Secretariat had not already earmarked such powers of bureaucrats at different seniority levels.
Many retired bureaucrats are of the view that there is no need for any systemic change to prevent corruption. A new committee may come out with new recommendations to ensure better governance, but they would be far more useful if the Cabinet Secretariat first enforced the age-old rule that civil servants must provide an effective and permanent link in the chain of administration across ministries. Ministers may come and go but the civil servants will be there to uphold the law and enforce decisions taken after following proper procedures. If a minister wants a civil servant to take a decision, the latter should be free to differ and indicate her views without any fear.
In the last few years, most corruption cases involving officials have shown civil servants to be pliant agents of the ministers. In some cases, the civil servants may have also benefitted from being pliant in keeping with the desires of the minister. The problem, in such cases, is not the absence of provisions in the rulebook. If only the civil servants had acted a little boldly and shown the courage to differ with a minister keen on playing games, the system would have remained intact, eliminating the scope for corruption. Indeed, if civil servants did not act boldly in some cases, the Cabinet Secretariat should do some introspection. Did it provide adequate encouragement and protection to honest civil servants for differing with an errant minister?