Governing the Republic

WORLD MONEY

The soon-to-retire Chief Election Commissioner J M Lyngdoh recently described politicians as a "cancer" on Indian society, further contending that "there was no politician in the country who was committed to democracy and welfare of the people".

Arvind Inamdar, a senior retired policeman from Maharashtra, of impeccable reputation and credentials, also blamed political interference for the lamentable state of affairs in the police force.

Do the babus have the right to legitimately feel holier than the politicians? Or is it merely a question of the pot calling the kettle black?

Between the minister and the civil service, the focus of the former should primarily be on policies, of the latter on implementation. (I am using the word "bureaucracy" or babus in a larger context to include the investigating agencies and the judiciary as well.)

Can it be contended that the implementation, the running of the routine tasks and responsibilities of governance have been carried out by the bureaucracy with an acceptable degree of efficiency, honesty and professionalism? From mundane services like, say, reasonably-clear road signs to implementation of major projects, the answer is sadly in the negative.

Take the fake stamp paper (Telgi) scam. Whoever was directly involved in the fraud, surely it was facilitated by the archaic, 19th century methods of revenue collection that we are trying to live with in the 21st.

Stamp paper to collect revenue in a country that boasts of sophistication in information technology, rocketry and atomic energy? Whose primary responsibility is it to ensure that systems are improved continuously in tune with the times? That of the politicians or the bureaucracy?

And not in this respect alone "" we continue to use archaic, time consuming and inefficient procedures for almost every service that the government is supposed to provide to the citizens.

A handful of exceptions apart, how many bureaucrats have made any serious effort to reform the systems and the procedures for providing routine services?

Most are content to let things go on with a Brahminic indifference to mundane details like citizen-friendly forms and transparent procedures; tolerating, if not encouraging, a huge, parasitic, slothful army of babus, who are rarely civil and do not consider themselves the servants of anybody except their political masters.

Take again the question of the "cancer" of politicians killing the society. How many civil servants have resigned instead of serving such political masters? On the contrary, too many have joined hands with the netas to extract their pound of flesh for performing the services they are paid to do.

There is a qualitative difference between corruption in this country and in many others. In other countries, you bribe to persuade somebody to do something he is not supposed to do; in India bribes are often needed to persuade the babu to do what he is supposed to do!

Consider the Tehelka case. The BJP president, found taking cash, had to resign "" like Judeo more recently. But the civil and military defence personnel caught on Tehelka's cameras? Nothing has happened to them.

Instead, an army of babus from a variety of departments pounced on Tehelka (and one of its investors) with great enthusiasm, to punish them for the crime of exposing corrupt practices. Cancerous politicians can at least be removed, but cancerous babus?

Consider the way the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and the overall vigilance system, and the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), operate. These institutions perhaps have the least political interference.

Surely these two institutions should have stood out for their efficiency and professionalism? Instead, the way they have operated, "they have become more obstacles than watchdogs because officials prefer not to take a decision rather than take one that would come under CVC or CAG scrutiny." (Tavleen Singh, Indian Express).

Quite apart from incentivising decision avoidance, the bureaucracy has built such a procedural wall of protection for itself that hardly anybody can be prosecuted, even when investigating agencies wish to do so.

Projects getting delayed by years, cost overruns of hundreds of percentage "" has anybody ever been held responsible? This apart, in many ways, perhaps the weakest institution of the republic is the judicial system.

Surely, no politician is stopping the reform of the system so beset with procedural hurdles and delays that no case ever seems to come to substantive arguments and prompt judgement.

Despite special judges, the Bombay blast and securities scam cases continue to meander even after a decade, with no end in sight. Take the case of the December 13 attack on Parliament.

SAR Gilani was recently acquitted by the Delhi High Court because the sole piece of evidence did not even remotely, "far less definitely and unerringly", point to him.

Did not anybody in the investigative agency or the lower courts consider himself responsible to stop the harassment of a citizen? Surely the buck should have stopped much earlier and an utter waste of time and public resources avoided?

Will anybody be held responsible? You must be joking! Are politicians solely responsible for creating an indifferent, callous and often inefficient system, a system that considers the citizen as an enemy, not its master, or at least completely irrelevant, a nuisance?

So, to come back to the question in the first paragraph: No, Mr Lyngdoh, the system whose commanding heights you reached is no healthier than the cancer that you so vehemently denounced, conveniently just before your retirement, of course.

E-mail: avrco@vsnl.com