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In 1990, around 200 officers of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) had gathered for a conclave in Uttar Pradesh. Among them was TSR Subramanian, who would go on to become the Union cabinet secretary, India's seniormost bureaucrat. He and the others listened in stunned silence as Mulayam Singh Yadav, then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, said to them. "Why do you come and touch my feet? Why do you come and lick my shoes? Why do you come to me for personal favours? When you do so, I will do as you desire and then extract my price from you." This remark, recorded by now-retired Subramanian in his book, Journeys Through Babudom and Netaland - Governance in India, tells the complex relationship - symbiotic and, at times, adversarial - between bureaucrats and their political leaders.
Unlike what Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister would have us believe, ministers are not mere pawns in the hands of their bureaucrats. The truth is that ministers get bureaucrats to do their dirty work (largely favours to family and friends); bureaucrats often bend the rules willingly and cultivate politicians for personal gains. For every corrupt minister, there are several servile and manipulative bureaucrats. Not for nothing has Political and Economic Risk Consultancy of Hong Kong ranked the Indian bureaucracy as the worst in the whole of Asia. The upright ones get tossed around, or they get suspended, like Durga Shakti Nagpal in Uttar Pradesh. She paid the price for taking on the politically strong sand miners in the state. With each passing day, the official reason for her suspension - razing the wall of a mosque which could have disturbed communal peace in a Greater Noida village - sounds more and more hollow.
In the days that followed Nagpal's suspension, more such incidents came to light. Ashish Kumar, the district collector of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu, was transferred earlier this week, hours after he ordered a raid on sand mines in his area. Jaisalmer Superintendent of Police Pankaj Choudhary was moved out within two days of opening the history sheet of Gazi Fakir, the father of Pokhran Congress MLA Saleh Mohammad. These cases have received prominence because the issue is under the media's glare. Veterans will tell you this is nothing new. In 2012, G Dharmaraj, additional superintendent of police, was transferred to the Nilgiris after he acted tough on sand miners in Vellore. U Sagayam, former district collector of Madurai who exposed the large-scale illegal granite quarrying in the district, has been transferred 18 times in 20 years. His reward for submitting the report on the illegal quarrying to the state government was a transfer to Chennai within days. It is widely believed that the state government acted on Sagayam's report only after it was leaked to the media.
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By blatantly suspending Nagpal, the Uttar Pradesh government led by Akhilesh Yadav has opened a can of worms. Uncomfortable facts are now tumbling out. Transfers have been frequent. Since the Samajwadi Party came to power in 2012, close to 2,000 transfers of IAS and Indian Police Service (IPS) officers have been ordered in the state. Of these, 116 transfers were in a single day. Things weren't any better under Mayawati who made 1,000 transfers in 2007, 970 in 2002, 777 in 1997 and 578 in 1995- the years she came to power in the state.
Life isn't easier in other states. In Tamil Nadu, for example, a young officer was transferred from Salem to an insignificant post in Tuticorin, reportedly because she forgot to say "vanakkam" to the chief minister during an award ceremony, a mistake which was purely unintentional and very much pardonable, discloses an IAS officer of the same cadre. The case of Ashok Khemka, the Haryana cadre officer who has been transferred 43 times in two decades, is no less revealing. He was removed as director general (land consolidation) in 80 days after he cancelled the mutation of a multi-crore land deal between Robert Vadra, Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law, and DLF. Khemka's postings have lasted from less than a week to a maximum of 20 months. He has now been transferred to the relatively insignificant post of secretary, Haryana Archives, and operates out of a tiny room with inadequate manpower. "They have archived me but I will continue doing my job. How can I go to court and say there is no work as secretary (archives)?" he asks.
The whims and fancies of the ministers are often inexplicable. In West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had appointed Nandini Chakravorty as secretary in her information and cultural affairs ministry. Chakravorty would always be seen by Banerjee's side in the first year of her government. So much so, several ministers and bureaucrats started calling her "Deputy CM". Then suddenly, in February this year, Chakravorty was transferred as the editor of the West Bengal State Gazetteer, a post until then occupied by junior officers. She had spent barely six months on the job when, earlier this week, she was transferred as secretary in the Sundarban development department. The state's bureaucracy is still speculating on why the official fell out of favour with Banerjee.
Damayanti Sen, IPS, who had proved wrong Banerjee's claim that the allegations in the Park Street rape case were "cooked up" and arrested the culprits, is another example. Sen was then Kolkata's joint commissioner of police (crime). The day after the case was solved, Banerjee summoned Sen and ordered her to tell the media from the state secretariat's press corner that the case was cracked only because of immense cooperation from the government. After a half-hour closed-door meeting with Banerjee at Writers' Building, a visibly distressed Sen did precisely that. But she could not save her job and a few weeks later was transferred as deputy inspector general of police (training) in Barrackpore, considered a "garage posting" for an IPS officer.
Ministers use transfers to punish unbending bureaucrats and surround themselves with compliant ones. "Pressure can come in different forms and the threat of transfer is probably the biggest. But 90 per cent of those threats can be dealt with by telling them 'post me anywhere'," says G K Pillai, former union home secretary. "If an officer has a reputation for honesty and efficiency and is quick at grievance redress, politicians will by and large respect him. I have always completed my full tenures, of three or five years," he says, though he adds that his wife (former labour secretary Sudha Pillai) was not so lucky. She was transferred within four months of a new posting for refusing to oblige a politician in a case of transfers but found herself vindicated when the courts struck down the transfers. The officers have no stability or security of tenure. "On an average, an officer is transferred within nine months in most states," says Jayaprakash Narayan, who resigned from IAS to set up the Lok Satta Party. "By the time you begin to understand your job, you are thrown out."
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The pressure from above can be severe. "When we work in the field, we are under a lot of pressure, even from the local MLA," says Yogendra Narain, former secretary-general of the Rajya Sabha who retired from IAS after 42 years of service. "Ministers often insist on something even when we advise them against. When we say 'we will get caught if we do this', they say, 'aap tareeka nikaliye (you find a way out)'." On several occasions, orders are delivered verbally. "Bureaucrats are becoming very wary of these oral orders. Many of them now put them in writing to their senior saying that 'the minister has said this; please advise'," says Narain.
An IAS officer who has invited the displeasure of his political bosses on more than one occasion says it's idealistic to believe that most oral orders are put on paper. And it's not true that the minister follows hierarchy and communicates his orders only to senior officers like the chief secretary, director or commissioner. "Political interference takes place down to the lowest level, whether it is for ordering postings, promotions or departmental inquiries," says the official. "Seedha phone aata hai (the minister or chief minister calls directly). The minister can jump ten levels down the hierarchy to convey an order."
This officer equates the politician-bureaucrat relationship to the way the underworld operates. "If you get a call that 'Bhai ne yeh kaya hai (this is what the Don wants)', will you dare put it in writing? Of course, you won't. You will also have to interpret that order correctly and read the mind of the political boss or else you will be out of the system forever." He adds, "If the politician tells you that today the chargesheet against Durga Shakti Nagpal must be sent out, forget bathing, eating, sleeping or even going to the loo; make sure that the chargesheet is out. That is the level of pressure."
Pillai, recounting the pressure he faced when he took on the cashew barons in Kerala early in his career, says a newspaper even suggested that he should be put in an asylum. Not just threats, bureaucrats are frequently tempted with bribes. Many succumb. "I've received oblique hints where the person would tell me that there is a flat or plot of land available for a really attractive rate, but I would always make it clear that I wasn't interested," says Pillai who reportedly would stay away from his house during Diwali to avoid gifts. It can get dirtier. Recently, Yunus Khan, a sub-divisional magistrate in Himachal Pradesh, survived an attack on his life after he tried to check illegal sand mining. Still, there is consensus that ministers can threaten and transfer an honest bureaucrat, but they cannot bend him against his wish.
It is issues such as these that have made 83 high-ranking former bureaucrats knock at the doors of the Supreme Court with a plea to bring about desperately-needed reforms in the civil services so that the officers can do their job with dignity and efficiency. Among the petitioners are former cabinet secretary Subramanian, former Manipur governor Ved Prakash Marwah, chief election commissioners, chief secretaries to various state governments, secretaries to the government of India, ambassadors and high commissioners, and heads of police, paramilitary forces and investigative agencies at the centre and in the states.
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Bureaucrats are often willing partners in the crime. If the steel frame is bent, a part of the blame has to be shared by these bureaucrats. In the Adarsh Housing Society scam in Mumbai, senior bureaucrats were found hand-in-glove with politicians to buy sea-facing flats for a steal in Cuffe Parade. Some of them were arrested. Their role in the irrigation scam, where large sums of money were spent on non-existent projects, too came under the scanner. "Rules were bent in a naked manner to fill the pockets of a few contractors," says a former senior bureaucrat. "The ministers had a free run. The officers didn't stop them; instead, they succumbed to the political pressure." Bureaucrats disclose that most Maharashtra leaders, from local bodies upwards, insist on having their favourites work for them. Madhav Godbole, who belongs to the Maharashtra cadre and served as the union home secretary, says: "Instances of government giving extension to officers who are set to retire are on the rise in Maharashtra. Politicians know that every government servant has a price and they are a good judge of people."
The case of Madhya Pradesh IAS couple, Arvind and Tinu Joshi, also presents the other side of the picture - of how bureaucrats manipulate their position and political connections to become rich. Raids on the two, who have since been suspended, led the authorities to cash and investments of over Rs 360 crore.
The picture appears dismal, but in the pristine environments of Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, the IAS research and training institute at Mussoorie, idealism hasn't yet given way to cynicism. The newly-recruited civil servants and members of the faculty are happy that Nagpal had the guts to take on the sand mafia. "Every day, we discuss Nagpal and a lot of questions come to mind. We usually ask ourselves whether we will also face the same consequences for doing our duty," says a young IAS officer who is undergoing training here.
The academy's director, Padamvir Singh, a 1977 batch IAS officer, says there was no reason for the government to suspend Nagpal. "Suspension is an extreme step which should be used in cases like corruption. You cannot use the suspension clause when there is a chance of error of judgment," he says. But are the trainees being taught how to ward off pressure and temptation? Rama Chandran, a teacher at the institute, adds, "As long as civil servants maintain a distance from the politicians in terms of seeking favours, there will be no problem in implementing the law."
Probal Basak, R Krishna Das and Virendra Singh Rawat contributed to this report
