You could call it the Pulok Chaterji effect or the declining influence of the Hazare movement on the government, but there is an unmistakable change in the way Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s team has been responding to policy challenges in the last few weeks. You cannot yet say conclusively that the government has rescued itself from the policy paralysis from which everybody saw it suffering until a couple of months ago. But positive signs of change are evident.
This is precisely what many analysts had anticipated once the government decided to induct Chaterji into the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) as principal secretary, replacing T K A Nair, whose administrative efficacy many believed had waned considerably. Ask any secretary in any economic ministry and he will tell you how Chaterji is in command, holding periodic meetings, setting the agenda, fixing targets and eventually restoring a sense of direction to how the government should move in facing various policy challenges.
So, you have special meetings to resolve knotty problems affecting the power and telecom industries and expedite investment in key infrastructure areas. Not all ministers are happy with such a turn of events as the focus has shifted back to the PMO, but most bureaucrats feel they now know what the government expects them to do.
This is not to say all problems with the morale of the bureaucracy, which had hit a new low, have been resolved. The long neglect of nurturing the senior bureaucracy, dating back almost to the start of the United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) first term in 2004, has had an inevitable impact on several batches of the Indian Administrative Services.
How did that rot set in? One, the culture of post-retirement jobs for senior secretaries spread far and wide. Almost every secretary approaching retirement began expecting a job of either a regulator or an information commissioner, if nothing else was available. And if no such posting was possible, a large number of these secretaries began expecting an extension in the same job. Such was the environment that almost a year before their superannuation, senior secretaries began spending much of their time in looking for the job they would like to do after they turn 60.
More From This Section
In other words, secretaries to the Union government were worrying less about their current job and more about what their next job should be after retirement. This led to a host of associated problems. Ministers loved the situation as they could dangle the carrot of a post-retirement job for the secretaries willing to toe their line.
Another harmful practice was the concept of appointing bureaucrats in some ministries with a fixed, two-year tenure irrespective of the number of days left before their superannuation. As a result, a senior bureaucrat due to retire, for instance, next month was given a two-year tenure. Such decisions encouraged discretionary rewards and favouritism that proved to be a disincentive for a host of other competent bureaucrats down the hierarchy. Why not, instead, appoint only those bureaucrats as secretaries in such departments who have a clear two years left in service before retirement?
Two, the practice of giving permission to senior retiring secretaries to accept private sector jobs, even though there could be a conflict of interest, became quite rampant. What used to be a matter of exception became almost a matter of rule and right. So, a finance secretary would be able to join a private sector company soon after retirement. This affected even public sector managers and regulators, although there might not be any violation of personnel rules in such appointments. A chairman of a public sector undertaking (PSU) after retirement will be found working for a private sector giant, operating in the same field as the PSU in question. A senior official of a financial sector regulator will be joining a company after retirement even though the company in question operated in the same area. The disease became infectious and governance suffered.
Three, ministers were allowed to have the final say in the appointment of secretaries in their departments. It’s true that ministers’ concurrence to an appointment of secretaries in their departments is necessary, but the system should be such that the bureaucrat knows that he owes that appointment to the Cabinet Secretariat or the PMO and the minister alone is not responsible for his appointment to that post.
This is particularly important for a coalition government. The minister may run the departments under him, but the PMO or the Cabinet Secretariat must have its control over those departments through the secretaries. In UPA-I as well as UPA-II, this power balance shifted largely in favour of the ministers. As a result, ministers often could run away with the agenda with the help of the department secretaries, while the PMO or the Cabinet Secretariat realised they could do little as their control over the steel frame had weakened.
In short, if the Pulok Chaterji effect on governance has to be durable, then perhaps it is time the retrogressive practices introduced or followed in the last seven years were phased out and a more transparent recruitment policy put in place that empowered bureaucrats and encouraged them with a policy of rewards and punishment with little scope for them to curry favour with their political bosses.
