Ep. 69: There is a problem with India’s bureaucrats: is there a solution?

Let’s face it, babus are merely glorified managers. There’s a need to eliminate the entire colonial edifice of the UPSC for generalist administrators

Image Courtesy econitynepal.com

A version of this essay was published by firstpost.com at https://www.firstpost.com/india/there-is-a-problem-with-indias-bureaucrats-is-there-a-solution-10743811.html

A recent incident roiled the Indian Twittersphere: apparently, an IAS officer of the Union Territory cadre of the IAS regularly commandeered a stadium in Delhi, emptying it of athletes at 7pm, so that he, his IAS-officer wife, and their dog, could go for a walk. This is awkward at a time when India is trying to support sports and increase the number of medals won in global competition.

It appears that the allegation was indeed true, because the duo were transferred within a few hours after a newspaper broke the story with a telling photograph. One was transferred to Ladakh, the other to Arunachal Pradesh. Nobody reported on where the dog will go. 

Image of IAS officer and Thyagaraja Stadhum courtesy firstpost.com

Some Twitteratti bemoaned the fact that Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh are treated as ‘punishment transfers’; someone pointed out that the pair will get ‘hardship allowances’ that are greater than what soldiers in real hardship posts on the border get (an unfortunate road accident in Ladakh just yesterday led to the deaths of 7 jawans and injuries to more). 

The quick transfer was a signal that the powers-that-be do not condone this sort of imperial hauteur on the part of the babus, though I’d have preferred the duo to be suspended without pay pending an investigation. I was told that the rules do not allow for this, and even the transfer could be overturned on appeal to the administrative tribunal. 

I conclude that the rules are loaded in favor of the bureaucrats.

We have all laughed at the shows Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, British dramas that purport to show how politicians may come and go, but babudom is forever. And that the entire purpose of babudom is to thwart whatever good ideas politicians may have in moments of temporary insanity. Babudom exists for its own self-aggrandizement. 

The best living example of this must be India’s babus. It is true that Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, a Macarthur Genius award winner, studied baboon societies with their vicious pecking order, and concluded that the best human analog was the British civil service. Sapolsky clearly has not had the delightful experience of dealing with India’s IAS. 

I say this even though I have had several acquaintances among the IAS who are indeed brainy, capable, and committed, and who produce results on the ground. The sad fact is the ghost of the predecessor service, the Indian Civil Service: conceived of, made its mark as, the tool of the imperialists to rape and pillage the country for the benefit of the imperial power.

To take a trivial example, why do you think the district administrator, who is sort of a minor local king, is called a ‘Collector’? Yes, his (and it was almost always a ‘he’) job was to collect taxes, sometimes utterly back-breaking taxes, even when there was crop failure. 

It was the ICS (1858-1947) that presided over the Late Victorian Holocausts of the 1880s, when some 20 million Indians starved to death due to poor management of El Nino droughts that turned into famine, as in the magisterial account by Mike Davis. It was they who presided over the Bengal Famine (4 million dead while grain was shipped out) during World War II. 

Their casual racism and cruelty is hard for us to imagine today, but it is clear they did not care one whit for the average Indian. The recent film RRR is probably not far off the mark in its portrayal of the British as white imperialists without sympathy for those they lord it over.  

The problem is that the lifecycle of an IAS (and IPS and IFS) officer still mimics the ICS. They are viewed as lords and masters of those they administer; far be it that they are civil ‘servants’. Their entire existence, including the quaint examination on topics that are mostly irrelevant to what they will do in their careers, is now an anachronism. 

I say this with a caveat: there is tremendous capability among them, if only it is harnessed. I have long maintained that the administrative nous needed to successfully conduct the Kumbh Mela alone is one of the greatest tributes to state capability. The covid vaccination of 1.4 billion people, under pressure, is an even more outstanding feat. So doubtless there is capability.

That capability is that of the management of complex systems. But the Chinese-mandarin-style imperial exams that select top babudom doesn’t have anything to do with learning management skills: all you need is a random undergraduate degree, an astute choice of subjects to specialize in, and a worldview exemplified by The Hindu paper (ie JNU style).

There is a compulsory General Studies examination. So far as I can tell, the content is on average things that any reasonably smart youngster should pick up from general reading. God knows that the babus do not exhibit any great patriotism or sympathy for India’s culture or freedom movement or governance or any of the other topics, especially if, as is often the case, they come from leftist humanities curricula where the professors drill anti-nationalism into their heads (see JNU as portrayed in The Kashmir Files).

Therefore, without loss of generality, this entire curriculum can be discarded. 

There is also a general Aptitude test. Call me prejudiced, but as one who took the Common Admission Test (CAT) for the IIMs and the American GMAT, and has taught generations of IIM students, I think those tests are better tests of ‘aptitude’ for managing people. In fact these are just tests of general intelligence.

Let’s face it, babus are merely glorified managers. So in my personal opinion, the UPSC Aptitude test can also be eliminated, and IIM CAT scores can be used instead. Whatever else it may or may not do, the CAT does a great job of filtering in smart, motivated, ambitious students. 

That means the entire colonial edifice of the UPSC for generalist administrators can be eliminated in one fell swoop, and babus can be sent to IIMs for training. IIM Bangalore was initially set up to specialize in public management, although it has transformed itself steadily into one of the best private sector management institutes in India.

Admittedly, a pure MBA may be inadequate for public sector management, therefore additional training could be added on. At Stanford b-school, there is a Public Sector track that has additional material compared to the normal MBA. There is a School of Government at Harvard. At IIM Bangalore, there is a program for mid-career Public Sector Managers. It will not be difficult to add new content for the babus. 

Similarly, the police service needs specialized training in civil unrest, counter-terrorism and other specialized topics. So it will be necessary to maintain a separate Police Academy for them after the IIM training. The foreign service needs specialized training in trade, geopolitics, game theory and so on, so they would need a Foreign Service Academy post IIM.

So the fairly hefty IIM fees will be waived for the civil servants, but in return they will have to sign a bond that they will serve for 10 years. Otherwise, some will game the system and exit with an MBA. I have known PhD candidates who did that.

What about other, lesser services? I say that deliberately, because there is a strict hierarchy, and the IES, IRS, IPS, Indian Forest Service etc. cannot hope to get the plum jobs that the IAS/IFS/IPS monopolize. This is a symptom of the preference for the generalist over the specialist: and you find IAS officers shunted from steel mill to electricity board to tourism as chiefs, and surely they know nothing whatsoever about these domains.

Therefore, one more suggestion: bring the other services on par with IAS/IFS/IPS in terms of being considered for posts for which they are qualified. For instance, an electrical engineer should be hired for running an electrical utility regardless of whichever cadre he/she belongs to. Similarly a doctor should be considered for running public health departments.

The age of the generalist is over; we need people with specialized training and experience. 

And that brings up the question of lateral entry. There was some noise about joint secretary-level positions being opened up for, say, 3 year stints for industry experts. This is a useful addition to institutional knowledge.  However, it looks like the scheme sank without a trace: doubtless the IAS mafia gave it a quiet burial.

There is no point building up people as little lords and ladies: they start to believe in the propaganda. I remember the cringe-inducing phrase “You are the cream of the nation” that we were subjected to from day 1 at IIT Madras. Fortunately we didn’t believe it. But babudom seems, on evidence, to believe in some sort of Manifest Destiny for themselves. 

There isn’t any. In fact, babudom, the judiciary, and media are three of the institutions that are holding India back. Surprisingly, the politicians are doing their job, or at least they are trying to. It’s time the executive caught up with it, and got with the program of India First. 

1530 words, 28 May 2022