How Bureaucracy Has Left the Indian Civil Services Adrift

India’s crisis-ridden bureaucracy is unrecognisable, and this perception of the civil services overshadows the handful of upright officers who continue boldly to keep the system afloat.

Once hailed as the steel frame of independent India, the country’s civil service today is a pale shadow of its halcyon past when officers of high intellectual calibre, personal integrity, and the brio to give unbiased advice, held sway.

Successors of the ‘heaven born’ colonial Indian Civil Service, or ICS, and the analogous Indian Police or IP, newly independent India’s civil services was not too different. They equitably managed the turbulent times of Partition, rife with bloodshed, refugees’ influx, and the division of assets between the two newly created nations.

In the decades thereafter, guided by competent political leaders they kept hope alive by nurturing a fledgling democracy in a hugely diverse country, which few in the world thought would survive as a nation state.

But over seven decades later India’s crisis-ridden bureaucracy is unrecognisable; vilified for its inefficiency, nepotism, and corruption, but above all else, for its arrogance and high-maintenance and low mileage capabilities. This common perception of the civil services overshadows the handful of conscientious and upright officers who continue boldly to adhere to old values and keep the system afloat.

Ironically, it is because of this latter diminishing complement of officers that many systems continue to function relatively well.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to concur with this public perception of the Indian bureaucrats. He recently excoriated the country’s civil servants in the Lok Sabha, venting his ire particularly against members of the ‘hallowed’ Indian Administrative Service (IAS) that heads the country’s bureaucratic pinnacle.

Also read: The Civil Services Have Failed To Deliver and It’s Time To Reconsider Their Importance

The ‘babu’ culture

Participating in the motion of thanks to President Ram Nath Kovind’s parliamentary address, an incensed prime minister lamented that India’s growth had become ‘hostage’ to the whims and fancies of babus a mildly pejorative euphemism for civil servants and the untrammelled power they wielded.

“Babus will do everything,” an incredulous prime minister asked rhetorically. “Because they became IAS (officers) they run fertiliser factories ….chemical factories… even fly planes,” he fulminated. “What is this big power we have created,” he asked, going on to inquire of his fellow parliamentarians whether it was judicious to hand over the ‘reins of the nation (of power and governance) to babus’.

The prime minister’s outburst upset senior civil servants who rather than introspect on the criticism levelled against them spent their energy speculating on what had prompted Modi’s outburst. Near-unanimously they agreed that the prime minister’s tirade against them was because of a handful of projects that had been delayed; of course, due to no fault of theirs.

What Modi stated in parliament on February 10, starkly echoed the despair and helplessness of billions of Indians, subsumed by a bureaucracy which other than the IAS is supplemented by the Indian Police Service (IPS), and overseas by the Indian Foreign Service (IFS). Assorted central services oversee varied other departments like revenue, customs, railways, forests, and cantonments, amongst others.

New IAS civil servants headed for training. Credit: PTI

New IAS civil servants headed for training. Photo: PTI

Exceptions notwithstanding, there is a collective strain that defines them all, at least in the popular perception: power, pelf and relative inviolability. The civil servants’ calibre is in direct proportion to their ability to perform in the qualifying examination and the subsequent interview. Thereafter, efficiency, probity, conscientiousness, and empathy are of limited relevance for the average three decades most officers serve.

Most officers assume the trappings of feudal grandeur much like their colonial predecessors, but without either their efficiency, commitment, or impartiality. Their ‘power’ props begin with their massive office revolving chairs, with the mandatory white towel changed regularly draped over the back for reasons unknown. Over decades this white towel has emerged as an unquestioned symbol of bureaucratic authority that brooks no challenge and is always right.

Red lights flash continually outside their office doors to further indicate high office and importance. These worthies, ironically known as public servants, are largely inaccessible to common people who obsequiously line up outside their offices for redressal of their grievances, sometimes waiting the entire day without getting to see the ‘sahib’. In colonial times, those in authority were commonly known as ‘mai baap’ (my father); in independent India they have a shorter, adaptive Anglo-Indian appellation sir ji.

Sir ji’s calls are screened by his army of staffers who invariably mouth the patent questions: ‘aap kahan se bol rahe hain’,  ‘kya kaam hai’, or a helpful ‘dekhta hun sahib kamre mein hain ke nahin’. But this is mere tokenism as most callers are summarily informed that ‘sahib’ is either out or busy in a meeting. This generally means only one thing  the personal staff does not consider the caller important enough to bother the boss. Similarly, visitors are disdainfully discouraged either by making them wait, or advised to meet some other lower-level official in connection with their grievances.

Such inaccessibility contributes majorly towards building public perception regarding the importance and invincibility of the officer. And though civil servants cannot possibly meet, or talk to everyone, there is no system to differentiate between those who have legitimate grievances and others who do not. This malaise has percolated down to the lower power structure echelons, leaving millions of unrequited supplicants across the country.

A large proportion of these civil servants’ business is conducted via haloed meetings, attended by officers whose comprehension of the subject under discussion is normally limited to what is included in the briefs or notes prepared by their juniors. Moreover, these incessant rounds of meetings tend invariably to be long and tedious, devoid of all levity or humour, and seldom result in any definitive decision. In most instances, the minutes are recorded on the ubiquitous file which in turn remains in perpetual orbit.

The German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) had famously defined bureaucracy as a highly structured organisation predicated on specialisation and technical competence, a formal set of rules and regulations, a well-defined hierarchy, and impersonality in application of rules. A century later Weber would be hard pressed, to put it mildly, to define Indian bureaucracy even remotely in this overarching framework.

Even insiders, who have spent decades in civil service, find it difficult to explain this sarkari jalebi that impinges on every Indian’s life in varying degrees but one that renders the bureaucrat wholly indispensable. It is also a truism that the power an Indian civil servant wields is vast and in many cases in indirect proportion to the ability of the person exercising it.

Metaphorically, India’s bureaucratic hierarchy divided into four groups mirrors the toxic chaturvarna vyavastha, or the caste system, to which admission is determined by one’s performance in the annual civil service and other entrance examinations. And much like the accident of birth that determines one’s station in the chaturvarna vyavastha, entry into one of these aforesaid categories too determines the future course of one’s career, circumscribing mobility across the broad four civil service groupings.

Specialisation is an important facet of bureaucracy in the Weberian scheme, but in the Indian context the ‘generalist’ IAS officers are the ultimate mavens in all administration branches, as Prime Minister Modi emphatically pointed out in the parliament.

Potentially, an IAS officer with a mere bachelor’s degree in arts could well be deemed as much of an expert in financial management as in aerospace and defence, in most instances learning the basics on the job. The depth of knowledge and experience normally necessary in each of these areas, it seems, are no barrier. As the prime minister declared: the ‘Babu’s can do everything.

Also read: Lateral Entry Is Fine. but What About Enhancing the IAS’s Professional Competence?

Streamlining the country’s bureaucracy

India’s first Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), aiming at streamlining the country’s bureaucracy, had in 1970 recommended that an overarching ‘functional field’ needed to be created for the lAS. The Commission proposed that this could consist of land revenue administration, exercise of magisterial functions and regulatory work in the states in fields other than those looked after by officials from sundry civil services.

It also suggested that the jobs which do not fall within a particular ‘functional area’ need to be demarcated into eight areas of specialised administration: economic, industrial agricultural and rural development, social and education, personnel, finance, defence and internal security, and planning.

Expectedly, these recommendations were never fully implemented. Instead, a hybrid system was adopted that provided an edge to IAS officers in matters of promotion, postings, and career furtherance. Under this skewered arrangement, the non-IAS services received step-brotherly treatment leading not only to resentment, but also demoralisation. Though the non-IAS officers are now being inducted into higher positions in the ministries in greater numbers than before, such opportunities continue to be limited relative to the number of officers seeking such opportunities.

The recommendations of the first ARC continue to be relevant as governance has become increasingly technologically enabled and specialised. Successive governments declared their intent on assuming office of executing administrative reforms, but these were cleverly stymied each time by the internal forces, reminiscent of the delightful BBC comedy Yes Minister and later Yes, Prime Minister.

In one uproarious episode Prime Minister Jim Hacker asks of senior bureaucrat Sir Humphrey Appleby whether he knew of a civil servant resigning on a matter of principle.

I should think not! What an appalling suggestion! retorts Sir Humphrey in high dudgeon.

Familiar?

Amit Cowshish is former financial advisor (acquisitions), Ministry of Defence.

In India, Ministers and Prime Ministers Come and Go But the File is King

Akin to an object in gravity-less outer-space, the government file remains in perpetual motion, making it difficult if not impossible to track it or to conclusively pin it down.

‘Round and round, like the diurnal revolution of the earth, went the file, stately, solemn, sure and slow.’ – Lord Curzon 

Chandigarh: In official India, there is one inanimate entity that trumps the clout of the country’s most powerful – be it the prime minister, his cabinet colleagues, the collective Union and state bureaucracies, and even the military – and that is the ubiquitous sarkari file.

Of unremarkable appearance, the file is usually little more than a sheaf of papers encased in bright generic folders, with disproportionately-sized multi-coloured flag markers and tags with jagged metal edges stapled on.

But looks can be hugely deceptive.

The file’s outward ordinariness is in inverse proportion to the power it wields, enslaving India’s most powerful with its contents, and whose revelations, in many instances, have surfaced to haunt the high and mighty at inopportune moments.

For within the file lurk printed sheets, peppered with indecipherable handwritten annotations in the margins in multiple-coloured inks by innumerable officials up and down the bureaucratic foodchain. These pages ultimately end up impinging on millions of Indians, either fostering or blighting their wellbeing, but further reinforcing the omnipotence of the file.

The file deals with assorted matters at multiple layers – the national, provincial and even those at the neighbourhood or block levels. But each file has a life of its own and its outcome is, consequently, important, if not vital, so we can only ignore or spurn its contents at great peril.

The reality is that all of us at some point in our lives have been subservient to some file or the other.

Although initiated by the omnipresent faceless government babu, the file travels unhurriedly in a country where the word for today and tomorrow is paradoxically the same. Photo: Reuters

Officialdom has repeatedly informed us, in a country where the state is all-pervasive, that the answer to most of our problems, requests or jams nestles in a specific file that is perpetually in circulation. Not many, of course, have any idea regarding what that file comprises, who its propagators or recipients are, and most importantly, what the deadline for its contents culminating in a happy ending will be.

The latter query is germane for most. In almost every instance, the wait for the ‘fulfilment’ of the file is interminable.

Also read: Lockdown 4.0: Centre Should Forget Red Tape and Stick to Five Principles

Akin to an object in gravity-less outer-space, the file remains in perpetual motion, making it difficult if not impossible to track it or to conclusively pin it down at one specific spot. Even people involved in this perpetual pass-the-file endeavour are equally unaware of either its exact status or whereabouts at any given time.

Although initiated by the omnipresent faceless government babu, the file travels unhurriedly in a country where the word for today and tomorrow is paradoxically the same, kal. Here, deadlines of parson and tarson (the day after or the third day or thereabouts) remain equally nebulous, as is the Hindi phrase ‘dus-ek din mein’, which means, literally in one to 10 days).

Accordingly, the file takes aeons to progress from one official’s desk to the next and endlessly onwards. However, at times, its path along Indian bureaucracy’s precipitous Himalayan highway is well lubricated by ‘considerations’ – thereby ensuring a steady income flow for some of its gatekeepers.

Former Army Chief of Staff General V.K. Singh – now a Union minister – once fittingly compared the movement of any file for materiel procurements in the Ministry of Defence to Snakes and Ladders, an ancient Indian board game, known originally as Moksha Patnam.

Also read: Army: How Red Tape Delayed the Procurement of Lightweight Tanks Until After Ladakh Faceoff

Gen. Singh declared that this file invariably slips back to the start from the top, just as the end appears optimistically in sight, much like the counters in the Snakes and Ladders game following a roll of the dice. In short, the file, like all others remains endlessly in play, yet again buttressing its pre-eminence.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman carried the Budget documents in a ‘bahi-khata’. Image: Reuters/Adnan Abidi

In New Delhi’s power corridors the file is further subjected to security markings ranging from ‘Confidential’ to ‘Secret’ and finally ‘Top Secret’, all of which necessitate different protocols and  packaging to undertake their journey to various offices located along cavernous corridors.

Inside, the file is suffused with a farrago of bewildering anagrams incomprehensible to laymen. ‘Pspk’, for instance, is ‘please speak’, ‘PU’ is short for ‘put up on file,’ and ‘N/A’ means ‘necessary action’, whilst the deadliest clincher or put-downer in any file is ‘LO’ or lay over i.e. ditch the proposal.

There is yet another implacable aspect to the file.

Once initiated, the file is indestructible and immortal, or in official parlance never ‘buried,’ and any attempt to entomb it is looked upon with suspicion, and motives imputed to a concerned officer for wanting to do so. This is because one of the many unstated decrees borrowed unquestioningly by independent India’s bureaucracy from colonial administration and perpetuated thereafter is that the file needs to eternally remain alive in some form, even hibernation.

Thus, it can be strategically activated if required at a later stage, either to settle scores, harass people, earn gratification or for all three motivations. The oft heard ominous threat, ‘purana file khul gaya’ (‘the old file has been reactivated’) is merely euphemism for a civil servant (or the politician directing him) attempting to settle scores with an adversary via the universal folder.

In this respect, Indian bureaucracy pursues what Ajit, one of Bollywood’s renowned villains once advocated for his rival in one of his films. He ordered him to be drowned in a vat full of liquid oxygen to endure everlasting misery. The liquid, he gleefully declared, would not let the hero live, and the oxygen would not let him die. Similarly, for Indian civil servants the file too remains enduringly alive, but in the twilight zone, dipped in ‘liquid oxygen’.

Bollywood villain Ajit. Photo: YouTube

Old timers will recall that the major qualitative difference with regard to the file progressed by colonial civil servants and their Indian successors, was in overall drafting skills. In the former’s file notings that were consistently apposite, brief and succinct, there was invariably a high quotient of drollery that served to lighten the overall drabness of government business.

One retired senior civil servant told The Wire that such humorous talent amongst civil servants and even Indian politicians, continued into the late 1970s, after which the file was swamped by long-winded and  grammatically flawed notings, devoid of all wit.

Also read: Exclusive: Official File Notings on NPR and Aadhaar Contradict Home Ministry Assurances

Over the last decade, he lamented, these had degenerated further into near-incomprehensibility, as bureaucratic drafting skills further dissipated into gobbledygook.

Meanwhile, the file is also the news reporters’ dream, securing which can not only boost careers, but topple or embarrass officialdom and governments which are anxious to keep its contents under wraps. Over the decades, many an investigative journalist has been handed over a damning file by disgruntled officials or, occasionally, by conscience-ridden colleagues, triggering exposés and dire repercussions.

Security and intelligence agencies too have bribed, honey-trapped or ideologically persuaded officials into handing over a file which is guaranteed, without doubt, to be the authentic repository of information from the enemy country. Fittingly, the all-pervading file has been the focus of innumerable Hollywood spy thrillers, though in recent years it has been replaced by the pen drive that succeeded the computer disc of the 1990s.

But not so in official India, where the file has efficaciously survived, over-riding digitisation and continuing to reign paramount, dwarfing its originators.

In short, most Indians, however powerful and grand, are vassals of the tyrannical File.

Debate | Civil Services: A Less Than Fair Assessment

It would be wrong to draw a direct parallel from the American and European examples of change in public service delivery effected through large scale successful private contracting.

The proposition that the civil services are a blanket failure and need to be reduced in their importance (‘The Civil Services Have Failed to Deliver and It’s Time to Reconsider Their Importance‘, N.C. Asthana, February 21, 2020) is poorly supported by facts or logic.

In any case, increased short term lateral entry at primarily policy analysis roles cannot translate into immediately enhanced service delivery where the political administration is inherently incentivised to achieve rapid results. Besides, lateral inductions of successful non-government professionals at senior levels in government as members of an existing service or on contract/outside cadres is not entirely new.

The positions of the Government of India, except a few, are not statutorily reserved for any service. Mere conventions govern the share of the various services in Central posts and an incumbent prime minister has near total freedom in shaping the senior civil service compliment by adjusting the induction of officers through deputation from various services in the departments and ministries.

The enhanced representation of some services in senior posts (conventionally joint secretary and above) is largely a reflection of two realities determining the functional character of the ministries. Firstly, that a large number of central ministries such as Rural Development, Public Health, Agriculture and Cooperation, Water Resources, Internal Security (Police), Urban Development are classified as state subjects in the constitution.

Secondly, the inherent diversity of the state and regional dispensations handling these subjects call for sufficiently granulated understanding of the diverse needs governed by regional-linguistic and cultural character. The requirement for senior staffing with a firm grounding in state subjects with regional nuance is naturally answered by an assemblage of professionals who have spent the initial decade handling state subjects, focusing on service delivery or regulation in specific regional contexts.

Also read: Debate: The Civil Services Are an Integral Part of India’s Growth Story

To expect dramatically improved results overnight in the same positions from an officer who has spent the formative years in the confines of a central department such as Income-tax or Defence Estates is over optimistic. Though a case for a specific person qualified with superior policy making skills can be made, the lacunae from direct experience of front-ending programme implementation will remain. It would be wrong to draw a direct parallel from the American and European examples of change in public service delivery effected through large scale successful private contracting due to the absence of effective markets in many sectors such as health care or primary education.

‘Expertise on tap, not top’:

Asthana has absolute clarity that the civil services are an unqualified failure in service delivery. But his yardsticks remain as unclear as his argumentative bias. He laments the relative uselessness of elite institutions in India’s development. He should see the rationale for continuing with an ICS like service post-independence in the Cabinet resolution for creating the IAS and IPS. It merely states that the newly and integrated Princely States (provinces) and the Presidencies directly governed by the Viceroy need a uniform standard of administration at the district and state levels.

In other words, a chief secretary or district collector or their counterparts in the police need to have the same formative background such as a university degree and needed to be trained to an even level of understanding the constitutional import of their office in addition to being at least trilingual in order to communicate with counterparts in other states or the Union government with whom state and district administrations need to be in functional communication.

Representative image of IAS officers. Photo: Twitter/@rashtrapatibhavan

Asthana worries that the decade-old Google does not reflect the intellectual rigour required of India’s senior civil service. I would argue that considered per capita, the Indian civil servants are more into publishing and intellectual discourses than their first world counterparts.

There is an interesting anecdote of of a US Army delegation at Delhi in the late nineties finding their Indian counterparts far more pedantic and intellectual than required. Decision memos for US presidents prepared by their under secretaries are never more than a page as compared to our voluminous cabinet notes called for by the complexities of the question being addressed.

There is great need to educate the service delivery machinery to be much more more businesslike and precise in their communication. Similarly, policy making levels need different data and evidence related skill sets to be honed.

Also read: The Civil Services Have Failed to Deliver and Its Time to Reconsider Their Importance

The requisite broad understanding of both the national character and regional nuance of an issue cannot be confused with the “understanding of a mere common man”. In fact, Asthana’s confusion resulting in this depreciation of the common man’s view of a complex issue has been answered well by Harold Laski in his celebrated essay ‘The limitations of the expert‘ (1931).

Laski forcefully establishes that “the expert sacrifices the insight of common sense to the intensity of his experience, dislikes the appearance of novel views, fails to see his results in their proper perspective, has a ‘caste – spirit’ and simply by reason of his immersion in a routine tends to lack flexibility of mind once he approaches the margins of his special theme. Specialism seems to breed a horror of unwonted experiment, a weakness in achieving adaptability, both of which make the expert of dubious value when he is in the supreme command of the situation”.

Summarising his preference of the common man’s uncommon wisdom to the rare man’s shared perceptions, Laski says experts should be “on tap, not on top”.

Public leadership: A Laskian design

Democracies are famously Laskian in their choices for public service leadership. Businessmen, lawyers, military leaders, career civil servants, novelists, poets, performing artists, and public activists are all elected as mayors, prime ministers and presidents in democracies.

Personal special knowledge of their chosen vocation or learning definitely helps them take better informed calls in and around those disciplines better than others. However, his choice of alternatives depends on his options that are likely to be those more endorsed by the common man who trust him rather than his trust in the acute expertise of the proponents of the proposal. The considered endorsement from a diversity of actors who have regionally granulated experience of the question is a far superior test deck rather than those of ideologically same-feathered lateral inductees or pro bono advisors as several watershed reforms that did not entirely satisfy the intention have shown.

Asthana’s comparisons of leadership in the United States Urban Policing actually goes to disprove his main argument which is that the civil service system needs to be improved (by reducing importance) through lateral recruitment at senior levels. He would argue that a foot-patrol man selected through rigorous internal departmental examinations or screening is the best bet for a two year term as New York City Police Commissioner.

Firstly, the New York’s Commissioner of Police is a discretionary political appointment made by the mayor of the city subject to rules and precedent made by the city. Regional policing in the US is a city subject reflecting its aboriginal rights in the colonies which formed the federation. The US Constitution and its machinery has evolved in a gap filling nature and predominantly prohibits the US federal government from entering and regulating the lives of the citizens.

Indian city administrations are mandated by a later amendment in the Indian Constitution and the constitutional Mayor in India is only 25 years old. Would Asthana recommend the selection of City Police Commissioner at the discretion of the city mayor from its constabulary? Firstly, law and order administration in India is not yet devolved to the local bodies.

Experience of structure, philosophy and methods of policing may not be satisfactory. Even assuming that it is devolved in future, does he think that such selection will be free from the inherent noises that vitiate a fair selection in the Indian scene such as community/representational considerations? How does he see the State and Union Public Service statutes operate in that selection?

If the cities were free to choose their police chiefs to diverse selection parameters, how do we ensure that the city police chiefs talk to each other in India’s highly diverse linguistic-cultural mosaic? His uneven comparison with the profile of New York’s police chief as a potentially ideal system, masks the continuing dissatisfaction of New Yorkers to New York’s police administration.

Further, he forgets that a third of the compliment of Indian Police Service of each Indian state is actually recruited from the State Police Service with due weightage for their performance also estimated through departmental examinations. Would he like the Mayors involvement in this screening by a beginning through performance reporting? I am not sure he may agree.

Indianisation: an unfinished agenda

The ghost of ICS is repeatedly cast on the IAS and its sister services without noticing the vast Indianisation that has changed the once prevalent Anglican elitism in the services. English anecdotes from the past century do not reflect the intense Indianisation and democratisation services like the IAS have undergone.

The services have become very broad-based, now recruiting from hundreds of small town colleges and institutes than a handful of English founded urban colleges which over-represented in the initial years and reflect much better the diverse social reality of India. After the Mandal reforms of 1994, it reflects Indian social segments better as well.

A task unfinished

Asthana ought to have seen that, like the story of national development, the task of civil service remains an ever unfinished one. In the very state he spent his time, he fails to notice the new ground broken by his colleagues by innovatively combining micro-finance and self-employment to empower women (Kudumbashree founded by S.M. Vijayanand, T.K. Jose and James Varghese), a joint sector airport developed first time by a State with private capital (CIAL by V.J.Kurien) becoming a model in PPP based civil airport development, decentralised tourism promotion councils and cost effective housing (C.V. Ananda Bose) and People’s Planning and Decentralized Service Delivery through Panchayati Raj (S.M.Vijayanand) which have become national models and templates for other States and nations.

The differential development in human capital, industrialisation and social development achieved by the front running Indian States such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh is a standing testimony to the intensity of the variegated state development machinery at work. Mandate of the people is converted through the imagination and commitment of the generalist elected leader through ground truth policies and practices developed by civil servants and specialists.

The junior levels cut their teeth through effective implementation of the schemes and programmes which becomes the base to reform and refine the practice and policy in later years.

PM Modi interacting with IAS trainees. Photo: PTI

No doubt, the opportunities in civil services as it exists in India offers huge responsibility and challenges to an aspiring young person. Part of the aspiration may be unjustified non edifying self-gratification also. I have during my own humble innings, and have come across recruits chasing ‘15 minutes of fame’ projects and mistaking glamour for moving mountains of hard work.

Nevertheless, the huge opportunity given by the country in two decades to try and reach five lakh homes with drinking water, successfully vaccinate and prevent loss of animal farming fortunes, make sense of induction training to young civil servants, assist a minister in office and parliament in disposing individual cases and developing policy, conceiving and grounding the development of a young university from scratch, extending quality power and water services, and calling hundreds of contentious over-litigated disputes in our democratic polity remanded even by the Supreme Court has certainly instilled a sense of a humongous responsibility and opportunity for a young and inexperienced mind which has the right motivation and ready to take on the rigour of a 23-hour daily drill in continuously pursuing functional knowledge in one’s assigned domain.

The mode of a cvivl service systems operation is not an inert system of sui-generis rules and techniques operating in a political void. Even astute technologists and econocrats have to take their trade skills through the prism of politics where influence and communication rules technical narrow cast objectives.

Asthana’s quick judgment does not display a considered evaluation of the thinking and rationale of makers of India’s civil service such as Sardar Patel and V.P. Menon. The house of the civil service needs fixing badly, and maybe part of the solution is allowing lateral inductees to join the services at higher levels also.

Maybe the regulars need the same reasonable contractual space, i.e., two-three years in a seat to develop a body of work as well? Even now there is a 10% window that the states select their non-state civil service officers into IAS. This can possibly be expanded as a one-sixth vacancies window to be recruited regularly by the UPSC from eligible private sector candidates.

Inducting eligible candidates outside services as contractual joint secretaries or advisors is the complete privilege of a prime minister who is not shackled by any constitutional or statutory restraint to limit his choice of able men and women to staff his government. Will Asthana trust the state and city dispensations also to choose their higher civil service-as the Indian mayors to have their police chiefs at pure discretion?

I am sure he may like to think over his premise again.

Dr. B. Ashok is a former Vice Chancellor and civil servant. All views are personal.

Debate: The Civil Services Are an Integral Part of India’s Growth Story

It is illogical to apportion the blame for shortcomings in governance exclusively on civil servants.

I am amused to read the article titled ‘The Civil Services Have Failed to Deliver and Its Time to Reconsider Their Importance‘ in The Wire.

The writer has erred in holding that the senior civil servants have not contributed adequately in publishing research papers. In reality, civil servants are not expected to excel in writing research papers, as the nature of our work is not academic, but something intricately connected with action. They have the concept of anonymity of the civil service. The luxury to indulge in a freewheeling analytical thought process in the public domain is not available to civil servants, as it may at times go contrary to the thinking of the political masters. Civil servants are expected to uphold the values of the Constitution, but they have to work in the hierarchy. It cannot be denied that the masters in a democracy are the elected government of the day. As a person who rose to high levels in the civil service, the writer cannot be oblivious to the fact that majority of civil servants do speak their minds, whether through presentations or discussions in official meetings or notings in files.

Also Read: The Civil Services Have Failed to Deliver and Its Time to Reconsider Their Importance

The second error of the writer is in assuming that Sardar Patel’s expectations have been belied by the civil service. Of course, there would always be some black sheep, who have to be dealt with as per law. But as a collective part of the state apparatus, the civil service is an integral part and parcel of India’s growth story in economic and social fields. The civil services, at all levels, did contribute to the work in progress, of a transparent and accountable governance system for delivery of public services.

Civil servants and their contributions

While avoiding to mention the outstanding contributions of some individual civil servants from different cadres, I would like to flag a few important areas in which the civil service did contribute significantly. First and foremost is in a reasonably robust system of holding free and fair elections for parliament and state assemblies. Second, in combating abject poverty and in ensuring basic nutritional security. Third, in enabling the opening up of the economy and bringing in systemic reforms to enable the growth of the private sector, with reasonably strong regulations and mechanism of checks and balances. Fourth, in ensuring outstanding response systems to natural disasters. Fifth, in bringing about a reasonably strong system of law and order, despite the limitations. Sixth, in terms of bringing in an inclusive governance structure, whether we examine it from the perspective of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, the poor, gender, disabled or the minorities.

Indeed, it would be instructive to see the several innovations in public service delivery that are being increasingly documented and recognised through the process of Prime Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Public Administration and similar activities in different state governments. In bringing the governance system accountable and transparent, the contribution of the civil services has been significant through various e-governance projects. Unity and integrity of a country cannot be delinked from the welfare of its people. The civil service did contribute to the nation in several ways, including the few cited above.

The third error of the writer is in assuming that the civil services function in a vacuum. It is illogical to apportion the blame for the shortcomings or limitations exclusively on the civil service.

Unclear about alternatives

Finally, the writer is unclear regarding the alternatives. The need for lateral entry has already been recognised by the government in a limited sense. This possibility is already under exploration. There is also no evidence that all ‘promoted’ officials are collectively better than the direct recruits.

The comment that the feudal character of the IAS has worsened is flippant and not based on facts. Indeed, the IAS did contribute to the process of reaching out to the people, whether one recalls the inspiring work done during the phase of Total Literacy Campaign, or in several village level meetings where the members of the service still work with communities on various social issues, ranging from self-help groups, watershed development programmes, skill development programmes, to combating social evils like child marriage or malnutrition or irrational practices of witchcraft, to implementation of the Forest Rights Act or Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and Jal Shakti Abhiyan, to name a few. The contribution of the IAS to the process of social mobilisation cannot be ignored.

The task of improving governance at the grassroots level is a continuous one. There is always scope for improvement. But there is no material to write off the role of the All India Services.

G.V. Venugopala Sarma is presently serving as member secretary in the National Disaster Management Authority. Views are personal.

If Those in Power Have No Conscience, What Future Can India Expect?

Most people are doing their jobs for a salary and not out of passion or for a cause.

Recent incidents including the Karnataka elections; washout of the parliament session; suspension of two trial court judges by the Delhi high court on charges of corruption; the Punjab National Bank, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank issue; the case of hospitals billing for lakhs and wrong treatment; and the Kathua and Unnao rape cases where the police were complicit, brought to the fore a big issue the nation is grappling with.

I would not be wrong to assume that these are not sporadic incidents or aberrations, but the result of systemic and cultural failure. This has raised the larger issue of whether the people in positions of power have a conscience left in them, and do they discharge the duties for which they are paid? We might have excellent book-keepers, but where are the conscience-keepers? I am quoting a few experiences to highlight the underlying cause of these cases.

A few months ago, I was travelling with two senior government officials. Since I was the youngest, I took the liberty to seek their counsel, given their vast experience in the government, on how to change the system. I asked, “What must people do if they see wrong things in an organisation? Should they shake it up or keep silent?” The first one replied, “Rajendraji, remember, the first thing is not to shake up the organisation, but get ‘adjusted’ to organisation.” He further shared that everywhere he goes, he ‘adjusts’ himself to the organisation. Recently, this person was appointed to the top position in his sector.

The other official advised, “Apna karyakaal shanti se pura kijiye (Finish your work quietly), and start lobbying for the next position. Why be a reformer? The organisation existed before you came and will exist after you go. The system needs sycophants who can ‘take care’ of their seniors.”

If this is the way senior-most officials think and govern their organisations, where is the conscience to deliver on their role and how will India transform? Most people look at coveted roles and are willing to ‘pay’ or ‘compromise’ to be in positions of power. Discharging their basic responsibility is the last priority. This is like a filtering process which trickles downwards and has led to a culture where people get to positions of power by compromising on their basic duties.

I remember my discussions as a member of the National Education Policy Committee, where everyone who came to give inputs talked about Finland’s education system and made a compelling case for adopting it. But none of the people who suggested this could give the reason as to why Finland’s education system ‘delivered’? I had to finally make this statement: “Finland’s system works because of the general culture in that country, which is, ‘If you are paid for something, you are obliged to do it‘.”

Does this happen in our country? Look at the other side of the story. If you do what you are paid to do, to shake up the system or try to bring a massive change or raise your voice against corruption, you are cornered or transferred, or false complaints are lodged against you. The case of the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority chief’s transfer is a case in point. He just did his job, and stopped the profiteering in the industry. Or take the case of the lady police officer who stood up and took on the local leaders for violating traffic rules in Bulandshahr, and she was transferred. These things set a bad example: that the honest and bold people in the system are rubbed so hard, they either exit the system or are made to stand in the corner and finally, they give in or give up.

Most people do their jobs for a salary and not out of passion or for a cause, and this is a big reason why people don’t want to lose their salary. They would rather just ‘adjust’ to the reality.

The population explosion has also contributed; and here is a classic example. In 2015, the Uttar Pradesh government advertised vacancies for 368 posts and 23 lakh people applied for peon jobs, for which the basic qualification was a school education and the ability to ride a bicycle. The applicant’s profile included more than 1.5 lakh graduates, about 25,000 post-graduates and more than 250 doctorates. For every job, there were 6,250 applicants, and in such a mad rush, corruption could be the way to make it. Then, when you pay to get a job, you will not hesitate in making money.

The failure of the judiciary also has a role to play. It’s a failed system which is the best recourse of a criminal or a corrupt person, as getting bail and a stay are easy, but not the judgement. Cases drag on for decades, and this has led to the wrong people celebrating while the right people become victims.

Where are the role models? This is another big challenge. If I want my child to grow up as a great citizen who stands up for the best of values, who are the role models in the current generation that he can look up to? Today, the end justifies the means, sadly. We cannot keep giving examples of role models from the 19th century in the 21st century.

In the case of UP above, only 368 got the job out of 23 lakh applicants, who are equally or more qualified. What is the provision for the 22,99,632 remaining applicants? Unless we find a livelihood solution for the remaining people, we have no right to sermon empty stomachs. The buck stops at the top and the solution lies in providing gainful employment to every citizen and, above all, every serving Indian must adopt one aspect of the Finnish culture: ‘You are obliged to deliver what you are paid for’. Then we can expect to have role models that can inspire a generation; and otherwise, we must be prepared for the worst, which is yet to come.

Rajendra Pratap Gupta is a public policy expert.

It Took Me 66 Steps to Get My Birth Certificate Certified

It took the author 66 steps to get his birth certificate legalised.

The shadow of the sarkari pen looms over the lives of common Indians.

Representative image of a government office. Credit: Reuters

Representative image of a government office. Credit: Reuters

Experts argue that over the last few years, India has gradually been transitioning from a protectionist form of governance to a market-oriented one. This transition has been characterised by systematic efforts at curtailing ‘License Raj’ and reducing bureaucratic red-tapism, in order to increase the ease of doing business in the country.

Over the last few decades, and in recent years, the ease of doing business must have increased in India. But that’s not the debate this article will engage with.

The focus here is a different aspect of a well-functioning government – let’s call it ‘permit raj’ – the ease of getting signatures from public officials. In a system characterised by permit raj, the shadow of the sarkari (government) pen looms large over the life of the common Indian man (or woman) – from birth, starting with an application for a birth certificate, to the moment of death.

The last few decades have not witnessed much success in curtailing bureaucratic red-tapism, and its debilitating effect on the day-to-day life of the common person. My own recent experience in interacting with sarkari babus at all levels of the Indian government – at the central, state and local – only goes to show how this happens.

A few months ago, I was rushing from one sarkari office to another, trying to get my birth certificate apostilled. Apostilling of certificates is characteristic of today’s globalised world. People aspiring to study or work in a country other than the one in which they were born are often required by the destination country to legalise their birth, education or marriage certificates from the country in which they were originally issued. Apostilling of certificates is a form of legalisation acceptable in all countries that are members of the Hague Convention of October 5, 1961.

I am an Indian citizen by birth. India is a member of the Hague Convention of October 5, 1961. I work out of a foreign country which wanted me to get my birth certificate apostilled.

The website of the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India explains that apostilling is a two-step process:

“Step 1 – [State] Authentication of documents: All original documents/copies requiring attestation or Apostille should be first authenticated by the designated authorities of the State/Union Territory from where the document has been issued.

Step 2 – Legalisation of documents: The Ministry of External Affairs thereafter, legalises the documents on the basis of the signature of the designated signing authorities of the State Government/Union Territory.”

The website also lists four outsourced agencies which can assist applicants with Step 2 of this process:

  1. M/s BLS International Services Ltd.
  2. M/s IVS Global Service Pvt. Ltd.
  3. M/s Superb Enterprises.
  4. VFS Global Attestation Centre.

However, the webpage does not clearly outline if these agencies also help applicants with Step 1. So I called up each of these agencies, and all four informed me that for certain states, they assist applicants with both steps of the process. However, since I was born in a state which lies in the Northeast, they would not be in a position to assist me with Step 1. If I can complete Step 1 on my own, they would assist me with Step 2. All four agencies do not service states located in the Northeast and a few other regions of the country.

This left me in a quandary. My family had moved out of the Northeast soon after my birth. We have gradually lost contact with most acquaintances in the town in which I was born. I also do not speak the local language.

I therefore scoured various groups on Facebook for more information on how other applicants from my birth state have completed the state authentication part. I also got in touch with my civil servant friends to figure out the process that I needed to follow for getting my certificate authenticated at the state level.

I gradually figured out that state authentication consists of six sub-steps:

  1. Visit the passport department of the state-secretariat in the state capital
    1. Submit an application
  2. The passport department (not thepPassport office) forwards my application to the deputy commissioner of the town I was born in
  3. The office of the deputy commissioner forwards my application to the health department
  4. The health department verifies the birth certificate and forwards my application back to the office of the deputy commissioner
  5. The office of the deputy commissioner forwards my verified birth certificate back to the state passport department
  6. The state passport department authenticates my birth certificate.

I was also informed that left to the vagaries of the bureaucratic rigmarole, this process could take weeks, if not months, and therefore it was in my own interests that I visit each of these offices personally and ensure that work got done.

And that’s what I did. What follows next is a detailed flow-chart of the actual process I had to follow to get my birth certificate apostilled.

 

As is evident from the flowchart, I had to visit three different cities/towns in order to get my birth certificate apostilled. None of these three cities/towns are located in the state in which I am based when I am in India. I therefore had to spend a lot of time travelling between these places – sometimes by plane and sometimes by train.

The flowchart demonstrates that it took me six days to complete the whole process. What it does not include is the time taken to travel from one place to another as I went through the process. I also spent a considerable amount of time searching for information on the process to be followed to get the work done.

A more accurate estimate of total time spent is therefore three weeks.

The flowchart demonstrates that I had to go through 66 stages in order to get the birth certificate apostilled. The number of stages would have been larger, and the total time taken would have increased considerably, had the deputy commissioner (DC) not intervened. In other words, proactive, well-meaning bureaucrats (such as the DC in my town of birth) have the power and ability to significantly improve the quality of public service delivery.

But then why does the ‘permit raj’ continue to trouble the ordinary Indian man? The answer probably lies in the amount of discretionary power that remains in the hands of the street-level, lower-level babus (who operate with significant independence, away from the administrative gaze of their IAS or state civil service bosses). These babus interpret the laws as they please, exploit loopholes in unwritten bureaucratic norms and manipulate the unquestioned faith that the common person places in them. After all, people have no way of knowing whether the babu is actually trying to help her or is deliberately trying to deceive.

It has been 70 years since independence. But the common Indian person has still not attained freedom from the treacherous clutches of Indian Babudom.

Sanchayan Nath is a researcher with the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development in the Netherlands.

Modi Govt Admits No Mechanism in Place for Monthly Performance Reports from Ministries

The publication of monthly reports is mandated, but only 13% of ministries and 5.7% of departments are actually following through.

The publication of monthly reports is mandated, but only 13% of ministries and 5.7% of departments are actually following through.

Credit: Reuters

New Delhi: Even as the Narendra Modi government yesterday admitted in parliament that it does not have any mechanism to monitor compliance with its own transparency directive, a quick check of the websites of 52 central ministries, and 52 departments under their charge, by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative for compliance with the requirement of proactive disclosure of monthly activities and achievements has revealed that while only 13% of the ministries were either fully or reasonably compliant with the transparency directive, in the case of the departments this rate was even lower at just 5.7%.

Raising the issue of how there was an urgent need to establish a monitoring mechanism as Section 25(1)(c) of the Right to Information Act obligates the Central Government to require all public authorities under its control to publish accurate information about their activities from time to time, Venkatesh Nayak, programme coordinator at CHRI, said there is a statutory mandate for this too and the transparency directives issued by the Central Information Commission (CIC) and the Cabinet Secretariat were “right steps in this direction”.

‘Deficit of political and bureaucratic will’ to blame

However, he lamented that “the evidence indicates a deficit of both political and bureaucratic will to ensure compliance with this transparency requirement. The Central Government has not committed to developing a mechanism to monitor compliance despite being reminded twice in Parliament”.

Therefore, he said, perhaps it is time to move the CIC again to issue a binding direction to establish such a mechanism under the Cabinet Secretariat or the Department of Personnel and Training.

Nayak explained that Rule 10 of the Rules of Procedure in Regard to the Proceedings of Cabinet, 1987, required the ministries and departments to submit reports about their activities to the Cabinet Secretariat every month. But, he said, barring the Ministry of Coal, no other Ministry had volunteered to make this information public.

Consequently in April 2016, the CIC had issued a recommendation to the Cabinet Secretariat to upload monthly reports of work done by all ministries and departments on their respective websites. “Within two months of the CIC’s recommendation, the Cabinet Secretariat issued a circular to all central ministries and departments requiring them to upload monthly reports of their major achievements, significant developments and important events,” he said.

But pointing to the large-scale non-compliance, Nayak said while “ever since, parliament has been asking questions regarding compliance with this circular”, the Central government has admitted to there being an “absence of mechanism to monitor its own transparency directive”.

In the latest reply, he said on February 8, in response to a question from V. Vijaysai Reddy of YSR Congress in the Rajya Sabha, who has asked the prime minister about the existence of the CIC’s order, the Cabinet Secretariat’s circular and as to whether the government has any mechanism to monitor the compliance across central ministries and departments, the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions (who assists the PM) replied that the government does not have any mechanism to monitor compliance with its own transparency directive.

No regular performance reports

Pointing to the elaborate analysis of the performance of various ministries and departments by John Mascrinaus and Shikha Chhibbar of CHRI and Geetika Vyas of Symbiosis Law School, Noida who had interned with CHRI, Nayak said the study had noted that only 13% of the central ministries were “either fully or reasonably compliant” with the transparency directive and that “having uploaded all monthly reports up to January 2018 the Ministry of Environment and Forests and Climate Change is the only entity to comply fully with the transparency directive.”

Three other ministries – Civil Aviation, Coal and Petroleum and Natural Gas – were found to have published monthly reports up to December 2017, while Ministry of Finance had published them till November 2017. As for the Ministry of Earth Sciences, CHRI said, it had published monthly reports from January to December 2017 but reports for the previous months were not accessible on its website.

Intermittent reports

Amongst the worst performers were the Ministry of Mines, which appears to have stopped publishing monthly reports after February 2017; the Ministry for Rural Development stopped the practice after July 2016; and the Ministry for Corporate Affairs only revived the practice of publishing monthly bulletins in November 2017.

In the case of five ministries – Commerce and Industry; Communications; Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution; Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises and Science and Technology – the analysis revealed that they do not have separate websites of their own but were accessible to the public through the websites of their constituent departments.

Coming to the compliance of the 52 central departments, the report said less than 6% (5.7%) of them were compliant with the transparency directive having published monthly reports up to December 2017. The best performers here were the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and Food and Public Distribution that have uploaded all monthly reports up to December 2017.

The Department of Justice also published all reports for the calendar year of 2017 but appeared to have removed reports of the previous months.

The departments that have performed miserably here include the Department of of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances which stopped publishing monthly reports after January 2017; the Department of Health and Family Welfare that has not been regular with its monthly reports – having started out in August 2016 but then stopping the practice, only to resume it in June 2017 and then stopping it once again in October 2017.

From Fire Safety to Urban Planning, Indian Regulations Are Not Working

Year after year, people are dying in incidents that are termed ‘accidents’ but are actually man-made disasters.

Year after year, people are dying in incidents that are termed ‘accidents’ but are actually man-made disasters.

People wade through flood waters in rain-hit Chennai in 2015. Credit: PTI

People wade through flood waters in rain-hit Chennai in 2015. Credit: PTI

India’s cities – big and small, in the north and south – are sitting around a bonfire of regulations, basic tenets of urban planning and precious human lives. The December Mumbai fire is the latest reminder. We haven’t learnt our lessons from the gruesome Uphaar Cinema fire that killed 59 people and seriously injured 103 people in the national capital in 1997.

Here are some of the major fire incidents that took place in the last 14 years. Some places that are frequent victims – temples and firecracker units in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, for example – don’t even come under the strict demographic definition of urban areas.

  1. Carlton Towers, Bengaluru, 2010; nine dead, 70 injured.
  2. SUM Hospital, Bhubaneswar, 2015; 22 dead, 120 injured.
  3. Surya Sen street market, Kolkata, 2013; 19 dead, ten injured.
  4. Amri (Dhakuria) Hospital, Kolkata, 2011; 73 dead.
  5. The Park Street, Kolkata, 2010; 16 dead.
  6. Kurla (West), Mumbai, 2015; eight dead.
  7. Kumbakonam, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, 2004; 83 dead, 27 injured – all school children.
  8. Srirangam, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, 2004; 57 dead, 50 injured.
  9. Nand Nagri, east Delhi, 2011; 15 dead, 65 injured.
  10. The Victoria Park, Meerut, 2006; 65 dead, 81 injured.
  11. Paravur, Kollam, Kerala, 2016; 111 dead, 350 injured.
  12. Mudalipatti, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, 2016; 38 dead, 33 injured.
  13. Mudalipatti, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, 2012; 54 dead, 78 injured.
  14. Khusropur, Patna, Bihar, 2005; 35 dead, 50 injured.

According to National Crime Records Bureau figures, 17,700 Indians died – 48 people every day – due to fire accidents in 2015. Of those who died, 62% were women. Maharashtra and Gujarat, our two most highly urbanised states, account for about 30% of the country’s fire accident deaths. There is a close correlation between deaths due to fire-related accidents and population density associated with urbanisation.

In cities after cities, towns after towns, year after year, Indians are getting killed and burnt in fire incidents. Technically speaking, these are not accidents; they are man-made disasters, manufactured by a mix of half-baked regulations and compromised enforcement machinery and powerful interest groups. They are actually planning-made problems.

This is a classic example of India’s ‘disposal problem’ (a phrase borrowed from the history of the US foreign policy). Let’s see the usefulness of this concept in our context.

The ‘disposal problem’ refers to how a well-entrenched people, practice or protocol (interest groups, professional cliques, sellers or buyers in a market place, rules, laws, standard operating procedures, institutional matrix, collective mores and folkways, etc.) can end up defeating the very purpose for which it was created in the first place. There is an element of “unintended consequence of purposive behaviour” (Robert K. Merton, 1936).


Also read: The Kamala Mills Fire, and Other Accidents Waiting to Happen


For example, every historical change in modes of warfare has produced a disposal problem in terms of trained and battle-hardened soldiers: what to do with much-eulogised and no-longer-needed troops. During the second term of US President Ronald Reagan, the disposal problem was: what was to be done with the Nicaraguan mercenaries, who were until then one of the major armies of Central America, and their ex-CIA Cuban and American handlers, a powerful constituency inside the Pentagon? In the 15th century, a problem much like this one – what to do with bloodthirsty knights who lived off the land – was a powerful motive for England to prolong the Hundred Years’ War and keep the knights busy in France.

These were the US and England then. This is India now.

The Kamala Mills building after the fire. Credit: PTI

The Kamala Mills building after the fire. Credit: PTI

A case in point is the origin and prosperity of the water mafia in the national capital. The official water supply falls short of New Delhi’s needs by at least 207 million gallons each day, according to a 2013 audit by the office of the comptroller and auditor general. A quarter of Delhi’s households live without a piped-water connection; most of the rest receive water for only a few hours each day. So residents have come to rely, as shown by Aman Sethi’s field reporting, on private truck owners – the most visible strands of a dispersed web of city councillors, farmers, real estate agents and fixers who source millions of gallons of water each day from illicit boreholes, as well as the city’s leaky pipe network, and sell the liquid for profit. Any attempt to tackle Delhi’s water crisis will have to first involve dismantling the bureaucracy-business-water mafia nexus.

Another example is Chennai’s land mafia and how it caused the end-2015 floods. The Adyar river in the south of the original city had a spacious estuary and a broad flood plain. Many areas south of the river were marshy and low-lying, serviced by small rivulets and canals. Because of decades of faulty urban planning and the state’s hurry to industrialise, industrial complexes, educational institutions and housing estates have ravaged the watershed areas, filling up thousands of smaller ponds and streams and silting major tanks and increasing the surface water flow manifold. Between 1996 and 2015, more than 1,000 acres of this wetland was allegedly illegally diverted to accommodate industrial installations belonging to state-owned companies, including a large port and several coal-fired power plants.


Also read: Did Chennai Learn Anything From the 2015 Floods?


After the unprecedented rain 2015, this increased run-off found its way into the city. While the unusual rains have caused the disaster, the impact would not have been so severe in the absence of the man-made factors. The planned developments along the Adyar river that reduced its capacity as an outlet are largely government initiated, as the river bed was under government ownership. All the swamps, marsh lands, low-lying areas and streams that the big corporations, middle-class housing and slums have been built on are inundated as they are at the receiving end of overflowing large regional tanks. The state’s inability to enforce environmental laws and insatiable greed for land grabbing by both national and international commercial interests are in full play in Chennai. Any endeavour to undo the damage done by the organised encroachers to Chennai’s watershed and wetland areas will have to start with breaking apart the bureaucracy-real estate business nexus.

India’s disposal problem is manifest in the context of urban fire safety as well. For example, Mumbai’s building norms have enough loopholes, such as norms not applying for establishments with a seating capacity of less than 50 people. Secondly, the city has failed to invest in LIDAR-based (Light Detection and Ranging) technologies that can be used to aerially keep a track of setbacks and the presence of fire exits.

As the city grows vertically, manpower-intensive physical inspection is not required to enforce all fire safety regulations. Moreover, adequate space could have easily been retained for essential services like fire stations while redeveloping mill land, but the city didn’t do it. There is a business-bureaucracy nexus working everywhere.

India’s policy makers have a serious disposal problem at their hands when it comes to urban planning and management. From fire safety to waste recycling, from energy efficiency to water supply, from housing to traffic safety, the organised interest groups have infiltrated the state machinery and have been successful in damaging public interests as a matter of daily existence. By 2050, about 70% of the population will be living in cities and India is no exception. Mere post-incident sound bytes from the politicians and law enforcement agencies won’t help our urban population.

Basant Rath is 2000 batch IPS officer who belongs to the Jammu and Kashmir cadre. Views expressed are personal.