The plastic frame of bureaucracy
The role of a civil servant in the affairs of state has for some time past been increasingly questioned, particularly when government is seen to have been privy to some horrendous acts. We, therefore, need to examine this role a little closely.
The duty of a civil servant is always to record the facts as he sees them in their entirety and to tender to his minister such advice as he thinks fit and proper based on those facts.. Thereafter, it will be his plain duty to carry out the orders of the minister, even if they are not in accordance with his advice, provided they are not demonstrably immoral or illegal. It is no part of a civil servant’s duty to sit in judgement on the political wisdom of his minister. These may be said to be the basic ground rules governing the relationship between a minister and a civil servant.
There is the famous – or notorious – case of the film Kissa Kursi Ka during the Emergency when I was a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in Delhi. Vidya Charan Shukla was Indira Gandhi’s hatchet man in the ministry. The film in question was refused a censor certificate by the Film Censor Board in Mumbai. It came up to me in appeal. I recommended that the film should be granted a certificate, notwithstanding that it taunted the Gandhi family in no uncertain terms, arguing that it was so badly made that it would die a natural death at the box office, but withholding the certificate would give it a notoriety value. I was overruled by Shukla. For this, and other, misdemeanours, I was given marching orders and reverted to the state. I had to be content with the dubious distinction that I was one of very few men in this world to have seen the film.
The subsequent history of the film is well known. All copies of it were allegedly burnt in the premises of the Maruti company by Sanjay Gandhi. In the post-Emergency era, all crimes committed during it were prosecuted. Shukla and Sanjay Gandhi thus found themselves in the dock in a Tis Hazari Court in Delhi. I was called as the main prosecution witness. It was put to me by Ram Jethmalani, prosecuting on behalf of the State, that I was so terrorised that I had to go by all the whims of the minister and I did not dare express my own views in any matter. I said the truth was far from what was imagined. I forcefully expressed my views in the case in question and there was the file to prove the point. I said that I did my duty as a civil servant; and the minister did his as a politician. The two points of view were different.
I said to myself after looking at the two forlorn figures in the dock that one did not whip a dead horse. Shukla and Sanjay were acquitted. Shukla became a staunch friend after that and said that when they would come back to power, they would remember my gesture. I said that I did not do anything in expectation of any favour on an unlikely (as it then seemed) return to power of the Congress..
That is how a Congress government behaved. The CPI-M has been no different. There was once a tete-a-tete between me and a minister in the course of which he made the fatuous, but apt, remark: “I am a Communist, not a gentleman”, inviting the retort that upon that question his opinion was conclusive and I was in no position to differ from it. But the limited point I would want to make is that when he dealt with us, he behaved as a gentleman. I soon received marching orders from my post. That was one of a series of marching orders given to me for doing my duty as a civil servant.
The basic ground rules mentioned by me at the outset are consistently violated, for the minister desires what is politically opportune in preference to that which is required by good governance. It is for the chief secretary to see that these rules are not violated.
The chief secretary is the arbiter of what is right and what is wrong for the government as a whole. He sets the tone of the entire administration, including the police. He should fearlessly stand by any officer in any sphere of government who does what is right. This paradigm of uprightness is all pervasive, and officers at all levels and in all departments draw strength from it. If this paradigm of uprightness is not liked by the political bosses, then the chief secretary will be forced to go. And if his successors tread the same path of rectitude, they will soon run out of stock of officers who can be appointed chief secretary. Therefore, an administration is as good or bad as the chief secretary makes it.
When PS Appu, an IAS officer of the Bihar cadre, was offered the post of chief secretary, he politely declined it on the ground that there were several officers senior to him and their supersession would not be proper. This plea was not accepted by the chief minister and Appu had little choice but to accept the offer. But he first defined the terms on which he would accept it. Chief among them was immunity from political interference in matters of administration. These terms were accepted and Appu was appointed as the chief secretary. Upon a breach of these terms subsequently, he resigned from his exalted office.
A few other cases like Appus’s can be cited. But they are rare. In West Bengal, the only name that comes to mind, among the older officers, is that of Amitabha Niyogi, an honest and upright officer.
The rot set in good and proper in West Bengal when an officer was appointed as chief secretary, superseding several officers senior to him, on the basis of an uxorial proximity to the ruling party. The officer did not demur like Appu. It is true that government has full discretion to appoint a suitable officer to the post of chief secretary. But suitability, justifying the exclusion of senior officers in the instant case, is not discernible.
The length to which government will go to get a “convenient” chief secretary is amazing. An officer of West Bengal, who was holding an important post in the Union government, was made to give up this post and his reversion to the state government procured so that he could be appointed as chief secretary. The realisation then came that he would not be “convenient”, and what followed was a dastardly act of betrayal by the chief minister, who, for the sake of “convenience”, ditched the officer in question squarely without any apology and, bypassing ten officers in all, found someone, about whom the less said the better, for the post of chief secretary.
A chief secretary appointed under such dubious circumstances will then be busy protecting his own turf, and anticipating prizes to be dispensed after retirement for good behaviour. Thus a slave to political expediency is born and nurtured. And the rest of the bureaucracy (including the police), with some exceptions, follows suit.
Two examples may illustrate the consequences that flow if a “convenient” chief secretary is in office. Some years ago, a young district magistrate of Malda dealt with a riotous situation in his district and in his report to the government he recited the facts, holding votaries of the present ruling party fairly and squarely responsible for the riot. This was not appreciated by the powers that be. And so the chief secretary took it upon himself to set matters right. He sent for the magistrate and asked him in no uncertain terms to change the complexion of the rioters so as to make it appear that the Congress was the guilty party! The magistrate stood his ground, politely refusing to do what he was told and soon got marching orders for his pains.
Then again, there was the case of the senior most IPS officer in West Bengal, with an admirable record of service, being passed over for the post of director general of police; an officer a year junior to him was appointed to the post. The chief secretary had before him a potential cause celebre in the making. He ought to have firmly put his foot down and argued against the supersession. But a man of greater courage was required for this. In the result, the senior most officer found himself shunted as DG, Fire Services. He happened to bear the wrong name and he retired with the feeling that he was unjustly treated by the secular government of West Bengal.
The psyche operating in all these cases needs to be studied. The attitude of officers is coloured by the awareness that their political masters will not tolerate any dissenting voice among people they have increasingly, and habitually, come to regard as their slaves. That dissent and an alternative notion, which, if need be, can be rejected in the light of logic, form the essence of good governance is forgotten.
The time, therefore, seems to have come when one must sing a requiem for the bureaucracy and one must mourn the demise of the steel frame, on which the bureaucracy in olden times had prided itself. That structure, alas, has been pulled down bit by bit and in its place has risen a new structure, which may conveniently be called the collapsible, plastic frame.
(The author is a retired IAS officer)
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