Slow degradation of bureaucratic values

Bureaucracy has lost its way, this is how

Civil Services Examination (CSE) results were out recently, putting the media limelight solely on the achievers.

Many coaching centres portray UPSC exams as a gateway for the bougie class to transition into the Aristocracy. It’s a dream sold to the parents and aspirants who’ve worked hard all these years yet struggle to climb up the hierarchical ladder and experience power for the very first time in their lives.

When asked why they are keen to become part of the bureaucracy, almost every aspirant will say that they ‘wish to serve the public’. If that is the case, why bureaucracy has become a synonym for incompetence, corruption and inefficiency?

Some argue that there are honest and hardworking bureaucrats in the services whose path-breaking initiatives have touched the lives of many. I agree, but does it mean that they need to be praised and appreciated every time for doing the bare minimum?

By far, the bureaucracy has lost its conscience and grit to stand for the right cause. Take for instance the tale of two civil servants.

1. Former IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt who acted as a whistleblower in the 2002 Godhra massacre and exposed the chilling realities of cold-blooded murders, is now serving life imprisonment in an alleged 30 years old custodial death case which many believed to be framed under concocted evidence. There are millions of cases of custodial tortures resulting in deaths and fake police encounters which go nowhere. But only in this particular case, an officer gets life for it.

2. Ashok Khemka, a 1991 batch IAS officer has been transferred 53 times in his 30 years of distinguished service. He commissioned an inquiry in 2014 into the alleged irregularities in the major land deal between DLF and a company owned by Robert Vadra. During that time he garnered huge support from the BJP. In 2019 when he expressed his concern about the new amendments made in the Punjab land act to allow infrastructure projects in Aravali Hills, he was transferred again.

These two stories prove that those who dare to speak the truth to power will not be spared. It’s also a lesson for those in service who are deluding to think that this symbiosis between political masters and the bureaucrats is a relationship of equals, they are inconsequential in the larger scheme of things and will certainly be replaced by someone who’s better in insincere flattery. Statement by Frank Underwood, a fictional character from House of Cards about political journalists in the US holds true for civil servants in India, “Proximity to power deludes some into thinking they wield it.”

The Civil Services, who were once regarded as the Iron Frame of India by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel have gone astray. The newly selected young IAS officers are most likely to be no different than their predecessors who may not hesitate to do anything for as little as a pat on the back from their political bosses.

The same goes for the IPS officers who have sworn to serve and protect the people of India, but compromise for the sake of plum postings and successful career progression. The Chief Justice of India (CJI) had observed that “Threat to human rights are highest in police stations” and IPS officers under whose watch this is happening are complicit in this travesty of justice.

The organisational structure of Indian bureaucracy is hugely undemocratic and short of any accountability. It not only carries the relics of the colonial past but has also strengthened the stereotypical nature of Indian Civil Services (ICS) that emboldened the class divide and maintained the submissiveness of Indians for the White liege lords to uphold the legacy of “Benevolent British Raj”.

Adherence to any such system that favours the concept of “master and subject” is against the basic tenets of democracy and the fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian constitution.

(The writer is a sophomore in B.Ed, based in Jabalpur)