Life as a senior civil servant
Let me now come to the last phase of my career- that of secretary to government. Before becoming secretary, I served as head of various departments. In all these posts I was conscious of a decline in the importance of the kind of work. I was doing, compared to the work I did a s district officer, but it was only when I became secretary to the government, supposedly the pinnacle of one’s career that the sheer futility of the job was brought home to me in all its starkness. The function of a secretary to the government is to aid and advice the minister in the discharge of his responsibility. Which is to say the secretary in effect does nothing? He only advises, and if his advice is rejected, he does not fume and fret, but like a good civil servant takes up some other matter. This system is grounded in the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, a comfortable legal fiction that rests on the premises that the minister takes both the praise and the blame for the functioning of his department and is solely accountable to the functioning of his department and is solely accountable to the legislature. The civil servant who advice him are fearless, anonymously creatures, who are protected from parliamentary censure and public disgrace for their action, even when they happen to commit mistake. The doctrine works in a rather perverse manner in practice, because ministers, while always willing to accept praise are when it comes to criticism, only too willing to find official scapegoats for their own misdeeds. Time without number, one has heard the following dialogues in legislative chamber across the country:-
Member- will the minister assure the house that the matter shall be investigated and those responsible shall be punished?
Minister- I assure the house that this matter shall be investigated thoroughly and those (official) found guilty shall not be spared. In fact I’ll nominated the honorable member as one of the members of the enquiry committee.
On the other hand it is rare these days to hear of a minister accepting responsibility and resigning from office on account of any lapse. So much for the doctrine of ministerial responsibility! The point of citing it here is to highlight its fortunate impact on the quality of advice that is tendered. Ideally this advice should be forthrightness and unequivocal. The minister should of course be presented with a range of options where they are available but he should be left in o doubt as to ever may prove to be costly if things go wrong somehow. Most civil servants has therefore adopted the sos policy. Sos meaning save your own skin. This means that in practice the official advice in seldom forthright, it is usually accompanied by several ifs and buts, and waffling of the on the one hand and on the other hand type’, culminating in a kind of incomprehensible bureaucratic argot caricatured so effectively in ‘yes minister’. This places the onus for decision making on the minister and allow the bureaucrat to wriggle out of responsibility should things go wrong.
But there is another aspect of problem which is ever more negative in its impact. This stem from the fact that on any serious issues, serious in their sense of materially affecting the public interest; decision are usually taken on political consideration and bureaucratic advice is like to be likely of little or no consequence.
Thus a civil servant may find that which his advice a ;to the number of toilets to be built for ladies in the secretarial is likely to be accepted without demur, when it comes to the number of new schools to be opened in a district, the decision is going to be taken on political grounds. No one is likely to take pains over his work when he knows that it is unlikely to receive serious consideration. Let me recount an incident which illustrates this perfectly.
This happened when I was secretary in the tribal welfare department. The state government in its wisdom had decided to introduce the sixth schedule of the constitution in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh. A resolution was rammed through the state legislature and passed without any informed discussion. A proposal was thenceforth forwarded to the government of India recommending the introduction of the eminent academician to demarcate the areas for inclusion in the sixth schedule & to work out the other modalities were thus pretty far advanced. The first thing I did on what I saw shocked me. This was an issue with grave consequences, but it had been dealt with in a most up the senior most civil servant in the state- the chief secretary himself- but that worthy had barely applied his aspect of the problem had not even been formulated let alone discussed. Whatever official nothing were available on the file seemed to uncritically endorse the decision of the political masters. What one witnessed here was more than intellectual dishonesty- it was sycophancy and time serving of the worst kind.
As it happened I was familiar with the issues because I had served earlier in the department. I knew it was a divide hitherto peaceful community on ethics lines and plunge the state into communal discord. The state government was p[laying the politics of division for short term politics gain, it was following the cynical policy of divide and rule followed by the British rulers, but it did not have their excuse and it was going well beyond even what they had contemplated.
What was worse, the state government knew, that the proposal was constitutionally unsound and could never be accepted by the government of India debate on the issue either among the political class or in the media? Thus all the sate, yet they were playing up the matter for all it was worth in the hope of gaining some short lived political advantage. At the same time there was no informed debate on the issue either among the political class or in the media. Thus all the estate of the realm, either thorough connivance or through ignorance seemed to conspire at a proposal which was nothing if not a fraud on the constitution. A few words about the background of the case will make this clear.The constitutional lineage of the fifth and sixth schedules goes back to the constitution of , wherein certain areas in the north east as well as the lahaul spiti valley of himachal pradesh were designated as “wholly excluded areas”. Certain other tribal areas of central India were designated as “areas of modified exclusion”. These provisions were retained in the constitution of 1935, though the nomenclature was slightly modified. They were now called “excluded area”, and “partly excluded areas”. These same provisions were incorporated almost unchanged in the constitution of free India as the fifth and sixth schedules.
The import of this peculiar nomenclature: “excluded areas, is actually clear enough. The intention of the colonial rulers was to keep these areas outside the political mainstream. In these areas, especially in the tribal areas of the north-east missionary influences was strong The British perceived these areas to be well disposed towards their regime and therefore wanted to keep them safe from the contagion of the congress dominated anti-British politics of the rest of India. Thus in the name of safeguarding tribal tradition and autonomy, the traditional system of tribal government was institutionalized, tribal custom was given the force of law and the state restricted itself to a nominal presence. All political rights were confirmed to the tribal, but in an area where almost the entire population was tribal, this was not seen to be unjust.
It will be readily seen, that the sixth schedule is a retrogressive piece of legislation. It look back at some mythical golden age as the aspiration norm to followed and precludes the development of modern political institution and representative democracy. Worse still, it takes no account of the political right of other communities and assumes that society will remain homogeneously tribal for all time to come. Seen in this context, Dr. ambedkar’s view (paraphrased by me) on this legislation, as expressed by him in the constituent assembly do not come as a surprised,:-
“The tribal community of the north east differs from the rest of the country in their culture and ways of life. They may be said to constitute almost a separate nation as the red Indians do in America and likewise should remain confined to its present area. It is not our intention to introduce this anywhere else.”
Dr. Ambedkar’s view clearly shows his own misgivings on this score, misgivings which have been justified by time because the sixth schedule been responsible among other things for keeping the north-east cut off from the national mainstream.
In any case the spirit of our nation constitution is inimical politics institution founded on ethnicity. Therefore no responsible person, even if he be a political adventure, would dream of introducing this measure in Madhya Pradesh, where even in the tribal district of baster, more than thirty percent of the population is non tribal. Yet this was what the state government proposed to do.
The issue was thus grave one. It was not only constitutionally perverse, it was politically gains. The intellectual dishonesty as well as the analytical ineptitude display by the civil service mandarins in this case was depressing. Considering the gravity of the issues one would have expected passionate arguments, rigorous analysis as well as vision and commitments to the long issues which I have just outlined above, in short all that goes into the making of honest advice when it is given in the right spirit by person of caliber. Instead what one witnessed here was worse than incompetence, it was collusion.
The choice before me was therefore clear; I immediately wrote out a long discussing the constitutional background of the case and argued strongly against its adoption by the state. I did not mince my words, the evidence of history, the weight of law, and the force of reason were all on my side, and no reasonable man could turn it down without forsaking reason itself. I took the note to my official superior, a man who enjoyed a reputation for being something of an intellectual.
In such cases, consideration of value is always going to be outweighing by political expediency. What recourse has the hapless civil servant in such cases? The Madhya Pradesh government’s rules of business prescribed that Uncases where the departmental secretary is in disagreement with the minister he can request the minister to send the file to the chief minister for final orders. The discretion, be it noted, is still left with the departmental minister, who may be the delinquently party in the first place. He may or may not send the file to the CM. it all depends on his whims and fancies. In most cases he will fail to oblige the bureaucrat, after all, why should he submit the matter to the arbitration of his political boss, if the decision lies with him. It follows therefore that in the very few cases where upright civil servant disagree with their minister, and resubmit the matter to him for onwards transmission to the CM, the file comes back with the remark that there is no need o do so. This is the extent of government’s commitment to upholding honest advice.
Let me close this chapter with an incident where a very senior civil servant was made to connive at something which, though not illegal, was still in my view gravely improper. This incident happened when I was in a department, which has a big budget and disbursed a lot of funds to other departments. A case came to our notice where the department minister had gone against the advice of the department, secretary and made a large purchase order at a highly inflated cost. The subordinate officer had either colluded with the minister the minister or been brow beaten into acquiescence. The department secretary had been overruled. The material that was to be supplied had probably never reached its destination. The minister’s guilt as well as the collusion of the subordinate officers was plain to see. We accordingly made out cases for enquiry by the Lok Ayukta and send the file to the CM for approval.
The file was first seen by the chief secretary and the approval of the General administration department was obtained. The chief secretary and the general administration department failed to scrutinize the file carefully and see that a minister was likely to implicate in the matter. We were surprised but quite gleeful. The file was sent to the lok Ayukta and a receipt was obtained. Then we sat back to await development; but within a few hours, the minister got wind of development and it was then that the fatal weakness of civil servant when dealing with politician came into play.
I received a telephone call from my official superior, (not the person previously mentioned), who was then at Delhi. He had been given a dressing down by the CM who had accused him of betrayal and acting with malice aforethought. I commiserated with him. We both felt that we had acted rightly. We both felt the glow if righteousness that come from standing up for a cause, even though as it presented to be the case here, it be a lost cause.
The next morning I received a phone call from the chief secretary. After a few polite meaningless words, he came to the point. He wanted me to recall the concerned file from the Lok Ayukta. This I pointed out to him would be highly improper. But he was insistent. I then put up the matter to him in writing, pointing out that such a step would be unprecedented and would bring disrepute to the state government if it became known. But back came my note with a written order that the offending file be recalled. The secretary to the Lok Ayukta, who had been sounded out in advance by the government, proved amenable and returned the file to which he should have clung like a leach.
In this manner a gravely improper thing was allowed to happen, with the captive connivance of no less a person than a chief secretary. The funny thing was that he was also able to argue at the same time that what he was doing was in the public interest. No one can beat the civil servant at giving a high moral tone to their worst misdemeanors, especially when their own interest is involved.
