The character of the average civil servant
The member of the Indian administrative service constitutes elite. They occupy the highest official posts in both the state and central governments as if they were theirs by prescriptive right. In these positions they are expected to carry out the fiendishly complex business of modern government without knowing very much about the department that they handle. They are lionized by society, feted by the press, and generally have their passage through life made smooth by the various amenities which just fall into their laps along with the plums of office.
With such a premium being put on their service, the country has a legitimate right to expect high standards of service and performance from them. They are expected to be in fact, rather like the guardians of Plato’s Republic, leading a Spartan like of poverty, renouncing their private claims in favor of a life devote to the service of the state, inflexible in their rectitude and unswerving in their commitment to the cause of good governance. Do they in fact measure up o this lofty ideal?
The fact is that they do not. The truth is not that they fall short of the lofty ideal; failure in a difficult undertaking would be no disgrace, but that they do not even accept the existence of these ethical norms. The sad truth in that venality and jobbery are accepted as the norm rather than an exception.
The sad truth is that the Course of self-advancement is dearer to most than the cause of the state and the dictates of politician are obeyed more readily than the dictates of conscience. I am reminded of T.S Eliot’s poem on J. Alfred Prufrock, which sums up the character of the average civil servant rather well:-
No, I am not prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,
Am an attendant lord, one that’ll do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advice the prince, no doubt an easy tool,
Politics, caution, meticulous,
Full. Of high, but a bit obtuse.
Indeed, at times almost ridiculous.
Almost at times the fool.
This picture of a pompous, vainglorious person, too full of his own importance to realize his own futility sums up the case perfectly. The first character trait o civil servant that comes to mind is obsession with rank and status. This of course is not a failing of civil servant alone but a part for our national character, but it is exaggerated sometimes to ridiculous length in the case of civil servants. To begin with this takes the shape of rather unnatural preoccupation with the outward trappings of authority, like beacon lights on official cars. Many officers, not satisfied with converting their vehicle into a mobile light house, also put a light on the bonnet. As it this were not enough, they also have a plaque affixed over the number plate, which carries their official designation in gilt letters, quite often with a red background for added effect. These tell tale symbols are challan all trucks coming up the road. The traffic jam that took place as a result of his injured vanity stretch nearly for a mile.
This puerile obsession with rank and status often manifests itself in a ludicrous competition to get the best postings, the best official cars, the best official houses and even the best room in the secretariat. I can tell many a tale about this business of room allotments because I was once in charge of this rather sordid matter.. There was, for instance, this officer who cultivated a leftist image, but was rather fond of the trappings of authority. He was not satisfied with his room and by dint of moving formerly occupied by a minister. This new room was apparently large enough to satisfy his vanity, but as luck would have it there was a cabinet expansion a few days later and this room was again allotted to a minister. This new room was apparently large enough to satisfy his vanity, but as luck would have it there was a cabinet expansion a few days later and this room was again allotted to a minister. The bureaucrat was now relegated to a room which was even smaller than his former room. This was an indignity not to be borne and the concerned officer kept badgering me to give him a bigger room. Again purely as matter of coincidence, the room that he had originally occupied again fell vacant, and he was now willing to settle for what had earlier seemed too small to him. There was poetic justice in this.
There is another story about the allotment of rooms in the secretariat which is truly hilarious, but which out of regard for the feeling of those involved I shall omit to narrate. Instead let me tell another story about the allotment of rooms in a circuit house. As everyone knows, most circuit houses in a district town have only two or three decent rooms and problems sometimes arise when VIPs and VVIPs land up all together and ask for rooms. There was once a collector who was transferred because of a minor glitch about the allotment or the non allotment of a room to a minister, but that’s another story.
This one concerns a senior officer whom we shall X. the district where I was posted had a circuit house with only three good rooms. When I was informed by his departmental officers that X was scheduled to arrive the very next day, I was put in a quandary, because out of three rooms in the circuit house one was occupied by the local minister another by the local MP and the third by an officer who was very much senior to X. this left only the fourth room which was much smaller in size as well as rather bare in terms of furnishing. X when he landed up was furious with me for giving him a room that he landed up was furious with me for giving his a room that he did not consider commensurate with his status. He conveniently forgot that he very same protocol, on the strength of which he was making such exaggerated claims on the world, accorded a higher rank to the three individuals who were occupying suits before him. X gave vent to his resentment by a deliberately slighted him. This was a ridiculous charge, which I was prepared to repudiate in equally strong terms. Fortunately for both of us, hearing the commotion, the senior officer, who was in the next room came out and on learning of the problem offered X his own room, as X was accompanied by his wife. This gentleman thus proved himself to be the superior of X, not only in rank, but also in magnanimity, but his gesture was as rare, as X’s outburst was commonplace. Officers like X, puffed up with a sense of their own importance often behave in this manner. The tragedy is, such officers often rise to the top of the civil service.
There is another story which can be mentioned as an interesting side light to show how the official mind works when anything concerning rank and status are involved. Everyone knows that the use of flashing beacon lights on official cars, is a privilege reserved for minister and those officers who are directly involved in law enforcement. In a democracy, the use of such symbols even by minister is not quite right, but in any case others are not permitted to use them.
This is however a privilege that is routinely abused by those who consider themselves important enough to broadcast their status to the world. Senior bureaucrats, politicians who are not minister, high court judges, member of various tribunal and commissions and so on. Some years ago the government of Madhya Pradesh brought out an order, dividing these light users into three classes, the most important people were allowed to use the red lights as before, the second rank people, which included the civil servant were permitted to use yellow lights instead the civil servant were permitted to order, dividing these light users into three classes, the most important people were allowed to use the red light as before, the second rank people, which included the civil servant were permitted to use yellow lights instead of red, and ambulance and other medical service were asked to use blue lights. This grotesque refinement of a basically undemocratic practice is bad enough in it, but now comes an extra twist that makes the whole thing ridiculous. Among the bureaucrats only those directly concerned with law enforcement were allowed to use beacon lights with two exceptions: these exceptions were the home secretary and the chief secretary.
Now both these officers are also deck bound mandarins, like the rest of the secretaries to government, and on the face of it there was no justification in functional terms for them to advice their rank over the heads of the rest of their colleagues. It transpired that both these bureaucrats had cornered this privilege because the concerned file had been processed by them and they were thus able to insist upon exception being made in their case. This is the absurd length to which the civil servant can go in their obsession with rank & status. It does not occur to them, that such display is vulgar and undemocratic. That it revels not a distinguished person but an inferior mind.
They do not remember that in this very country there was a man who used to travel in third class compartments as a point of principle because there was no forth class, and whose simplicity and lack of ostentation was such that the world calls him mahatma. Such are the unworthy inheritors of his legacy.
From this general tendency another character trait can be inferred. People who have so much regard for rank and status are unlikely to have ant regard for those who have neither rank of status, i.e., those who constitute ninety nine percent of the population of this country. I can say from my experience of the civil service as a class that this is true. There are, of course, many well intentioned and committed officers but these again are in a minority. The civil service as an organizational hierarchy and as a class does not take its character from these people. It takes its color and complexion from the kind of people. It takes color and complexion from the kind these people I speak of and these people are curiously disobliging to ordinary people, just as they are extremely obliging to powerful people,. In fact the successful careerist in the bureaucracy is often the man who follows the policy of “ lick above and kick below”. He is obsequious and fawning with senior officers & politician, ruthless and overbearing with subordinates and inaccessible to member of the public. Now it has been a principle with me throughout my career, to be accessible to everyone, and all those who came to see me, seemed top agree on one point, that my colleagues were usually inaccessible to them and in their eyes at least I had the inestimable virtue of being a patient listener, if nothing else. Very often they asked for nothing else.
This lack of sympathy for the common man is the most damning indictment that can be brought against public servant in country like ours, where the majority of the population is without substantial wealth, or influence, yet this is as true of the lower bureaucracy as of the highest civil servant s. go to any office as an ordinary citizen, and you are unlikely to meet with courtesy or consideration.
Everyone, right from the peon and the clerk sitting among disorderly piles of files, to the head of office, invisible in his air conditioned chamber and unusually inaccessible to ordinary people, are all likely to be rude and overbearing. All this does not in any way redeem the conduct of the senior civil servant, for they are after all expected to set the standard.
This lack of regards for the common people is accompanied by excessive servility towards people in authority. A member of the public who had faced the rudeness and condescension of the over mighty bureaucrat will be surprised if he saw them creeping and crawling before a chief minister or a Prime Minister.
There are no other words to describe the undignified posture that I have seen many bureaucrats adopt towards powerful people. Servility of this kind is never an edifying spectacle, but one could laugh it away if it did not have rather unfortunate consequence for the quality of governance in the country. Important people are able to get away with all kinds of folly and stupidity because those who advice them haven’t the nerve to tell them so. I remember one meeting in which all the collectors of a division were to be addressed by the chief secretary. Several secretaries were also asked to be in attendance and I happened to be one of them. This meeting was being held just before a general election and after talking about this and that for some time the chief secretary came to the point. He declared that the forthcoming election would be a verdict, not merely on the performance of the government but also the performance of the collectors, and the result would show who had done well and who had done badly. To my mind this was a most dangerous doctrine. The CS was telling the offices, without putting it in so many words, that they had better ensure the victory of the ruling party. But no one objected. It was left me, as so often, to set the record straight.
I pointed out that the election result would be verdict on the performance of the government as a whole, including the programmer and policies of the government, which were not designed by the collectors. There were also political factors at work in any election, and it was simplistic to reduce the whole exercise to this cracker barrel formula. Faced with this frontal assault the chief secretary did not press the point the point. But even then no spoke up in defense of one of the core value of the civil service-political neutrality- which was under attack here. The habit of sycophancy does not die easily.
To this rather depressing scenario, I must add one more depressing fact. Most civil servant are rather too deeply preoccupied with bread and butter issues and rather too little with matter concerning ideals and value. I had ample proof of this when I was secretary of the Madhya Pradesh IAS association. Some officers once moved a resolution that the age of superannuation for IAS officer should be raised of sixty years, on the grounds that just officers also retired at sixty. This was some years ago, when the age of superannuation was fifty eight years. As secretary of the association I was asked to elicit the views of altered in all the four corner of the state, asking them what they thought of the proposal. Four hundred and odd members of the service scattered in all four corner of the state, asking them what they thought of the proposal. The results were amazing. Among all of extending the retirement age. Many were eager to contribute to fund, which might be set up file a petition in the Supreme Court. Exception for the one honorable exception, even rayon was keen to hang on to the fruit of officer for two more years, no one was keen to obtain his freedom from government to take up politics, or writing, or the cultivation of Pieria roses, or other vocation or avocation. Everyone was happy with the hack work that he was doing and wanted to keep on doing it. Such is the effect of long service in the government on the mind of the civil servants.
On other occasion a meeting was called to discuss the introduction of a code of ethics in the civil service. This was a fall out of the initiative taken by the UP cadre officer in trying to identify the most corrupt officers. Like the UP initiative, this was also a fiasco. I had planned to speak on this occasion, because to my this was a momentous issue. I had decided to speak on the concept of justice and order, two concepts central to any philosophy of the civil service. My argument was that the moral order, at which we must aim, was the equivalent in social and political terms of the cosmic order which prevails in the universe. I had decide to keep the arguments on a rather lofty plane, in keeping with the subject, but as I looked at the faces all around me I had a moment of revelation. I saw ponderous heavy figure, each immured in his own self importance and shallow egotism. Looking at these hard faces I was reminded of Auden’s lines:
Intellectual disgrace,
Stares from every human face;
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in every eye.”
(Intellectual disgrace denoting indifference to those intangible values that make life worth living, not lack of intelligence as some might think)
One could not discourse on abstract ethical issues to men such as these. I put my speech back in my pocket and decide that I must leave the service as soon as I could.
