For Honest Bureaucrats --On the website of ETA -- Easy To Act

For Honest Bureaucrats

On the website of ETA -- Easy To Act

By Leena Mehendale , A very senior bureaucrat, writer, teacher

"To a simple question – what is the cure for corruption?" there is a simple answer -- “honesty”. But as soon as this question touches then governmental frame work, neither the question nor its answer remains simple. They both acquire a much bigger dimension – but not in the same manner. The corruption within Government cannot be tackled by honesty alone. That corruption has a solid support of authority and arrogance which is not always available to the honest officer. It is in this presumption of support, where most of the senior, honest bureaucrats make mistake, and suffer for it."

Today all aspects of social fabric including governance is hit by corruption, no one appears to know how to curb the omnipresent menace. If at all, a ray of hope comes from the direction in which, as per people's perception, there sits an honest officer working in his small or big post. And if this honest officer is at a higher level then the ray seems a little brighter.

Is that ray of hope sufficient only to keep the perception of light alive or does it have the strength to destroy the darkness and disappointment completely? That is the main question.

Today, if a common person is asked to choose between an honest officer, who does not deliver and a corrupt officer who may deliver at cost -- but may also ruin the case if the cost is not paid – whom should the common person choose? – For common man, both the choices mean suffering only. On the other hand, if an Officer wants to claim that she/he is honest, then there could be embarrassment because today the honesty of a bureaucrat has become synonymous with inaction – whatever be the cause.

To a simple question – what is the cure for corruption?" there is a simple answer -- “honesty”. But as soon as this question touches then governmental frame work, neither the question nor its answer remains simple. They both acquire a much bigger dimension – but not in the same manner. The corruption within Government cannot be tackled by honesty alone. That corruption has a solid support of authority and arrogance which is not always available to the honest officer. It is in this presumption of support, where most of the senior, honest bureaucrats make mistake, and suffer for it.

The honest bureaucrats must understand that authority of their position is not as much a strong – enough foundation, as it is for the corrupt. Hence the honest bureaucrats will have to look beyond their own honesty and the authority given by position. They will have to nurture five more aspect within administration. Fortunately, their authority can be a useful tool for such nurturing.

These aspects are motivation, team-spirit, monitoring, training and coordination. Call it the Panchsheela of governance if you like. They are totally lacking in today's system of governance. Hence the system does not yield good results of the work done by honest officers.
Take for example, the issue of team work. It is said that in Govt. the right hand does not know what the left hand does. Hence no possibility of coordination or of team work. The recent terrorist attacks on Mumbai and the heavy casualties suffered is an example of lack of team work.

Once I was heading an Industrial Development Corporation and we undertook a program of economic rehabilitation of devdasi women through vocational and entrepreneurial training. We were quizzed and hindered by both the departments. The department of Industries kept advising that devadasis should be left for department of women to tackle. The department of women kept resenting the idea that officer of another department was suggesting anything for devdasis which was 'their' domain!. They had a program of encouraging the devdasis to get married – whereupon under one of their schemes, they would give a grant of Rs. ten thousand for buying Mangalsutra.

That, according to the department of Women was sufficient and they did not need advice or interference from anyone in department of Industries. In the existing schemes of both the departments, there was no thinking of economic rehabilitation, or entrepreneural development or capacity building for devadasis. For the same reason, both of them would also not grant any budget to our corporation to carry out those programs.

In government we have a system of something called Rules of business, under which jobs are assigned to various ministries whereupon, they and they alone are authorized to carry out those jobs. This system pre-supposes a Total absence of any need of team-work, it does not understand the need of Integrated Approach. Every senior Officer is completely endoctrined in this system and assiduously guards her/his Turf.

That doctrine then results in such examples which can be seen in all activities of government. More recently when there was terrorist attack on Mumbai on 26/11, there was a similar lack of co-ordination between the administration, the police, the military, the media, the hospitals etc. which resulted in delay in ending the crisis and also the loss of precious lives of our committed police and army officials, apart from the loss of lives of many citizen.

Along with such complete lack of team spirit there is also lack of recognition that some training is needed to build up Team Spirit. The proof of its lack is that only rarely a senior officer is ready to take up responsibility. They undoubtedly categorize themselves as responsible, but this responsibility begins only with the files coming to their desk and ends with they writing their comments and sending the file out. The responsibility remains as long as they are in the office room – once outside, it seems to end. In any case, their responsibility does not include completion of task. And, if the staff under them is lacking any training, then identifying such lack is also not felt as their responsibility by Senior Officers. I have heard many senior bureaucrats to say that if staff is lacking any training it is the headache of the staff and "we are not there to train the staff."

All the middle and lower level staff in Govt. lacks both training and motivation. The monitoring of on-going Govt. Schemes, and to rectify the errors during implementation is the prime job of the middle level officers. In old days, when there were no computers, monitoring was rather difficult. Even then, during the post-independence era, during the decades of sixties and seventies, many committed enthusiastic officers, very painstakingly designed good monitoring systems. As the number of files as well as schemes increased, those systems have become bulky, voluminous and difficult to handle manually. The computer can take care of these aspects very effectively provided it is told in its own language, what we want to monitor. Those senior officers who have, with little efforts, learnt the spread-sheet type soft-wares such as excel or lotus, know well that monitoring through such programs is very easy. They effectively use such techniques for their personal data management such as monitoring of salary, loan – repayment, bank-balance. Yet, rarely I have seen them initiating their middle level officers to internalize such techniques and design a good data-base or monitoring system for the schemes of their Department. They neither create awareness of such possibility, nor demand it, nor feel responsible for it.

There is yet another example of lack of coordination. Once while working in petroleum Ministry, one of my mandates was to create mass awareness for petroleum conservation. I was told not to include the topics of water conservation or electricity conservation or environmental and ecology aspects but to concentrate only on Petrolium conservation. Don't we spend diesel while pumping out underground water? Won't we save it if we conserved water? -- Such questions are not to be raised for fear of merging the turf–boundaries which are considered more sacrosanct when compared to promotion of coordination or team work. Another Officer said – we can't direct a program towards children or teenagers because they do not consume any petrol diesel or LPG.
The examples galore.

For years, I have closely seen all these attitudes of the honest and dishonest officers – I have been a part of the same system – a part of their fraternity. From my side I have tried some small and big experiments to introduce these five aspects. What kept up my enthusiasm throughout was one constant question – "A system which has given me my job, my professional career, some perks, some success, some respect and some chance to work for the people – how much do I owe to the system towards its improvement?” The same question applies to all the honest officers. They owe it not only to the system but also to the country to work for these Panchsheela. Without those, the corruption can neither be fought, nor controlled.

About Author 

 I consider myself as an accomplished Administrator, Thinker and Writer (for children too). Acquainted with all parts of India and travelled over 400 out of 650 districts in India. Proficient in Hindi, Marathi Bengali and understand Assamese, Oriya, Punjabi Gujrati Nepali, Maithili and Bhojpuri too.

After completing M.Sc Physics and working as lecturer for a year, joined the IAS in 1974.

I joined Indian Administrative Service in July, 1974, Maharashtra cadre. Working as a Senior Civil Servant since then on various postings, discharging responsibilities of Planning, Implementations, Execution, Law and Order, Coordination and Monitoring and as a Quasi-Judiciary Officer under several Acts.

Member Administration CAT Banglore
Last posting Additional Chief Secretary, GAD (General Administration Department) April 08 onwards