IN A LETTER to prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru on April 14, 1948, home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel wrote, “I need hardly emphasise that an efficient, disciplined and contented service, assured of its prospect as a result of diligent and honest work, is a sine qua non of sound administration under a democratic regime even more than under an authoritarian rule. The service must be above party, and we should ensure that political considerations, either in its recruitment or in its discipline and control, are reduced to the minimum, if not eliminated altogether. The Constitution is meant to be worked by a ring of service which will keep the country intact.”
This ideal remained with the civil service for long, although it cannot be said there were no aberrations. We joined young; I was barely 22 and straight from college when I went to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie. A couple of months into my probation, I was tasked to write a paper on integrity. I recall I wrote 26 pages, basically stating that corruption arises when the demand for goods and services far exceeds supply, when the moral fibre is weak and when the political and social framework is riddled with deception and duplicity. The directors and faculty of the academy were also formidable people and exhibited values that a faithful public servant must possess.
I am reminded of how far we have drifted from the ideals we were expected to conform to from the recent story of a probationary officer in Pune. My knowledge is limited to what I read in the newspapers, and I cannot vouch for its accuracy. The facts stated are appalling. A 34-year-old woman gets into the civil service. She gets in because her application says she is mentally and physically disabled and, therefore, entitled to a quota. Six times, she evaded a medical test at All India Institute of Medical Sciences and Safdarjung Hospital. The Central Administrative Tribunal rejected her plea. But she got relief from the Bombay High Court that gave her a chance to appear for a medical test again.
She must have gone through a few months of training at Mussoorie. The faculty would have been able to judge her characteristics and suitability for the IAS. She was posted as assistant collector (under training) to a prize district in Maharashtra―Pune. There, she starts her drama. She asks for a car, a house, an office. An officer on probation is expected to learn, move with the people, and understand the requirements for becoming a good IAS officer. Instead, her focus is on the display of power and authority. Not having got a car, she used her own Audi car, put a sticker on it to show that it was a Maharashtra government car, and forcibly occupied the room of an additional collector in the collectorate. She had been given a room but was dissatisfied with it as it did not have an attached bathroom.
The collector finally wrote to the chief secretary in desperation. She was becoming too hot to handle, and her father, a former civil servant, was constantly exerting pressure. In addition to being “handicapped”, she also stated in her application that she belonged to the non-creamy layer of the Other Backward Class category. At the same time, her father declared his assets as Rs40 crore when he stood for election recently. She is reported to have declared assets of Rs22 crore when she entered the service, many times more than what officers of my generation would possess after four decades of service. The chief secretary gently shifted her to a nearby district, Washim, but in response to media outcry, the government of India has initiated an official inquiry.
The incident took me back to my posting as assistant collector (under training) in the district of Calicut (now Kozhikode) in Kerala. I wrote a letter to my collector, M. Joseph, in an inland cover, saying that I looked forward to working under his guidance. He wrote a polite letter back, welcoming me. When I went to Calicut, a room was reserved for my temporary stay at the PWD rest house in East Hill until I found another accommodation. Someone picked me up in a jeep and took me there.
Once or twice, I called for a jeep to take me to the collectorate. Then my collector called me and said, “We have only two jeeps in the collectorate, and we need them for official work. You must use public transport. You will learn what the people think of the government and the district administration. You will hear from the people and become a better officer.”
I used a bus after that and learnt to eat “meals” from wayside shops, trek across the countryside, and up and down slush and mud, with leeches clinging to my body. My district taught me humility, an ability to get on with junior officials and ordinary people and learn from them.
Indeed, even at senior levels, I never had the perquisites that the young assistant collector wanted. When I came to Thiruvananthapuram as deputy secretary, I had no official car or residential phone. I used to bring food from home in a small lunch box. My peon used to carry it up for me until one day he told me that the “union” had directed him not to. I never had a bathroom attached to my office as joint secretary or secretary in the government of India or as ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
My concern is whether young officers are selected, groomed, and taught values that will make them better officers. I see a lack of coordination between the Union Public Service Commission, the academy and the Department of Personnel and Training. I saw this in another case recently when a disabled candidate was selected by the UPSC and welcomed by the academy but got a posting only after high-level intervention. Successive governments have fiddled with the system, creating a certain degree of chaos. This is no reflection on the civil services, where brilliant and hardworking officers still exist. My shout-out is intended to rethink and rejuvenate the system at the lowest level so that we have more officers with values rather than ambitions and expectations.
The writer is a former cabinet secretary.