The deep rot within the premier Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is a very big reason for the enormous corruption that our great nation is suffering from.
It is wrong on our part as simple, patriotic citizens to blame the politicians for all of India’s problems — from deep corruption to unhygienic public toilets. Politicians in power are merely godfathers of corrupt IAS bureaucrats and both share a symbiotic relationship in milking the system for their own needs. While the politician is busy building a war chest to fight the next elections, for the corrupt bureaucrat, it is not just amassing ill-gotten wealth but also rising up the hierarchy.
The IAS constitutes the backbone of the administrative system in India and controls the day-to-day administration in the country. IAS officers and their teams implement the most insignificant of decisions and also the most significant ones.
However, such is the rot in the system that by and large, the highest qualification to rise through the ranks is not efficiency and intelligence but servility to the politicians of the day. Good, incorruptible and efficient bureaucrats are also needed to run the country. But if they want to remain in the system, they are expected to cast a Nelson’s eye to all the corruption around them. They feel helpless and powerless and focus on their own contribution to national growth while remaining in the cesspool of a corrupt system.
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Former IAS officer and RBI Governor D Subbarao and former IAS bureaucrat Arun Bhatia are just two of the small number of IAS officers who have spoken openly about the rot in the system and the need to reform it.
Subbarao has commented famously in his book Just a Mercenary: Notes from my Life and Career on how the IAS system has failed the nation. Having emerged from the ICS — Indian Civil Services — established by the British Raj, he has pointed out that a large number of IAS officers today are inefficient and corrupt as compared to those during the 1950s-1970s “who were known for their competence, integrity and commitment”. The system has failed, he says, because there are no incentives for good performance and no penalties for bad performance. If IAS bureaucrats stood united, without forgetting their oath to serve the nation, the politicians won’t be able to manipulate them.
While discussing the raging Puja Khedkar case in a Times Now panel on July 16, Arun Bhatia, an incorruptible, ramrod-straight ex-IAS officer, spoke of how corruption has become institutionalised in the country. In his view, the IAS “is one of the most corrupt organisations in the country which the people are unwilling to concede”.
Calling the IAS “a rotten system”, he pointed out that the entire system is corrupt because even honest officers affix their signatures on a file that is reeking of corruption simply because they do not want to lose their perks, privileges and status.
IAS probationer Puja Khedkar’s case is a striking example of the frothing, stinking rot within the system coming to the surface. This would not have happened but for the arrogance of the young probationer and her family. Her father, notably, a former bureaucrat who headed the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board was suspended twice on allegations of bribery and misconduct. He has declared assets of Rs 40 crore.
It was after Puja threw tantrums in the Pune District Collectorate and illegally installed a red/blue beacon — that much-envied symbol of power — atop her personal Audi, that she exposed herself. Her case of gaining entry into the IAS through allegedly fraudulent means would not have come to light had she quietly completed her training with all the entitled perks and privileges of an IAS officer. But such was her arrogance that the Pune District administration was forced to complain to the Chief Secretary. From there on, it was social activists like Vijay Kumbhar who dug out her past and exposed how she had allegedly manipulated the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) which selects candidates and appoints them as IAS officers.
On July 19, the UPSC registered an FIR against Puja for allegedly manipulating the qualifying norms for the UPSC and her training was also suspended.
With the media intensely following up on this case, a can of maggots has exploded in our face demanding that the system be cleaned up. We have been hit so hard that no one really cares or remembers Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise, made some 11 years ago, to deliver a corruption-free India.
A friend on social media commented: “Corruption is a part of life in India. It is like cancer; no cure. Actually, no one is serious about removing corruption.” Indeed, while this does ring true, we, the people of India, including upright bureaucrats from within and outside the IAS must not give up. It is for us to clean this mess.
From time to time, experts have called for a complete overhaul of the IAS system, ranging from the selection procedure to service rules. Subbarao has suggested a two-level entry system: first level for those who are in the 25-35 age group and a second level for those in the 37-45 age group wherein professionals from diverse fields such as engineering, medicine, entrepreneurship, farming, NGO sector and journalism are brought in. The first level entrants should be evaluated after 15 years and one-third should be weeded out and replaced with fresh entrants to maintain high standards of performance.
Bhatia, too, has pointed out that the IAS needs to be revamped. Instead of selecting nerds and top rankers in various subjects, he feels that those with “sound common sense, integrity and strength of character; maybe track record of doing social work need to be selected”. The existing system, he pointed out, does not measure a candidate’s attitude and sensitivity to poverty.
Future generations will ask: Why was the IAS system not reformed and revamped in spite of the Puja Khedkar case and scores of examples of high corruption in the IAS? This is an opportunity that India must not miss.
The author is a journalist and works for a policy research think tank. He tweets at @abhay_vaidya
