Triple Stream: Editorial

TRIPLE STREAM:

DOWN SIZING BUREAUCRACY

I. V. Chalapati Rao

The word ‘BUREAUCRACY’ is an innocuous word as far as its denotative meaning is concerned. But over the years it has acquired a connotative meaning and an odour. Today it means a ritualistic shuffling and accumulation of papers suggesting inordinate delays in decision making etc.

Even in pre-independence days there was bureaucracy in Indian administration but after India became free it expanded and ramified beyond tolerable limits. Speaking about Government files, Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy said: “Round and round like the diurnal revolutions of the earth went the file - stately, sure and slow.” Decades have passed but the imagery still holds good.

TREVOR FISHLOCK the British journalist wrote “The bureaucracy in India is exalted and wondrous to behold. In administration it is a sargasso. It is a vision of hell. Its vast gloomy halls of serried desks, whose occupants look up, blinking like disturbed holes, its carrels of clerkery and stacks of files all crumpled at the edges, charred as if rescued from a fire long ago and withered with the smell of ink, dust and old paper!” It is the unkindest cut. Sheer exaggeration.

‘The Washington Post’ once wrote “In­dian Civil servants are considered to be the ultimate paper shufflers. They are sticklers to form which means they often return papers for minute mistakes. They hate to take action that could get them in trouble. Files get passed from bureaucrat to bureaucrat without a decision being made”. Naturally undisposed papers pile up like mountains.

It is a world-wide phenomenon ­Speaking about such paper in Egypt, Aziz Bindari called bureaucracy ‘the fifth Pyramid in Egypt’. In his interesting book ‘In-laws and Out-laws’, NORTHCOTE PARKINSON dealt with this bureaucratic pre-occupation with paper work humorously in a separate chapter entitled ‘Paper Monstrosity’ - ­Referring to the special variety of bureaucracy some one said: “In Washington an elephant is defined as a mouse built to Government’s specifications”.

In 1940 Winston Churchill, Great Britain’s war-time Prime Minister issued a memo entitled ‘BREVITY’ advising bureaucrats to cut down the fat of the files by being simple, brief and precise in their language. He said “Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase even if it is conversational”. General Waiter Walker said “Britain has invented a new missile called the CIVIL SERVANT. It does not work and it cannot be fired”.

India is perhaps the world’s largest employer of public servants. Bureaucratic inertia is not only a way of life but also a national problem. In 1948 there were 14 lakhs of employees. In 1998 the figure rose to 48 lakhs. Originally, there used to be at the Centre 8 Secretaries with 18 Departments. In 1996, there were 92 Secretaries with 81 Departments. The bureaucrats are like the Sultan in the Arabian Tales who used to say whenever an addition was made to his harem “The more the merrier”. Expenditure was 51,000 crores of rupees. Every year the figures are soaring to the sky, fulfilling Parkinson’s Law “Expenditure meets the income and tends to exceed it” inspite of all economy measures. Plans and people get lost in the morass with behemoth-size bureaucracy and jumbo cabinets.

Our trains run three times faster after independence, but files are moving in our offices five times more slowly. To use Chruchill’s coinage. they crawl at the pace of a “Paralytic Centipede”.

Reasons are not far to seek. The favourite administrative devices of our Bureaucracy are:

1. Principle of dynamic inaction.
2. The art of salutary delay.
3. Buck passing
4. Abdulla disposal (removing papers!)

James H. Boren, the President of American bureaucrats said humorously: “When in doubt, ‘mumble’, when in trouble ‘delegate’, when in charge ‘ponder’......The organisation’s goal is to cut redtape lengthwise. “Nothing is impossible until it is sent to a committee”. “If you don’t like to commit yourself: appoint a committee or write ‘L.O.T.E. (Lie over till eternity).

Special training is necessary for our I.A.S officers to transform them into private sector-style managers. They need orientation in modern managerial skills including computer operation and competent knowledge of the outside world to acquire the right kind of attitude and ability to deliver the services with efficiency and humility. New recruits from the private sector should be brought in to modernise the stake-holders. Top civil service jobs should be tilled with special care. Bureaucrats should be kept on their toes by plans to have their performance periodically assessed and evaluated not by their seniors alone (because they have solidarity unions and tribal affinities) but by those working under them and by the public - a system described as “360 Degree feed ”.

Drafting should be brief and business-like. God’s Ten Commadments contain only 279 words.

The American Declaration of Independence has only 300 words. The famous Gettysburg speech of Abraham Lincoln is one of the briefest. The more we write or speak, the less we communicate.