The men who rule us: good, bad and the corrupt

The Sunday Times Of India
Srivatsa Krishna, Nov 21, 2010, 12.33am IST

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-toi/special-report/The-men-who-rule-us-good-bad-and-the-corrupt/articleshow/6962036.cms

Contemporary India is characterized by a 21st century economy, being run by a 14th century polity of the robber-baron variety, supported by a 19th century bureaucracy. The last few weeks have been characterized by scam after scam tumbling out of India's cupboards, which have shamed us globally. The CWG mess where India got "Kalmadi-ed", Adarsh where " Ashok Chavan and Mother-in-Law Pvt Ltd" cheated the nation in the name of Kargil war heroes, and the spectrum scam where Raja looted the exchequer by giving away a scarce national resource to companies who wouldn't know the difference between a telecom tower and Leaning Tower of Pisa. In each of these cases civil servants formed an integral part of the decision making. For example, it is fairly well known that Raja waited for an officer with integrity to retire before going in for the 'lootfest' with someone much more pliable; likewise Adarsh society has serving and retired officers including Idzus Kundan, Seema Vyas, Ramanand Tiwari, Shankaran, Jairaj Phatak or their immediate family who allocated flats to themselves at a deep discount. This is unprecedented and perhaps happened for the first time in the history of independent India that serving civil servants have violated All India Service (Conduct) Rules and yet no action appears to have been initiated against them. These officers and others from both the civil service and defence services who signed the files to procure faulty bulletproof vests for Mumbai Police, or to buy coffins for the Kargil jawans, those who did not stop Raja and Chavan from running amok, or those who routinely issue NOCs to hazardous buildings which collapse much later must be tried and punished under a fast track court system setup exclusively for this purpose.

There have been some fundamental changes in the governance superstructure of India over the last two decades, and these are: First, the Westminster model of governance where the politician is expected to debate and legislate policy, whereas the civil servant is supposed to execute policy has been turned on its head. The politician more often than not, cares a damn for policy, and has instead gone into execution for he sees the pot of gold there. The civil servant is left to pass off something as policy, whose value is questionable given that it has allowed crony capitalism to flourish on a large scale. Second, the culture of the civil service has become one where accountability to a process is paramount over accountability to a result. As such, especially in the secretariats of almost every government, time and money is wasted in following due process whereas eventual impact and results are often relegated to a distant third or fourth place after personal aggrandizement, political sucking-up to name a few. Thirdly, our democracy is rapidly degenerating into a kleptocracy where the entry barriers to fighting elections namely huge money, muscle power along with the right caste and family credentials make it impossible for the average citizen with sound common weal to even dream of contesting elections. As such the masses elect a few through an imperfect electoral process which has led to fractured mandates leading to the tail wagging the dog, leading to a further splitting of the spoils to recoup election expenditure and political blackmail as standard operating procedure to bully and coerce an already timid bureaucracy.

However, we must also not forget the other side, because there is another side too. The beacons of hope are also many from the civil service with whom lives India's hopes for a better tomorrow: We forget that it was an IAS officer namely S R Rao who was called upon to rescue Surat from collapsing during the plague who went to places where even the Army reportedly refused to go into in a boat and more recently he along with other IAS officers worked tirelessly to make the CWG a resounding success; Rentala Chandrashekhar and J Satyanarayana led India's e-governance revolution which is touching the lives of millions today when they interact with the government at the cutting edge level. Dr T V Somanathan, another exceptional officer, has quietly designed a world-class blueprint for the Chennai metro which is being rapidly executed on the ground, as is being brilliantly done by N Sivasailam in Bangalore. Dr I V Subba Rao designed the bar-coded entry to smoothen the pilgrim experience at Tirupati one of the busiest temples in the world.

Countless faceless IAS officers work selflessly every day in circumstances, which almost no private sector professional would be willing to work in on a day to day basis. I challenge a Ratan Tata or a Narayanamurthy to report to a Pappu Yadav or A Raja or a Kalmadi and yet produce market like performance and market like results —and that too while being watched over by a pro-active judiciary, indisciplined staff and a rapacious media! Also we often confuse publicity with achievement and as such, many who do good work in the civil service remain unknown —but that doesn't take away the good work they do every single day in very tough circumstances.

In the rarest of rare cases, the Supreme Court awards the death sentence to those who kill and rape. Perhaps the time has come to contemplate the death sentence for those who rape the public exchequer too, so that we set a public example of such cases to prevent others from doing the same. If not, we run the peril sadly accepting the uncomfortable truth that removing corruption from India is as impossible as it is to remove capitalism from America.