A recent government of India notification opening the doors of bureaucracy to skilled people from the private sector, who are willing to contribute to nation building has put the bureaucracy on notice, ruffled a few feathers and allowed a few others to flock together. Inviting applications for 10 senior-level posts, crucial to policy making and implementation of government programmes, the government seems to have opened a virtual Pandora’s Box. A domain available to only career bureaucrats till now, who usually join the service after passing exams conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), is being opened to experts from outside the domain in a way akin to pulling a fast one on the law drafters by the law makers. The civil service must be independent of government with career bureaucrats hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. Colin Powell once said “Don’t be buffaloed by experts. Experts often possess more data than judgment. The elite can become so inbred that they produce haemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.”
Is this move an innovative administrative innovation to improve governance, or a disruptive political innovation to instil ideologically disposed individuals to change track of governance, time will be the best judge to judge. However, it also must be said, again in Powell’s words that “Organizations don’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter. Endeavours succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.” Having quoted that, established systems must be sufficiently disrupted and even uprooted for such change.
Leaders bring “fresh ideas and new approaches to governance, if they are sufficiently fired in the belly. The bureaucracy is trained to implement the policies of the government of the day and not play politics of the government of the day. In that sense, they are expected to be impartial and conscientious of the work assigned to them and in the ways of implementation of such work. Their job is onerous since they are also the custodians of the property of the State on behalf of the people.
Governance is the process of interaction and decision-making among the actors involved in a collective problem that lead to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of social norms and institutions. In lay terms, it could be described as the political processes that exist in between formal institutions. The spirit of governance is also the spirit of training that the aspiring civil servants undergo at various places in the country. The civil services system was considered one of the best British legacies to Independent India, given its lack of experience in governance then, and huge need for socio-economic development. But post-liberalisation in 1990s, the bureaucracy was seen by some sections as stagnant. Further bureaucracies have been criticized as being inefficient, convoluted, or too inflexible to individuals and or as individuals.
Though the legacy takes us to the British times, the civil service in the United Kingdom only includes Crown, i.e. central government employees, not parliamentary employees or local government employees. Public sector employees such as those in education and the national health care system are not considered to be civil servants. Police officers and staff are also not civil servants. With times changing, are new models of governance required, is also a debate that must be done. There could be better individuals in every profession, outside their system. If they were to be brought into the system, ostensibly, to improve, does it mean that the current systems are found wanting? Hind sight would always allow us to reflect and criticise the existing methodologies. Does that make the unknown any better? Can a change of a few Ministers, more efficient and less affiliated, or change in portfolios allotted to them, not do the trick?
A trend seems to be setting in, where we seek outside help when our internal systems don’t deliver. It is like searching for the right excuse for our failures. An example often cited, is how our education systems have delivered or failed to deliver. A decision was taken some years ago to appoint industrialists as heads of governing bodies in many Institutions like the IIT’s, IIM’s and a host of others in the top echelons, to improve delivery and governance. Important stake holders, the students were to benefit. Audit is the cornerstone of the health of an organisation as any industrialist would vouch for. A pre-audit would have also recognised these Institutions as being the best in the country when they took them over. Has even one audit been made to showcase the contribution and growth that followed an induction of experts from outside? Are not endowments collected, revenue generated and outreach achieved parameters to excellence? How many of these can directly be attributed to the experts? The academicians would have anyway brooked no nonsense from these industrialists had they interfered in that part of delivery.
Yes. Experts would be needed in niche areas. Areas that normally are outside the purview of a civil servant who is trained in administration. They add value to the cause in such ways that justify their inclusion. The lateral entry to experts in governance could also be justified, if such is the cause. The flip side would However, be more damaging if such experts join the race and the game, not to speak of being instrumental in creating classes within classes. A complete chaos would rule if such experts were to be singled out, by succeeding governments, either for propagating an earlier truth or refusing to align to a new truth. Political exigencies cannot dictate either transparency or accountability or deliverance in governance.
A lot of effort is made by the individuals in completing the service commission tests at the Central level or the State level. The State too spends a considerable amount in instilling precisely the administrative acumen that it wants in these individuals, in a host of training institutes both in the country and abroad. Why not make them accountable if they fail to deliver? Will the precedence allow us to do something similar in our police service? Will we be in a position to change the Police Commissioner for example, by an expert from the free society if he fails to deliver? Can we afford to do the same for revenue or a banking, or a foreign service that we have?
“You don’t know what you can get away with, until you try” is an adage that helps innovation. Do governments really want such innovation? Then what they need are mavericks with ideas. Ideation is the process of forming and relating ideas, oftentimes in a business context. It is used to describe the sequence of thought, from idea generation to idea implementation, which is the result of mental activity that can be based on past or present knowledge, thoughts, opinions, convictions or principles. Ideation is meant to conceptualize an idea and is the thought process involved in apprehending and expressing a new concept. If the ideas apply to cutting edge needs of the society, new policies and new delivery models could emerge, which must be implemented by the trained-in-administrative-procedures civil servants. For an expert to toggle on both, would be asking for the moon.
Change management for a government must explore all approaches to prepare and support individuals, teams, and organizations in making an organizational change. The most common change drivers must include, technological evolution, process reviews, crisis, the citizen habit changes, pressure from other political entities, the coalition dynamics and the organizational restructuring. Only then induction of experts from outside, would justify the cause and the means.