So, the top bureaucracy of India has decided not to decide anymore. As Shailesh Pathak, a former bureaucrat and columnist aptly says in a subsequent article (read it here), they have announced a “Decision Strike”. Of course, many will question the implied premise that the bureaucracy was taking decisions all this while. But let’s not pursue that line further because a Central Bureau of Investigation FIR (first information report) against an avowedly honest former secretary to the government of India is not a matter for mirth.

It deserves serious introspection because this has not happened overnight. India’s so-called steel frame had been rusting up for decades without anybody caring much about it. But the way the PC Parakh case has blown up in its face, the bureaucracy is having to make menacing noises and that’s a good thing. Perhaps now we will pay attention to the real problem at hand: the rebooting of the relationship between the politician and the bureaucrat. Over the decades the balance of power between these two crucial institutions of governance has so tilted in favour of the politicians that bureaucrats have tended to cross the lakshman rekha to cosy up the former.

ALSO READ: Redux: what whistleblower PC Parakh had said on coal scam

This is perhaps what president Pranab Mukherjee had on his mind when he was addressing IAS probationers on October 18, just two days after the CBI action against Parakh. “I know more often we hear the complaint that many a thing could not be done or implemented due to political interference. I do not hesitate to share the perception, yes it is there. My advice to senior civil servants is: be a little patient, tell him (politician) this cannot be done, (and) why it cannot be done,” Mukherjee told the probationers at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie.

The problem is that most politicians don’t want to know why things can’t be done. Shibu Soren, the coal minister who Parakh was reporting to, did not certainly want a ‘no’. This ‘my way or the highway’ principle of the political executive leaves little choice for the babus except to fall in line or to be kicked around. Of course, what started as a defence mechanism has now become a matter of active choice with babus courting ministers openly.

Consequently, the “decision strike” is not the problem of the babus who have embraced the politicians but those who want to discharge their duties towards the public interest. The crisis is for those who want to stick by their conscience, not for those who don’t mind crossing the line.

What is the way out of this log-jam then? “Parakh would have escaped unscathed had he put on record the reason behind his decision and the role played in it by the prime minister as minister in charge of the coal ministry,” said Devi Dayal, a former bureaucrat who served in the petroleum ministry for several years.

According to Dayal, the relationship between the two has broken down completely. “The decisions taken by the minister are shoved down the throats of bureaucrats. The earlier practice of debate, discussion and interaction has ceased to exist,” he said.

This has happened, he said, because bureaucrats do not oppose a ministerial directive even if he/she finds it against the national interest. “The age of compliant bureaucrats who are happy to toe the line of the minister has only made the politician’s job easy,” he said. “Those who stand up are transferred.”

 But then is it not better to be transferred than be implicated by the CBI or any other investigating agency? “Yes, of course. If a bureaucrat feels the decision taken by the minister is illegal he should put it on record and register his dissent,” he said. Recalling his own tiff with a minister when he served as joint secretary in the petroleum ministry, Dayal said he had opposed tooth and nail the discretionary power of the minister to arbitrarily allot petrol pumps.
Kamal Taori, another former IAS officer, concurs. “The only way out for honest, upright officers is to put everything in writing. Let the bureaucrat take only written orders from the minister. Once this starts, it is the minister who will find himself in hot water, for the job of a bureaucrat is to implement the policy decision taken by the minister,” he said.

Shakti Sinha, a 1979-batch IAS officer who served prime minister Vajpayee as joint secretary, however, felt such stilted positions wherein bureaucrats take only written orders from the ministers don’t work in the real world. “A combination of formal and informal communication between the two works the best. There are times when not everything can be put on record. If a bureaucrat feels a decision taken by the minister is illegal, he should convince him to revert it. And if he does not, then the bureaucrat should put it on record,” he said.

Parakh, for example, did what Sinha suggests in the first instance when Soren tried to bulldoze him. But when he decided to change his mind and allot the mines to Hindalco he did not make any reference to what happened behind the scenes. A mild “upon a rethink pursuant to representations received from Hindalco received through the PMO” would possibly have helped his case. But he did not do that perhaps because of the stature of the office he would be dragging into the firing line. He did pour his heart out to the cabinet secretary but that is a post that has diminished beyond recognition by the emergence of the PMO (another big reason for the crisis).

The second administrative reforms commission (ARC) formed in 2004 had deliberated upon the ambiguity in the relationship between a bureaucrat and a political executive in detail and devoted a chapter on ways to make it work to the advantage of the country.

Delineating the decline of the civil services over the years, it said, “In the initial years after Independence, relations between ministers and civil servants were characterised by mutual respect and understanding of each other’s respective roles, with neither encroaching upon the other’s domain.

“However, in subsequent years, matters started changing for the worse. While some civil servants did not render objective and impartial advice to their ministers, often some ministers began to resent advice that did not fit in with short-term political interests.... As a result, ‘political neutrality’, which was the hallmark of the civil service in the pre-Independence era as well as in the period right after Independence, was gradually eroded. These trends led to the phenomenon of ‘politicisation of the civil service’ in India.”

Suggesting a way out, the commission proposed a civil services law that would incorporate a code of ethics for ministers and a code of conduct for the bureaucrats.

But that would be like waiting for Godot. Perturbed by the events, the IAS Officers Association is planning to meet the prime minister to vent their ire. That would be like talking to the deaf. Instead, wouldn’t it have helped if the Association passed a resolution saying that henceforth all senior officers would record their dissent when forced to push through anti-people decisions? Wouldn’t re-emphasising already existing ground rules work better than trying to re-draw them?

Why has it become ingrained in the IAS mindset that the only way to save their skin in these circumstances is to acquiesce and buy peace with the politician, not standing up to them? Is there no way of enforcing the lakshman rekha? We seek answers to these and many other questions in the cover story package that follows.