IAS, IPS or IFS are high sounding words. People associate a mystique of power and position with these abbreviated nomenclatures. They trace their origin to the British Raj when it was called Indian Civil Service. Being the class of officers created to carry out administrative functions of a colonial power, the ICS officers had created an aura of grandeur, influence and position around them. Their lifestyle was imperialist in all of its manifestations and those who worked under them, the vast army of slaves, could behave in no other way. Soon after independence, somebody asked then Home Minister, Sardar Patel, known as the Iron Man, what he would be doing with the ICS cadres, who, as common knowledge goes, did not show much sympathy with the freedom movement. The Sardar made a historic comment. “I would sure want to shoot them but who will run the government?” The difference between the ICS bureaucrats of Sardar’s days and IAS of our times is this that while the former were dedicated to their colonial masters, the latter are predominantly obsessed with their self interests. But stop a while. We are not generalizing the theory; we know that a fairly good number of IAS, IPS and IFS officers are nationalists, efficient in their profession, dedicated and committed to their job profile. Many of them have been men and women of honesty and integrity and thus retained the ordinary peoples’ faith in executive.
Deputations are a routine in All India Services and every state has a sanctioned strength of deputation quota in its bureaucracy. Babus proceed on deputations or study leave and return to deliver in their respective states after completion of the period. Things are a little different in J&K which has, over the years, become a haven of “cooling period” for bureaucrats.
Here we are talking about 18 out of a total of 30 top rung IAS officers allotted to J&K Cadre who have, through influence or their smartness or through the kid-glove handling of the State government, managed to get themselves adjusted in different positions in New Delhi to keep away from the dirt and din of a state disturbed by terrorist activities for last over two decades. Since there is lack of dedication in them, they manage to be in the corridors of power in New Delhi to satisfy their ego and to escape sharing responsibility of helping the State return to normalcy. Despite efforts by the State Chief Minister to streamline administration and defreeze the adhocism and stop-gap arrangement, that have become regular features of the government, his persuasion has not brought very satisfactory results. About a dozen of them were called back but after passing the “cooling period” here many of them managed to give one more slip to the State and return to their comfortable nests in the capital city of New Delhi.
One debilitating consequence of this kind of escapism is that the government is forced to give the charge of their assignments to lower cadres who are kept in their own pay and grade as per rules, but in practice enjoy all the perks that would accrue to a regular incumbent at the higher post. This is how adhocism is promoted all to the detriment of efficient administration. Quite naturally this creates groups with vested interests within the administrative structure and then politicians and other influential persons form a nexus of their own. This is an unhealthy trend and the Chief Minister finds himself at loss how to deal with such cadres who show little commitment either to the state government or to the people. Escapism of the higher cadres is solely responsible for the stop gap arrangement and induction of non-professionals into service who are unable to deliver the goods. Since they have the patronage of politicians that are part of the nexus and the immediate bosses in the hierarchy, these half-baked babus enjoy the best of both the worlds. It is all to the loss of the state and the people. What can a Chief Minister do when a senior rank bureaucrat has no commitment to the State, to the people and to his own conscience?
IAS, cadres are imparted professional training and expertise and that is very right. But at no stage are they lectured exhaustively on the need of breaking away from the mindset of ICS cadres of British colonial days and adapting themselves to a new phenomenon of India in making. We all agree that the tight jacket administrative norms established originally by the British for ruling over enslaved India need to be radically reformed. In Afghanistan, when a top bureaucrat enters his office chamber for routine work, he first hugs his footman and asks him about the welfare of his family. But once he takes his seat in the chamber, the footman is a footman and the officer is an officer. This is the mindset of free and un-enslaved nations. Our bureaucrat expects his footman to bow and prostrate and fold his hands and meekly open the door for the Sahab Bahadur. Our cadres lack socialization; they labour under superiority complex, and in the process many of them become the victims of split personality.
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