New dark cloud hangs over India’s babudom

New dark cloud hangs over India’s Babudom

By Jawhar SircarPublished in Deccan Chronicle,26.05.2018

By opting and qualifying for the civil service implies the voluntary acceptance of certain restrictions and a rather harsh discipline — the crux of which is to internalise pain without demur. What is less known is that the job also entails facing the raw heat of democracy’s raging furnace — elected representatives with a pre-set agenda. While appreciating the compulsions of political bosses to override the often-mindless worship of rules by babus, one cannot deny the fact that officials have learnt to live with reprimands, tantrums and worse. But even these did not prepare them for what they have gone through the Narendra Modi years — the last four — where the narrative of terror obliterates whatever good they may have thrown up. Uncertainty is a weapon that the PM revels in — by reshuffling the highest level and “repatriating” (throwing out) officers from the Centre back to the states than ever before in history. His latest torpedo lies in the PMO’s loaded suggestion to all concerned ministries to replace the system of allotting “cadres”, which would undermine the UPSC selections. The existing, time-tested system is that the UPSC goes through its rigorous process annually and shortlists candidates for all the all-India services and the Central services on rank-cum-option basis. There are only three all-India services — the IAS, the IPS and the Indian Forest Service. Their officers are recruited centrally and trained initially by the Central government, which ensures a “common pan-Indian spirit”, but are allocated to earmarked state governments for posting them within that state. Many work only in that state for their entire career, but several others “opt for Central deputation”.

This means that if they are selected on the basis of their performance so far — yes, many are rejected — they can work either in the Central ministries in New Delhi or in Central government offices located in different cities of India. But how are they allotted to the different states? This is a million-dollar question and here again, the system that has worked flawlessly since Independence is that the seniority of ranking in the UPSC examinations counts the most. About half of each state cadre is filled by successful “insiders” from that state, while the other half by “outsiders”, who gave a list of their “preferred states” (other than their “own”) in case they do not qualify on merit for their first choice. As we know, a certain fixed number of slots are reserved candidates from the OBC, SC and ST categories — in all services. Other than these three all-India services, the UPSC’s common examination also recommends who would be allotted to which of the 17 Central services. These include the Indian Foreign Service, the Indian Audit and Accounts Service, the Indian Revenue Service, the Indian Railway Traffic Service and so on. The main difference is that while all-India service officers can work both in their state cadres and at the Centre, the Central services work only under the Central government. Incidentally, candidates give their “options” for specific Central services to which they are recommended by the UPSC on the basis of ranking and the number of seats available — determined under the reservation policy. This means that the no candidate can be sent, against her or his will, to some service that was not among the options.

It is this judicious mix of option and UPSC ranking that has worked quite satisfactorily and the courts have accepted its fairness. This does not mean, of course, that the UPSC is infallible or that those who are chosen for the IAS or the Indian Foreign Service are “superior” in any respect — it only means that they did better in the examinations, which could happen for a whole variety of reasons. But it has generally been accepted as a “fair and transparent system” even though time has proven that many underserving people have come in. The commission cannot predict this as it does not indulge in astrology. Similarly, several highly meritorious students have not been able to “crack the exams”, but that happens everywhere. The short point is that a rather complicated matrix of determinants is tackled by the UPSC through its vast experience of seven decades in matching merit with other factors — with quite transparent procedures. What, then, is Prime Minister Modi upto? His proposal is that this established UPSC-rank based system of deciding who gets into the three all-India services in any of the four categories (General, OBC, SC and ST) and then deciding who goes to which state for life is to be replaced. He proposes that, in addition to the ranking in the UPSC, which is quite objective, will be added the probationer’s performance at the training academy. This would obviously be a subjective system of “performance rating” at the end of the first three months in service and its purpose is to distort the clear rankings in the UPSC merit list.

Where the other category of Central services are concerned, the system proposed by the PM is to decide who will be allotted to which ministry, on the basis of the report sent by the training academy at the end of the same common three-month stint called the “foundation course”. It must be remembered that the training academy is controlled directly by the PM’s own department of personnel and training — which explains his gameplan. It bears the typical Modi trademarks of the highest degree of centralisation of decision-making; the subverting of national institutions (the UPSC, in this case); hanging the Damocles’ sword on everyone’s head and the resultant sadistic glee — with which he carried out his Tughlaqi style of demonetisation. There are other issues at stake. The foundation course is the only time when officers of different services and state cadres meet their other colleagues, with identities clearly established, and lifelong bonds are created. It just cannot be spent in bending backwards to please the bosses to get a better grading or in jockeying for high stakes with the PM’s Office or the ruling party. One man simply cannot be allowed to destroy so many wonderful past traditions or the future of the whole system of governance.

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Damage of this ‘darkest hour’ could well be irreparable

Damage of this ‘darkest hour’ could well be irreparable

By Jawhar Sircar

(Published in The Indian Express,18^th May,2018)

When a retired DG of Police feels that 49 retired IAS, IPS and Central Service officers have over-reacted to the Kathua rape case — of an innocent Muslim girl of just eight years — clarifications are inescapable. We refer to an Op-ed article in the Indian Express on May 12, 2108: A Case of Selective Outrage. Comparisons of the heinousness of crimes are messy and subjective, but if we look for defining moments in India’s media history in recent memory, one could break down to two, straightaway — Nirbhaya’s rape on December 16, 2012 and Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement.

The rape case is the one we refer to, because where the latter movement is concerned, all that emerged from a million flashbulbs and months of headline-hogging is that its leaders were catapulted to power. One landed into a Chief Minister’s seat and another was rewarded with a Lieutenant Governor’s post. Fine. Nirbhaya, however, remains a metaphor for beastial violence on a hapless woman — sick, in all respects — but the murdered victim was not selected for unimaginable horror because of her religion. We need not labour the other points like the cool, calculated manner in which a minor girl was gang-raped over a long period — and that too, in the hallowed premises of a place of worship. The new dimensions to this pre-planned hate crime have brought shame to India all the world over — even in countries where rapes are not uncommon — and has been showcased among billions of Muslims abroad as how their brethren here are tormented in Hindustan.

The retired DGP appears quite satisfied with the prime minister’s “distress” that was both cryptic by his own loquacious standards and issued mechanically, so dreadfully long after the tragedy. Our colleague must surely be very optimistic in voicing his satisfaction also with the “assurance” given by the PM, but however much he castigates us, we are twice shy. We have been bitten by earlier promises, which are now laughed off as ‘jumla’ by the PM’s able alter ego. Among these are the assurance of bringing black money from abroad — but in reality, the present regime has set an all-time record of letting notorious bank-swindlers escape abroad with impunity. After the horses — like Mehul Choksi — had safely bolted, we were presented with some swash-buckling legislative showpieces. We have also not forgotten the promise to double farmers’ income in five years — though in reality the farm sector is hurtling from crisis to crisis. The numerous jobs that he promised are nowhere in sight while the emperors of jobless economic growth never ever had it so good. Even the International Labour Organisation estimates that over 60 per cent of India’s workers are now very ‘vulnerable’. The promise to act against corruption sounds so hollow when we see the kingpins of the mining mafia of Karnataka standing next to the PM in full public view — even as their humongous scams are constantly vexing the Supreme Court so much.

The article ridicules our letter to the PM and the writer declares that “a few incidents of rapes” surely cannot threaten the country’s existence. His slant becomes visible when he refers to the Babri masjid as “a dilapidated structure” and imputes that we are oblivious to “damages to Hindu temples in J&K”. No, we are not. We are equally concerned at all assaults on the freedom of faith and demand action on proven perpetrators — but not through lynch mobs to whom communal governments appear to be ‘outsourcing justice’. We are certainly not “blind to the atrocities committed by Muslims” — whatever that means after 2014 — but certainly abhor this distasteful “communalising of crime”.

Our former DGP-friend cherrypicks a comment that 49 retired officers had used in the open letter to the Prime Minister — by which we stand firmly. We have described the present crisis as the “darkest hour…. in post-Independent India”. He mistakes our anguish and limits it to just “two incidents of rape” — whereas we are deeply distressed with the impermeable gloom and the wilful destruction of the plural structure guaranteed by our Constitution. He cites other contestants for this ‘darkest hour’ phase, like the Mahatma’s assassination, the 1962 war, the massacre in Nellie in 1983, the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984 and so on. Only colour measurement spectrometers can decide this, but we have no desire to compare any of these painful examples in terms of their relative ‘darkness’.

Our submission is based on the after-effects of such man-made crisis as the crises referred to did not leave behind, other than rancour and continuing injustice, any cancerous cells within our body polity — which the present dispensation is injecting. The dogs of religious war have now been let loose with the cold-blooded acquiescence of State power — as never before — and minorities are being handed ‘punishments for retrospective crimes’, i.e, for any excesses that some of their co-religionist rulers may (or may not) have committed on Hindus, many, many centuries ago. It is as ludicrous as attacking Kazakhstan today because the ancient Sakas came out of that region to conquer northern India 2,000 years ago and killed many of ‘our forefathers’. Or Odisha attacking Bihar for the massacres at the Battle of Kalinga. Avenging ‘historic wrongs’ is a very dangerous game that Hitler practised and frankly, in the absence of detailed DNA maps and genetic identification, it is impossible to establish who was actually what and when. This business of labelling ‘we’ and ‘they’ surely gets the targeted votes but it spreads poison — based of dangerous oversimplification.

The short point is that our group is gravely worried that the damage this ‘darkest hour’ is causing could well be irreparable and permanent — which no other previous crisis created. It is really doubtful whether any amount of chemotherapy on Indian society in future would ever be able to rid it of the cancerous cells that are deliberately being injected at present, on such a large-scale in such a well planned manner.

(Please Click Here to read the article on The Indian Express Website)