Subservience over Efficiency: The
Prime Minister & Civil Service 'Reforms'
By Jawhar Sircar
(The Hindu Centre for
Politics and Public Policy, 20.07.2018)
In 2014, when
Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office he could have—and should
have—pushed through urgently required structural reforms to improve India’s
conservative bureaucracy1. He had an unprecedented mandate and had charmed voters into
believing that he would cleanse Indian governance as none before him ever had2. In reality, however, he appeared quite comfortable
with the creaky bureaucratic apparatus that he had inherited, for he had
assumed that his first-hand experience in running it at the State level for
over a dozen years would suffice. But the fact is that the two sets of
administration in our federal set-up, the Union and the State, are actually as
different as chalk is from cheese3. This is not only in terms of scale: what distinguishes the
two bureaucracies are their totally different world-views and consequentially,
their approaches to governance. In a State, a Chief Minister can operate
through select bureaucrats who swear personal loyalty to him—or her—rather than
to democracy, and may do wonders4—though many of these Gujarat myths5 are now being busted on closer scrutiny6.
But this
personal fiefdom model clearly does not work in the national capital of 1.35
billion people. In a rather impersonal Delhi, systems matter more than rustic
loyalties, and experience, not just genuflecting, counts. Prime Minister Modi
is finally realising this, after his disastrous demonetisation botch-up, the
several hit-wickets over the Goods and Services Tax (GST), and his failure to
move the economy upwards even when blessed with the lowest-ever international
petroleum prices. This partly explains why he has chosen the last of his very
secure five-year term to tinker around with the bureaucracy. After four years
of relative peace, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) in particular, and
the civil services in general, are suddenly being targeted for overhauling. Not
a week passes without some bright idea being floated or an order being issued.
A spate of recent announcements, however, call for a closer look and the moot
point is: will these usher in revolutionary improvements in the functioning of
either the bureaucracy or democracy or will the proposed measures help
consolidate the iron grip of one person or a party?
But why did Modi decide to lean
so heavily on the bureaucracy from the day he took over as Prime Minister? The
reply is simple: he needed a set of people who could carry out his commands
without question. The Secretaries to the Government of India were his
points-persons, and Cabinet Ministers were told this quite unambiguously. For
widely differing reasons, he behaved as if his Ministers, save a couple of
lucky exceptions, were hardly worth relying upon.
This is not a
sweeping generalisation: I can cite many instances to substantiate this
observation, from my experience of running Prasar Bharati, a mammoth public
institution, for two and half years in the Modi regime. For example, the
sudden, unwarranted and controversial decision in October 2014 to broadcast on
Doordarshan the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) supremo Mohan Bhagwat’s
traditional Dussehra Day speech to his cadres was obviously taken by the Prime
Minister himself7. No one
was consulted in an 'autonomous organisation' and it was thrust upon all,
including the protesting CEO of the public broadcaster. The Information and
Broadcasting Minister appeared to have been left out of the loop, and
incidentally, this is the same Minister who was ordered by the Prime Minister's
Office (PMO) to return home to change from the jeans he was wearing to some
more appropriate dress, before boarding his plane for his foreign tour.
It was made clear to everyone in
Delhi that Modi's ministers were not his colleagues—they were his
subordinates. He was much more than primus inter pares or
first among equals. After all, it was he who had ensured that his party, the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), almost single-handedly, had won an absolute majority
in Parliament in 2014. In one sweeping order, he abolished the 68 Groups
of Ministers (GoMs) though which the previous United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
government operated, deciding all inter-Ministerial issues and problems through
consensus. It signalled that the Prime Minister would take the call after
consulting the Secretary of the concerned Ministry and if required, the
Minister—but the last was rare.
In a
theatrical gesture, he had kissed the steps of Parliament for countless cameras
to capture the moment when he entered its portals for the first time,
but none of his subsequent actions revealed any fondness for parliamentary
democracy. Not surprisingly, his cohorts took their cue from him and sang the
virtues of the American presidential system. The otherwise communicative Prime
Minister chose not to be present in Parliament most of the time and when he did
attend, he very rarely participated in the debates. But more important is the
fact that even though he wielded enormous, unprecedented power, Modi did not
utilise it to abolish the feudal habits of the bureaucracy, and re-invent it
for the 21st century.
After all, the same machinery
had served avaricious post-Mughal rulers. More or less the same bureaucracy was
taken over by Warren Hastings and Cornwallis in the latter half of the 18thcentury, once they snatched the reins of power. The colonial duo
did place a few white men on top but they also manipulated this feudal
bureaucracy for their own purposes of extortion and repression and to facilitate
their own unjust enrichment. The new 'nabobs', as the British overlords were
called, set up hundreds of 'circuit houses' to hold peripatetic revenue courts
(on their 'circuits') in the interior and built countless inspection bungalows
to strengthen their control and bring rural India to heel.
As Prime
Minister, Modi was given the opportunity to surgically cut through the ailing
parts of this vast bureaucracy, this colossal pyramid. But he chose not to.
Instead, he used technology to seek explanations directly from District
Magistrates in this 'federal polity', bypassing the constitutionally approved
layers. Over the next few months, it became increasingly clear that he was an
unabashed centraliser who did not believe in 'cooperative federalism', one of the
many catchy phrases he popularised, only for effect.
Indeed, his centralising8 of
all decisions, postings, and transfers was not only unprecedented, but it often
resulted in deadlocks. Critical posts of heads of national-level institutions
were kept vacant for several months and years—even as they went to seed—and all
important boards and committees took even longer to fill up. Decisions had to
await his personal attention but he was forever on tour—bestowing embarrassing
bear-hugs on every foreign leader he met. He did introduce a new and subjective
'360 degree assessment system', but this was to ensure that those he did not
want were not promoted as Secretaries or Additional Secretaries. He also
brandished a weapon called 'repatriation' that had been used very rarely in the
past. In the last four years, more IAS, Indian Police Service (IPS), and
Central service officers have been sent back to their States or cadres from the
central government than in the preceding four decades put together. Cabinet
reshuffles have been infrequent, but reshuffling of Secretaries, Additional
Secretaries, and Joint Secretaries are so regular and unpredictable that it has
started to demoralise the bureaucracy. But these tactics do not qualify as
structural changes.
On its
part, the bureaucracy soon mastered the art of survival. Many bent backwards,
in contorted yoga postures, to applaud every 'scheme' that the leader announced.
Most of these schemes were just rehashes of earlier or existing schemes,
renamed with much fanfare by the Prime Minister and his coterie. Total personal
loyalty and unusual subordination could just not ensure efficiency and
delivery. No advice was either sought from (or given by) 'professional
administrators' who had spent a lifetime in drafting and implementing complex
schemes and projects. Else, an administrative disaster like the
demonetisation of currency notes could not have either been conceived or rammed
through. It also explains why no senior official was held responsible for this
Himalayan blunder. Modi and his protege from Gujarat, Finance Secretary Hasmukh
Adhia, decided everything in total secrecy. The chatteratti of Delhi
spoke of how the Finance Minister himself was not kept informed of its details
and the Banking Secretary was never in the loop—which explains why the banks
floundered for want of a determined line of command. More recently, Arvind
Subramaniam, the government's senior most economist, submitted his resignation
to go back to the U.S., just as Arvind Panagariya, the former vice chairman of
Niti Aayog, did a while back. But then, these economists have already gathered
enough material to write their best-sellers.
Subverting
the UPSC's methods
It is against this backdrop that
the Prime Minister's proposal of May 20, addressed to all the Ministries, is
alarming. It suggested that the Department of Personnel and Training, which
Modi heads, should finally determine the fate of candidates who successfully
clear the extremely difficult civil services examination conducted by the Union
Public Service Commission (UPSC). He wants the allocation of the three All
India Services, the IAS, the IPS, and the Indian Forest Service as well as the
17 to 20 Central Services to be done by the training
institutes that successful civil service candidates report to for the first 100
days, rather than the UPSC.
Currently, the UPSC uses its
time-tested 'rank cum option' system to allocate the service for successful
candidates. But if the new system is enforced, a successful candidate who
qualifies for the three All India Services, where a 'State cadre' has also to
be determined, will have his—or her—fate determined by the training academies,
not the UPSC alone. This, is even though the current system has worked well for
seven decades.
All officer-trainees undergo
their common training, known as the Foundation Course (F.C.) at the
training academies, of which the 'mother' training institute is the Lal Bahadur
Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) in Mussoorie.
Unfortunately, as the LBSNAA can no longer accommodate all the successful
candidates, who now number around 1,000 to 1,200, some officer-trainees do
their F.C. at new training centres located in other cities. This is a pity
because the F.C. period is the only time civil servants from different services
stay together and acquire life-long friends, beyond their own service or
cadre.
Apart
from the fact that it is not clear how these multiple training institutes will
standardise their assessment grades in just three months, what is causing
concern is that successful candidates may spend the entire F.C.
period currying favour with their trainers to ensure they move upwards to
more coveted services or careers. Or that open political jockeying will be the
order of the day to help enterprising candidates jump from the middle of the
list to the top—as Modi's department will then matter more than the UPSC.
However, the Prime Minister's
'decision' may not pass the test of judicial scrutiny if it is carried out as
Article 320 of the Indian Constitution empowers only the UPSC to recommend and
decide the postings of officers to different services and State-cadres. But if
this case goes to a 'considerate bench' in the Supreme Court, anything can
happen. Indira Gandhi bullied the judiciary and encouraged some judges to crawl
and be rewarded. The key point, however, is that Modi chose to impress upon all
civil servants, once again, that he is the boss, and he will decide their fate
and future, even if the first experiment is likely to be after the next general
elections.
For the last 70 years, the UPSC
has been following a very rigorous, transparent process, inviting applications
from some hundreds of thousands of aspirants. In 2016, some 11,35,943
candidates applied for the UPSC's 'Preliminary' examination and 4,59,659
actually took the examination. Only 15,445 were selected to take the next very
tough series of 'Final' examinations. After that, the UPSC constituted
interview boards with highly qualified experts — vice chancellors, retired
civil servants, top scientists, army generals and other specialists — to grill
the cream of the candidates that emerged through these two stages. In 2016,
only 2,961 were called for the interviews, and 1,209 were finally recommended
by the UPSC for appointment to the civil services. Thus, only one out of every
940 aspirants made it to some service, with just one out of every 4,000 or
so 'general category' aspirants qualifying for the IAS. It is important to note
that there are four categories of 'posts' in each service, reserved for the
Scheduled Castes (SC), the Scheduled Tribes (ST), the Other Backward Castes
(OBC) and the residual 'General' lot.
The UPSC
also scrutinises the 'options' submitted by individual candidates for specific
services of their choice, in terms of vacancies available for each service
under these four categories. For those who opt for and also qualify for the
three All India Services, there is the additional option for the State cadres
they prefer, and these choices have to be done precisely in conjunction with
the limited number of posts available under each category (SC,ST, OBC, General)
for each of the 23 services. Even the UPSC does not claim that its system is
perfect, but it has earned credibility and is the best we can get. The fact
that the UPSC selected less than 200 for the IAS and the Indian Foreign
Service out of the 4.6 lakh aspirants who appeared for the preliminary
examination does not mean they are 'superior' — it just means that they scored
better in a specific set of tests.
Joint
Secretaries as lateral entrants
The second 'bouncer' was lobbed
on June 19: ten 'professionals' would be inducted from the open market at the
'cutting edge' level of Joint Secretaries in the Union government. By declaring
these 10 posts to be contractual in nature and not on the permanent rolls, the
government conveyed its intention to bypass the constitutionally laid down
imperative of getting the selection done only by the UPSC. Earlier governments
had brought in professionals from outside like Manmohan Singh, Montek Singh
Ahluwalia, Vijay Kelkar, and Jairam Ramesh, but without such fanfare. They were
all highly qualified individuals with impressive educational and work
experience, just as the post of Chief Economic Advisor is usually filled by
foreign-based economists, even after 70 years of Independence.
The civil services were not
alarmed at their entry or even when these economists did not return to their
universities in the U.S., like ex-Chief Economic Adviser Kaushik Basu or former
Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan did. They hardly noticed the trickle of
such contract-based employees who often bypassed the UPSC rules and took no
note when their terms were extended under various provisions, or they moved
from job to job, within government. It was only when some of these
'professionals' reached ministerial status and rose even higher, that the
regular bureaucrats woke up. But then, these 'professionals' were well
qualified and so very few in number. Moreover, they were not 'regular Joint
Secretaries or Secretaries' who replaced officers from the IAS or other
services — they were just 'special adjuncts'.
This time, however, hackles have
been raised because the advertisement is for 'regular Joint Secretaries' and is
quite vague about their qualifications. Indeed, it looks like a case of testing
the waters before the real reason emerges. It is worth noting that many of the
earlier crop of professionals subsequently joined politics, which is one of the
several concerns expressed after the present advertisement was issued.
To
appreciate better why 10 Joint Secretary-level market recruits have become the
subject of so much discussion, let us try to understand what this is all about.
The highest official in the Government of India is the Secretary in charge of a
Ministry: there are usually around 70 to 80 such posts for a total of 50,000
civil servants. They, in turn, control some 60 lakh government employees of
other grades. Eight or so of these Secretary-level posts are usually occupied
by scientists and other specialists, such as the Secretaries in charge of
Atomic Energy, Space, Science and Technology, and Statistics. The real cutting
edge of the central government is, however, at a notch or two below, as the
Secretary is usually busy with meetings, briefings, parliamentary demands,
important policy decisions and ceaseless fire-fighting or attending to
ministers. Thus, the ubiquitous Joint Secretaries — roughly 470 of them —
actually run each critical vertical in the Union government.
Ten lateral level entry Joint
Secretaries may be too small a number to worry about, but it is also too small
a number to make a difference, if that is what Modi desires. Of course, it is not
clear, how much power they will be given because Modi has an established record
of showering disproportionate favours on those members of Delhi’s establishment
who swore undying loyalty to him before he became Prime Minister. He, however,
would certainly crush any civil servant or economist if he or she began to
develop links with the Opposition now, in the manner in which certain high
flying individuals had done. The best known case perhaps is that of Bibek
Debroy (now Chairman of the reconstituted Economic Advisory Council reporting
to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Niti Aayog Member)9 who,
as a member of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies (1997-2005),
had written what became a game-changing report for Modi: he had written a
research paper, along with Laveesh Bhandari) that was published by the RGICS.
That paper created a controversy as it rated Gujarat as the number one State in
India in terms of providing economic freedom. The paper's findings were used by
Modi, who was then Chief Minister, to come out with a full-page
advertisement extolling his government. Many people see it as the beginning of
talk of the Gujarat model that helped Chief Minister Modi power his way to
Delhi as Prime Minister Modi. There are also civil servants who were favourites
with the previous regime, who have now shifted their "loyalties" to
the Modi government. That is the fear: are we heading for a situation in which
individuals who are willing to insinuate themselves into any administration
will be recruited in one shot to carry out ‘special tasks’ that even the most
‘accommodative’ of most serving bureaucrats would baulk at?
The media is, however, not fully
correct when it says that the IAS is threatened by the possibility of 10
external professionals coming in laterally at the Joint Secretary level. The
IAS no longer dominates the Joint Secretary-level appointments, as the other
services have secured their rightful positions. Moreover, most States (like
Gujarat, when Modi was its Chief Minister) are unwilling to let their officers
go on deputation to the 'Centre'.
The
Opposition, instinctively, has smelt a rat, seeing in this move (of lateral
entry into the service) yet another attempt to 'saffronise' the administration
with these 10 lateral entrants, with more to follow.The CEO of Niti Aayog,
Amitabh Kant, who has emerged as a spokesperson for this government on
administrative issues, has pronounced that we need to be “flexible” and
"transparent" in selection, without elaborating on either of the words10. The
Secretary of the concerned department and authorised officials of the PMO,
however, have maintained silence on the subject, which has fuelled more
concerns. The Niti Aayog's CEO also announced that more lateral recruits would
be taken in, at the level of Deputy Secretary or Director in the central ministries.
An occasional breath of fresh air is surely desirable, if one is sure of the
quality of 'professionals', not just their loyalty. But what is critical is
that safeguards need to be put in place to ensure that a 'lateral entry' Joint
Secretary is not a stooge of a business house who will be adequately rewarded
by the house for extending favours to it, once this low-paid term is over.
Senior civil servants — even of
the regular variety — have been known to alter government policies to suit
certain business interests, even if this causes losses to the exchequer. A
disturbing piece of news that one hopes is not true is of a just-retired
Secretary of the Human Resources Development ministry, who drafted the
controversial rules to accord the 'centre of excellence' tag to even unborn
universities. It is reported that he is currently employed by the same business
leviathan that stands to benefit from this rather illogical rule. The media
says that the government has been unduly kind in granting special permission to
this favoured bureaucrat to serve his new employer before the quarantine period
was over11.
Orwell's dictum comes to mind, that "all animals are equal, but some
animals are more equal than others". After all, the business house is so
close to the centre of power.
These 'breaches' of conduct are
rare among regular civil servants who get a pension. But what of those who come
from the private sector and will return to it after three years? There are many
other areas that need clarity and the pronouncement made about more such
recruitments to follow, needs to be spelt out in greater detail and placed in
the public domain or before Parliament
It is almost
certain that the UPSC is out of the selection, as these 10 are supposed to come
in for three-year contracts, in which case it is not mandatory. Even so,
entrusting the UPSC with the selection may be less controversial, and it could
conduct special but transparent examinations, as it has done earlier.
Transparency in selection is critical, because the maximum salary of some
$3,000 a month and the usual "car and a flat" (even in south Delhi)
is unlikely to excite the interest of professionals settled abroad.
Incidentally, only three of the 70 to 80 Secretaries in the Government of India
occupy the much-envied bungalows in Lutyens' Delhi and Joint Secretaries are
allotted modest flats, compared with what private sector honchos are accustomed
to. We are not even discussing the utter humiliation that many public servants
have to go through at the hands of elected politicians and their acolytes — in
the name of democracy.
In addition, given that
thousands of senior posts are lying unfilled because of the constitutional
compulsion to reserve almost half the number only for eligible SC, ST, and OBC
candidates, the present regime must clarify whether the recruitment of these 10
lateral entrants will follow reservation norms. Or else, 'contract employment'
may well be misused to defeat the reserved quotas, as the Dalits have pointed
out.
No one
says that the government does not require lateral entrants at each level to
bring in special skills: we already have two Secretaries selected from the open
market. At the same time, IAS and other officers — many of whom are toppers
from the IITs and IIMs or qualified doctors, lawyers, or economists — also
need to be encouraged to specialise, after their district phase is over. But
professional specialisation of IAS officers has not been encouraged by Modi’s
own tightly-controlled personnel department or by State governments. As a
result, these highly-qualified professionals and university toppers are usually
made to move from atomic energy to gobar gas — without
being allowed to acquire the desired degree of 'specialisation'. This is where
Modi could have made the historic difference: he could have encouraged
specialisation and professionalisation among the highly-qualified existing
officers who, additionally, have 20 or more years of 'hands on' experience in
administration from the village level upwards, before being selected as Joint
Secretaries — through a tough process of weeding out.
Repeating
an old order
And, most recently, the Union
government wrote to the States asking them to ensure that IAS officers at the
level of Secretary and Additional Secretary are henceforth assessed on their
attitude towards the weaker sections of society. This is quite superfluous as
this provision was embedded in the All India Services Conduct Rules a
long time ago, and has since been one of the major criteria on which
'performance' is judged.
If the Prime Minister needed to
send placatory signals to the weaker sections of society — that are quite
disappointed with him and his government — he could very well do so on his
weekly radio broadcast, Mann Ki Baat. It is
doubtful whether former Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani's
scandalously insensitive handling of Rohith Vemula's suicide or the repression
let loose on Dalits after the clash at their Bhima Koregaon anniversary or even
the attacks and murder of carcass flayers will be forgotten, because such a
legal provision is being reiterated. But the high-handed manner in which State
partners in our federal set-up were literally ordered to agree immediately to
this order or face political humiliation is characteristic of Modi’s regime.
The shots were, sadly, fired from the shoulders of the IAS.
Equally
important is the mention that Secretaries and Additional Secretaries would be
assessed on both "financial integrity" and "moral
integrity". But this is not only not a new provision, a small but viscous
number have always managed to prosper under corrupt political masters. There
are exactly 5,004 IAS officers in India, of whom some 65 to 70 make it as
Secretaries in the Union government — and Modi has certainly failed "to
improve their efficiency". Even though civil servants are constantly under
multiple surveillance, the vexatious existing procedures for convicting any
government official (not only those in the IAS, IPS or IFS) are self-defeating.
Thoroughly upright seniors cannot punish their corrupt juniors at present,
because of processes that take decades and exonerates most. The 'dreaded 3 Cs',
the CBI, the CVC (Central Vigilance Commission) and the CAG (Comptroller and
Auditor General), can hardly function effectively as they are hamstrung by the
same dilatory procedures. Yet, the 'the 3 Cs’ are either a reason for serving
officers refusing to take risks or for really injecting terror — without, in
fact, being able to check corruption so rampant in the bureaucracy.
Modi would have been better
served if he took a break from his 'loyalists' and consulted the very few
'reformist Secretaries' who are beyond fear or favour. The creaking
bureaucratic system, a product of our 'Soviet' period that preceded economic
liberalisation, is screaming out for reforms. For instance, a simple 'out of
the box' solution is to hold secret ballots periodically in every government
office, to create a reliable database of 'marked officials' — those whose
financial or moral integrity is in question. Everyone in the office knows who
they are, but the honest majority suffer in silence as these nefarious elements
are favoured by every regime. Many of them are also the most litigant ones and
some also lead employees' unions. They can make life miserable for their
colleagues or superiors by manufacturing spurious complaints against them.
Once such a database is created
through a series of 'secret ballots', the government would have evidence that
even the courts would accept and would not have to wait for the bribe to be
taken or a woman to be actually molested. It could direct the attention of the
investigating agencies to the leads provided by this data and go hammer and
tongs after the 'marked officials' — and not plod on as at present only after
formal complaints are lodged. Instead, in Modi's regime, an officer like former
Coal Secretary H.C. Gupta was convicted and awarded a jail sentence, even
though all his colleagues swear that he was an honest officer who may just have
slipped up.
If we
agree that the UPSC's highly competitive examinations still select the best
candidates possible, we need to examine what happens thereafter. Young officers
are thrown into a system where they are brutalised by the political
class and unscrupulous seniors, resulting in many among them becoming corrupt,
callous, inefficient or simply lazy. Every government since Independence —
including this most hyped one — is equally guilty of permitting the political
class to bully civil servants and traumatised them into inactivity, connivance
or even cash partnerships. The vast majority has simply been numbed into
compliance. Modi really did not need to curry favour with the dirtiest layer of
the political class, as he could make or break anyone. He missed his tryst with
destiny by mesmerising himself with his unreal oratory12 and
in dressing up unapologetic narcissism as state policy13. Modi
could have used his electoral mandate to institute permanent civil service
reforms. Instead, he allowed himself to be distracted by other preoccupations
and then scrambled in his last year, to tighten a screw here and a nut there —
only to ensure that his personal power and glory increased, at any cost.
Consequentially, the corrupt tax
officer extorts even more and the slothful sleep during office hours. He has
bludgeoned the top layer of the bureaucracy but has failed to elicit their
confidence in rebuilding India, shoulder to shoulder. His crudely communal
approach to governance may not have elicited horror from serving officers, most
of whom are terrified of 'Big Brother' watching them all the time, but retired
officials rose up against a Prime Minister and his regime's impropriety as
never before in India's history. His government will surely go down in history
as one which spread fear amongst insecure civil servants for no productive
reason, but one where sycophants achieved dizzying heights, while upright,
imaginative and innovative officials went unconsulted, unwanted and unrewarded.
References:
[All
URLs last accessed on July 19, 2018.]
1. Veerappa Moily, Union
Minister and author was entrusted in 2005 to head the Second Administrative
Reforms Commission and after four years, he has produced 15 volumes of report
and recommendations — that were not acted upon by either the UPA or the NDA
governments. Return to
text.
2. India Today. 2014. Full text of
Narendra Modi's speech in Delhi on Jan 5, 2014, January 5.
[https://www.indiatoday.in/india/north/story/bjp-pm-nominee-narendra-modi-speech-baba-ramdev-161259-2014-01-05].
Excerpts from Mr. Narendra
Modi's speech at Baba Ramdev's rally in Delhi, reported in IndiaToday online
on 5 Jan 2014. (1) "Bureaucracy's hold is getting strong and the BJP is
working hard on this". (2) "We were not born for posts but to do
something in life." (3) "Most governments come and work day and night
on how to win the next elections. But with Gujarat's example, I say everything
is possible." Return to
Text.
3. Maheswari,
S. 1992. Problems and Issues in Administrative
Federalism, Allied Publishers. Return to
Text.
4. Shah,
G. 2013. Politics of
Governance: A Study of Gujarat. Studies in Indian Politics.
June 1. Vol. 1, Issue. 1, pp. 65–77. [http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2321023013482788]. Return to
Text.
5. Leading the Modi fan brigade
are Bibek Debroy's Gujarat; Governance for Growth &
Development (2012, Rediff Books) and Uday Mahurkar's Centrestage:
Inside Narendra Modi Model of Governance (2014, Random House).
While the first hagiography earned the economist a permanent seat on Modi's
high table, the latter was a calculated primer for Modi's style of governance,
meant for Delhi analysts, media persons, middle men and bureaucrats. Return to
Text.
6. Ghatak,
M, and Roy, S. 2014. Did Gujarat's Growth
Rate Accelerate under Modi?, Economic and Political Weekly.
April 12, Vol. 49 (15): pp. 12–15. The Economist of
London has exposed several other claims. [http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/mghatak/EPWModi.pdf]. Return to
Text.
7. Anuja.
2014. RSS chief’s speech
shown on Doordarshan, stirring controversy, Live
Mint, October 3.
[https://www.livemint.com/Politics/vAvPYrSC6P4mYMazJy87BI/Doordarshan-telecasts-RSS-chief-Mohan-Bhagwats-annual-speec.html]. Return to
Text.
8. The Indian Express. 2014. Full Text: Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on 68th Independence Day,
August 16.
[https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/full-text-prime-minister-narendra-modis-speech-on-68th-independence-day/].
Mr. Modi justifies his
centralisation in his first Independence Day speech from Delhi’s historic Red
Fort in August 2014 thus "I have started making efforts at making the
government, not an assembled entity, but an organic unity, an organic entity, a
harmonious whole - with one aim, one mind, one direction, one energy." The
Indian Express, August 16, 2014. Full text of PM’s speech. Return to
Text.
9. Bibek Debroy had earlier been
Director of the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies, and given a
glowing report on Gujarat. Return to
Text.
10. Razdan,
N. 2018. Lateral Entry Will
Be For Finest People In The World: NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, NDTV,
June 11.
[https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/niti-aayog-ceo-amitabh-kant-lateral-entry-will-be-for-finest-people-in-the-world-1865876]. Return to
Text.
11. The Times of India. 2018. Ex-secretary not in
conflict over Jio institute, says HRD ministry, July 12.
[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/ex-secretary-not-in-conflict-over-jio-institute-says-hrd-ministry/articleshow/64954109.cms]. Return
to Text.
12. It is painful to compare his
negligible achievements in administrative reforms with what he promised,
say at Varanasi on December 22, 2013 : “we want to bring development, it can
happen - brothers-sisters, the biggest problem before the country is good
governance - we got 'Swarajya' but we didn't get 'Surajya'; didn't get
'Susashan' - from this very land of Maharashtra, Lokmanya Tilak had given a
Mantra, "Swarajya Mera Janmasiddh Adhikar Hai" - brothers-sisters,
the nation fought with "Swarajya Mera Janmasiddh Adhikar Hai" - and
we got 'Swarajya' - today, the need of the time is - that we all demand that
'Surajya Mera Janmasiddh Adhikar Hai' - before Independence, 'Swarajya' was our
birthright, after Independence, 'Surajya' is our birthright” India
Today, December 23, 2013. Return
to Text.
13. Gupta,
A. 2012. Red Tape:
Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India,
Duke University Press. July. [https://www.dukeupress.edu/red-tape]. An
excellent example of corruption and the bureaucracy may be seen in Gupta’s Red
Tape, especially in chapter 3 on ‘Corruption, Politics and the
Imagined State’ pp. 75-110. Return
to Text.
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