UPSC GK: Lateral Entry into Civil Services (POLITY)

Neither new nor undesirable

21.06.18 TH OPINION

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY ATTEMPTS TO FIX CHALLENGES OF GOVERNANCE: Our ceaseless search for the Holy Grail to fix the challenges of governance always leads us nowhere because the thing doesn’t exist. But what we find in the process is a counterfeit, of… well, nothing; it looks like a solution but it is in fact a problem. Good intentions, unless tempered by thoughtful deliberation and preparation, do not lead to good policy outcomes.

GOOD INTENTIONS HAS MOTIVATED GOVT TO INVITE INDIAN NATIONALS WITH EXPERTISE TO APPLY FOR 10 J.S. POSTS: The move by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) towards lateral entry in government service falls in this category. It has invited applications from “talented and motivated Indian nationals willing to contribute towards nation building” to be appointed as joint secretaries in 10 Departments/ Ministries at the Centre. One cannot question the good intentions behind the decision to make lateral entry more institutionalised than the case till now. Nor should one read too much bad faith into this, until and unless that bad faith comes into the open.

IS THE PRACTISE OF LATERAL ENTRY IN KEEPING WITH IDEA OF CIVIL SERVICES AS ENVISAGED IN CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY? WHAT IS THE FLAW WITH CONSULTATIVE PROCESS OF INVOLVING PRIVATE SECTOR EXPERTS? Once we unwrap the new policy, however, what we find is a little incongruence that can one day grow into a monster. Since the problem that the new policy seeks to fix remains vague, we cannot hope for whatever improvements promised. It is also a distant cousin to the ‘committed bureaucracy’ bogey of the 1970s. Moreover, the lateral entry policy goes counter in spirit to the governance philosophy enunciated by the Constituent Assembly, insofar as it concerns the candidates from private sector, consultancy firms, international/ multinational organisations (MNCs). Traditionally, the services of outside experts were availed through consultative processes, a practice quite widespread with the erstwhile Planning Commission and to some extent with its new avatar, the NITI Aayog. It is not clear why the government determined that the practice was not effective.

Why and wherefore

INADEQUATE EXPERTISE AMONG IAS IS KEY REASON TO PROMOTE LATERAL ENTRY: The lateral entry decision is based on the assumption that since our civil servants, especially those of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), are generalists and hence ill-suited to deal with policy implications of new technologies and new modes of thinking, the country is in dire need of domain experts. Nobody questioned the assumption so far as the government invoked it sparingly and also it is prima facie valid.

LATERAL ENTRY POLICY ALSO AIMS AT AUGMENTING MANPOWER IN CIVIL SERVICE; WHAT WILL UPSC DO THEN? The policy’s aim “also to augment manpower” can only mean that the lateral entry will be as wide as regular recruitment and used as regularly. In doing so the government is turning an exception into a rule but the whole enterprise also begs the question: what does all this mean?

DOMAIN EXPERTISE HAS NOT BEEN CLEARLY DEFINED; HAVE WE EVEN LOOKED SUFFICIENTLY WITHIN OPUR RANKS FOR DOMAIN EXPERTS? Neither the DoPT nor Ministries concerned cared to define ‘domain expertise’. For example, most of the 10 posts open for lateral entry are pretty generalist. A joint secretary in agriculture? And a candidate is merely directed to the website of agriculture ministry. Has the need for domain expertise in plant breeding been felt so as to look for another M.S. Swaminathan? Is there a need for a plant pathologist? A marketing expert? Or is the nation destined to have joint secretaries in all branches of a given Ministry? Therefore, we must recognise that domain expertise is salient only in a very narrow context.

A clear trade-off

LATERAL ENTRY + SIMULTANEOUS ELECTIONS = STEPS TO PROMOTE DEVELOPMENT; BUT WHAT ABOUT RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY? What is common between the lateral entry policy and the push for simultaneous polls is a certain restlessness that the system has become too unwieldy to speed up development. The sentiment is honourable but misplaced. The Founding Fathers felt that India needed a responsible government more than an efficient one. Trade-off, there is.

FOUNDING FATHERS CHOSE A RESPONSIBLE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM OVER A STABLE PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEM: While elaborating why the Constituent Assembly preferred the parliamentary over the presidential system, B.R. Ambedkar reflected the sense of the House that while the former is more responsible but less stable, the latter is more stable but less responsible. Is the country in such a state to opt for efficiency at the cost of accountability?

3 WAYS TO ENSURE RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT = INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY + SCRUTINY OF LEGISLATURE + NEUTRAL BUREAUCRACY: Of the three methods at our disposal to ensure the government is responsible, one is independence of judiciary; the second is to subject the executive to constant scrutiny of the legislature; and the third is to maintain bureaucratic neutrality.

Most democracies train their higher civil servants to be accountable rather than efficient and India is no exception. What haunts a civil servant is the spectre of having to answer to a quo warranto writ against his alleged action/inaction. If this dynamic renders bureaucracy slow to act, it’s a welcome trait. In any case, a civil servant is expected to follow the decisions taken by the political executive which is the real master.

METRIC OF ACCOUNTABILITY, BUREAUCRATIC NEUTRALITY AND FIDELITY TO DUE PROCESS – CAN ALL OF THIS BE ENSURED AMONG LATERAL ENTRANTS? The new system is open to three groups: 1) officers of State governments; 2) employees of public sector undertakings and assorted research bodies; and 3) individuals in the private sector, MNCs, etc. Among the three groups, any metric of accountability, bureaucratic neutrality and fidelity to due process gets progressively worse from group 1 to 3.

CAN DECADES OF ACCULTURATION AND O.J.T. OF CIVIL SERVANTS BE REPLICATED AMONG LATERAL ENTRANTS? The nation cannot escape the havoc likely to be wreaked by a large number of private sector experts becoming joint secretaries on three-to-five year contracts. Whatever training or orientation that these new entrants will undergo cannot match 15-20 years of acculturation/on-job training that regular officers receive before they become joint secretaries.

Unless the government is mindful of the dangers, lateral entry can result in large swathes of higher bureaucracy being consumed by the ‘nation-building’ zeal at the cost of accountability.

D. Shyam Babu is Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal

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Trial by hire

24.06.18 TW

BEST EXAMPLE OF LATERAL ENTRY -> MMS: It was on a flight in the early 1970s that the then minister of foreign trade Lalit Narayan Mishra met a young Indian economist, Manmohan Singh, who was working with the United Nations. Impressed by the interaction, Mishra hired him as an adviser in his ministry in 1972. That was one of the better-known examples of lateral entry into the government. Singh went on to become the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, the Reserve Bank governor and, by a stroke of luck, the prime minister in 2004.

(As a Minister of Foreign Trade, he was one of the first to recognize the potential of future Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh and appointed him as his adviser at the Ministry of Foreign Trade. Their first meeting happened coincidentally on an India-US-Chile flight.[3] Mr. Mishra the minister for commerce (then called minister for foreign trade) was on his way to Santiago, Chile, to attend a meeting of UNCTAD.)

Governments have for long been looking for specialists in different fields to overcome the talent deficit in their ranks. The current Narendra Modi government is no different. Last June, Modi appointed Rajesh Kotecha, an ayurveda doctor and former vice chancellor of Gujarat Ayurved University, as a secretary in the AYUSH ministry.

Current Prasar Bharati CEO Shashi Shekhar Vempati, who earlier worked with Infosys, is another example of lateral entry to a post usually held by a bureaucrat.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE: MONTEK SINGH AHLUWALIA

A few months before Kotecha’s appointment, the prime minister’s office had asked the NITI Aayog to create a policy for hiring specialists as lateral entry to middle-rung posts. Economist Arvind Panagariya, who was vice chairman of NITI Aayog, came out with a policy document, India—Three-year Action Agenda 2017-20 , which first articulated the lateral entry policy at the joint-secretary level. In April 2017, the document was cleared after a NITI Aayog meeting.

But, more than a year later, when the government came out with an advertisement seeking applicants for 10 joint-secretary posts, curiously on a Sunday, it opened a Pandora’s box.

AREAS IN WHICH LATERAL ENTRANTS HAVE BEEN INVITED TO APPLY: The ad asked for expertise in specific areas of revenue, financial services, economic affairs, agriculture, road transport and highways, shipping, environment, renewable energy, civil aviation and commerce. The choice of ministries indicated that the government was looking at expertise that the generalist IAS officers might not have.

QUALIFICATIONS FOR LATERAL ENTRANTS: According to the ad, the applicant should be at least 40, and a graduate from a recognised university. Officers of any state or Union Territory government, with relevant experience, can apply. Persons working in non-government companies with at least 15 years of experience can also apply. The pay would be between Rs 1,44,200 to Rs 2,18,200 a month.

2 MAJOR ADVANTAGES OF LATERAL ENTRY: Said NITI Aayog CEO and former IAS officer Amitabh Kant: “The NITI Aayog experience with lateral entry has been extremely good. They bring in a vast number of fresh and vibrant ideas. This move was long overdue. It will catalyse Union Public Service Commission entrants to specialise.

BUT GOVT MUST ALSO LET IAS AND OTHER OFFICERS SPECIALISE: The government must also allow deputation of its officers to the private sector as well.”

JOINT SECRETARY IS A SENIOR POST MANNED BY AN IAS OFFICER USUALLY: However, unlike advisers and subject experts hired by various ministries, a joint secretary is a senior post. It is usually handled by an IAS officer, who has the responsibility of running a specific department of the ministry. According to statistics, the Union government has 391 joint secretaries. But, the dearth of subject experts compelled the government to fill the vacancies with specialists.

CRITICISM: SUBVERTS UPSC’S ELABORATE SELECTION PROCESS: There was sharp criticism from political parties, which said the move was aimed at doing away with the elaborate UPSC selection process and to fill the government with people from a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh background.

CRITICISM: RESERVATION POLICY FOR UPLIFTMENT OF SC AND ST WILL BE UNDERMINED: The opposition parties’ main grouse was that, under this process, the policy of reservation was being done way, albeit covertly. And, as reservation is a sensitive topic, the government would find it difficult to defend itself, especially in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Former finance minister P. Chidambaram said there were “serious misgivings” about the government ad and that more clarity was needed on the development.

The powerful IAS community has also reacted strongly. “It is a disruptive idea that will challenge the IAS officers who often become complacent after years of service, till they become joint secretary,” a retired IAS officer said on the condition of anonymity. “In the past, we had imminent lateral entries like [economist] Montek Singh [Ahluwalia]. So, care should be taken in the selection. It is a good move to get good people. Most of my retired colleagues are roiled at the idea, saying it will undermine their services. But, I say why not try this idea for five years as the government says.”

Said former IAS officer P.S. Krishnan: “Due recruitment process should be followed so as not to undermine anything that will hamper the rights of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.”

Another criticism is that the hiring procedure has not been explained, which has led to people to believe that selections could be based on personal preference.

CRITICISM: GOVT HAS BOUGHT THIS POLICY TOO LATE IN ITS TENURE: Moreover, bringing a new policy at the fag end of the government’s tenure casts doubts about proper implementation.

Government sources, however, said that in days when expectations are more, it helps when there are people who can deliver. “The rising complexity of the economy has meant that policy making is a specialised activity,” NITI Aayog’s action agenda said. “Therefore, it is essential that specialists be inducted into the system through lateral entry. Such entry will also have the beneficial side effect of bringing competition to the established career bureaucracy.”

Currently, when an IAS officer is promoted to the secretary level, he has only two to three years of service left. “One possible solution is early promotion to the secretary position. Introduction of lateral entry will facilitate this change,” said sources. Specialists could be brought in with three- to five-year contracts.

Former home secretary G.K. Pillai said, “It is a good move, but one has to be sure if it is for a short time or permanent. Also, there is no clarity whether a person hired as an expert in health, say allopathy, will be moved to ayurveda. Then, it will not work. Moreover, a person should be inducted for a longer period, as it takes time for a person to understand it. It will need commitment from a person who wants to join.”

Sanat Kaul, a retired IAS officer who has held several government positions, welcomed the move, but said that the selection procedure has to be impeccable. “Otherwise, it would mean filling the posts with people [associated with political] parties. What was known as a steel frame has been reduced to rubber frame, as loyalty to a minister matters more to an officer than actual work. They prosper more than the officer who stands up against them.”

WILL THIS LEAD TO FAVORITISM? The government had earlier created a pool that had officers who could be called in for specific roles. This, said many officers, could be a better way to deal with the talent deficit. They also pointed out that, at one stage, Modi had done away with interviews for the lower posts to curb favouritism.

Ironically, this latest move could fall prey to the same problem.

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2^ND ARC ON LATERAL ENTRY

Inducting specialised personnel in the government

The Second Administrative Reforms Commission had also observed that some senior positions in the central government require specific skill sets (including technical and administrative know-how).[iii] One way of developing these skill-sets is to recruit personnel directly into these departments so that they can over a period of time develop the required skills.  For example, personnel from the Central Engineering Service (Roads) may aspire and be qualified to hold senior positions in the Ministry of Road, Transport and Highways or a body like the National Highways Authority of India.

However, another view is that special skill-sets may be inducted in the government through lateral entry of experts from outside government.  This will allow for widening of the pool of candidates and greater competition for these positions.[iii] The Second Administrative Reforms Commission had also recommended that senior positions in the government should be open to all services.

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WHAT IS ARC

ARC is the committee appointed by the Government of India for giving recommendations for reviewing the public administration system of India. The first ARC was established on 5 January 1966. The Administrative Reforms Commission was initially chaired by Morarji Desai, and later on K. Hanumanthaiah became its chairman when Desai became the Deputy Prime Minister of India.

The Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) was constituted on 31 August 2005, as a Commission of Inquiry, under the Chairmanship of Veerappa Moily for preparing a detailed blueprint for revamping the public administrative system.

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Pros of lateral entry:

1) The lack of specialisation across the top tier of Indian bureaucracy is a concern that has remained unaddressed until now.

2) IAS officers get recruited at a very early age via the UPSC exams. It is difficult to gauge their administrative judgement and capabilities then. Some may pass with flying colours, while others don’t make the cut even later on in their careers. Allowing for lateral entry of seasoned professionals and experts into the service makes up for this deficiency.

3) Career promotions in the IAS move along seamlessly with few impediments along the way. Attempts to introduce ‘meritocracy’ hasn’t quite worked out. Bringing in experts from the professional sphere is expected to shake the IAS out of their comfort zone.

4) This isn’t the first time that the government brought in professionals from the private sector or academia into the top tier of government. Take a look at the Finance Ministry, Reserve Bank of India and even the current NITI Aayog, which have hired the likes of Raghuram Rajan, Arvind Subramanian and Arvind Panagriya to name a few.

5) The IAS was designed for a time when the State was all-powerful. That reality somewhat changed with liberalisation in 1991, where the state was compelled to cede more space to markets. Therefore, it becomes more critical for the government to ascertain the impact its policy decisions have on various stakeholders such as the private sector, non-profits, and general public, i.e. those who have experienced government from the outside.

Concerns with lateral entry:

1) Lateral entrants from the private sector and academia may not work well with the bureaucracy. The same pretty much goes for any inter-sector scenario. Differences in work culture, turf wars and systemic inertia often come in the way.

2) It’s important to gauge what processes the Centre has put in place to ease the transition and establish authority. Candidates coming from the outside may not know the nuances of the system which can be exploited against them in any number of ways.

3) The IAS establishment is likely to baulk at lateral entrants who haven’t made it through probably the hardest open competitive exam in the world, but because of privilege and social networks.

4) One of the distinguishing aspects that the current crop of IAS officers can hold up is their experience in the field, serving some of the poorest districts in our hinterlands. Those entering from privileged backgrounds and the private sector may have never seen a village school.

“The lateral entrants should, therefore, have mandatory ‘district immersion’, serving at least five of their first ten years in field postings. The hard grind of such field postings will make lateral entry self-selecting, drawing in only those with commitment and aptitude,” note Gulzar Natarajan and Duvvuri Subbarao, both IAS officers who have served with the Anhdra Pradesh cadre, in a column for The Indian Express.

5) There are also concerns that the introduction of pro-establishment candidates through lateral entry at the position of joint secretary could stifle good civil servants who are resisting against something inadvisable that the government seeks to do.

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NCERT

WHO ARE CIVIL SERVANTS? Trained and skilled officers who work as permanent employees of the government are assigned the task of assisting the ministers in formulating policies and implementing these policies.

It is the responsibility of the administrative machinery to remain politically neutral and faithfully and efficiently participate in drafting the policy and in its implementation.

The All India Services have their origin in the conception of ‘Civil servant’used in the British East India Company’s official records in 1765 and it was Governor General Cornwallis who introduced Covenant Civil services (Higher Civil Services) and the Un-Covenanted Civil services (Lower Civil Services).

Originally opened to only the British, Indians were allowed to compete for these services after 1870 when the Indian Civil Services Act of 1870 was passed. After India became independent, the founding fathers debated the need to have All India Services and decided that it was necessary to have a civil service that will foster national integration.

The credit for establishing the All India civil services in independent India goes to Sri Sardar Patel, the first Home Minister of the country and the great architectof political integration of the entire nation.

In post-Independent India, the civil services had to be transformed. From serving foreign masters, the administrators were expected to serve the people in a democratic framework of governance based on the Constitutional provisions. 

This required a shift in emphasis from merely administering or carrying out the tasks efficiently to whole heartedly serving the country. As Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel put it so beautifully in his stirring address to civil service probationers at Metcalf House in New Delhi on 21 April 1947:

“The service will now be free to or will have to adopt its true role of national service without being trammelled by traditions and habits of the past;

Officers must be guided by a real spirit of service in their day-to-day administration, for in no other manner can they fit in the scheme of things

Your predecessors were brought up in the traditions in which they felt out of touch and kept themselves aloof from the common run of the people. It will be your bounden duty to treat the common men in India as your own or to put it correctly, to feel yourself to be one of them.”

Persons selected by the UPSC for Indian Administrative Service and Indian Police Service constitute the backbone of the higher level bureaucracy in the States.

Makers of our Constitution were aware of the importance of the non-partisan and professional bureaucracy. They also wanted the members of the civil services or bureaucracy to be impartially selected on the basis of merit. So, the Union Public Service Commission has been entrusted with the task of conducting the process of recruitment of the civil servants for the government of India.

STEPS TAKEN TO MAKE CIVIL SERVICES SOCIALLY REPRESENTATIVE: While efficiency and merit are the norms for recruitment, the Constitution also ensures that all sections of the society including the weaker sections have an opportunity to be part of the public bureaucracy. For this purpose, the Constitution has provided for reservation of jobs for the Dalits and Adivasis. These provisions ensure that the bureaucracy would be more representative and social inequalities will not come in the way of recruitment to the civil service.

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CONCERNS AND REFORMS RELATING TO BUREAUCRACY:

A study by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, released in 2012, ranked and rated Indian bureaucracy as the worst in Asia with a 9.21 rating out of 10. According to the study, India's inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy was responsible for most of the complaints that business executive have about the country.

A paper prepared in 2012 by the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions states that corruption is prevalent at all levels in civil services and it is institutionalised.

On 28 November 2011, the Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT) of the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions created a proposal to retire and remove incompetent, inefficient and unproductive All India Service officers after 15 years of service, instead of tolerating them until their retirement. Former Cabinet Secretary TSR Subramanian welcomed this move with caution, saying, "Periodical weeding out is very good. But the process to determine who needs to be prematurely retired should be fair and transparent. There is a possibility that even good officers may be targeted because of political reasons,".

In 2016, the Ministry of Finance for the first time, dismissed 72 and prematurely retired another 33 Indian Revenue Service officers for non-performance and on disciplinary grounds.

In 2016, it was reported that Government of India has decided to empower common man to seek prosecution of corrupt IAS officers. Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions (DOPT) has accepted to receive requests from private persons seeking sanction for prosecution in respect of IAS officers without any proper proposal and supporting documents.