As I see the police commissioner of Kolkata being retained for further questioning in the chit fund related cases, I ponder at the fall in the overall levels of credibility of civil servants.
In my tenure as the Chairman of Leather Export Promotion Council, I had the opportunity to work with some of the outstanding IAS officers, upright and efficient, as well as a few not so. Overall the Civil Servants were the blue-eyed citizens of the society and commanded immense respect everywhere. However, most suffered from overburdened with the aura and kept to their own colleagues in the services. There again, seniority matters, the assigned department matters and the regulars look down upon the promotee officers elevated from the state civil ranks or had passed exams after being IPS or IFS officers.
Notwithstanding any, the bureaucracy is the combination of all internal organs of the administration, their political masters, merely the body and their acerbic tongues. The officers, under the fear of transfer or subjugation, has learnt to be passive and subservient to the legislature, often where they must disagree with their masters. ‘Bara Babu’ and ‘Babu’ sadly is all that could differentiate a high secretary in the government and a lowly clerk.
Not that everything is gloomy in the bureaucracy. The UP officers now have annual secret balloting to identify the most corrupt of their colleagues, though the government is dismissive of such noble efforts. Ironically in one case, an officer voted as most corrupt was selected as the Chief Secretary of the state. A transfer is a weapon wielded by the politicians, and here the courts have declined to interfere, ‘on normal administrative exercises undertaken by the government.’
It’s impossible for any government official at any level from Panchayat to Union ministries to indulge in any corruption without active or passive participation. The Commonwealth Games scam, the 2G, the land grabs could never have happened with an exercise of due diligence by the bureaucracy, which sadly they have utterly failed. It is only the signature of the officers that could move wealth. As the country marches ahead, there would be a need for greater probity and transparency in every step. From a few million dollars in GDP, in the seventy years, we are nearly touching US$ 3 Trillion which could treble in the next ten years.
The urge of the politicians to invent new ways and methods to subvert systems and plunder will not change too soon, in the wake of their greed to get rich, and also to feed the thousands of party cadres. It is in the interest of the politicians to allure the officers or by subversive methods to force the officers in meekly complying with their crafty designs. It is the job of an upright officer not to get entangled in placating wily politicians, like in the present case of the harassed Kolkata Police Chief, who is undergoing lengthy traumatic interrogation regarding scams.
Not all politicians are corrupt, and most officers are honest. It’s they who have to propel the nation forward without fear or favour, by identifying the black sheep and discarding the bad fish. I wish the return of the days when the proposals for marriages, place their first preferred choice for officers from the government.
Jai Hind!
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide voix
