V S Pandey, Former Secretary, Government of India
The Union Government has come out with an advertisement inviting applications for ten Joint Secretary level positions in identified sectors through lateral entry method. It has led to lots of arguments for and against in the print and electronic media. Everybody has presented his own perspective on the issue. However there are few important points that need to be brought to the table before embarking on the pros and cons of this move.
Firstly, we should remember that in a democracy like ours, civil services and for that matter the bureaucracy as a whole, were created only as an instrument to look after the interest of populace and the country as a whole. Thus each step taken to change or reform a system must further and fulfill this basic objective. We need to analyse the present proposal of the Central Government on this criterion only. The arguments like destroying the existing system, affecting the promotion and career prospects of IAS or other services, breaking the hegemony of IAS etc. have no relevance.
Across the globe there are various models of bureaucratic structures available for us all to analyse and compare with our system. Nobody can deny that the governments should keep getting expert advice and opinion from everywhere possible to run things more efficiently for fulfilling the aspirations of people. How it should be done is the question.
There cannot be any argument against lateral entry of people at any level lest at the level of Joint Secretary. We all know that lateral entry has been done at the secretary level in numerous ministries like Petroleum, Power, Commerce, Finance, Economic Affairs, Steel, Agriculture, Defence Production. By the way these are the most important and sought after ministries in the Government of India. I do not remember that there was ever any opposition of outsiders being appointed as Secretaries to these important departments when the Governments of the day wanted to have people with domain expertise to head certain departments. So the present action of the government should in no way raise any alarm in any quarter on the ground that this step is against the larger interest of the system. The concept of lateral entry at various levels was even recommended by Administrative Reforms Commission and various other expert groups to make the system more responsive to the needs and aspirations of people.
The problem with the lateral entry system is lack of transparency, honesty and political interference in the selection process. Nobody knows why a particular individual was selected to head a particular department as Secretary and why others were not given the opportunity to serve at the top. Nobody knows why some individuals were selected and on what basis and why were many others more qualified left out. There are innumerable examples of less qualified and useless people selected and appointed in a totally opaque manner to very senior positions in the Central Government from time to time.
People argue that through transparent selection processes also the system is prone to selecting inferior and less qualified and incompetent people to important positions like Vice Chancellors, Directors to various National Level Institutions, CMD of PSUs etc . Clearly poor selection of personnel to man higher positions is one of the most glaring shortcoming of our governance for past several decades and due to this we as a nation have paid a very heavy price. This problem will be solved only when politics in our country will become honest, clean and selfless and oriented towards serving the people.
The Primary task of the Government should be to ensure that the process of selection to government jobs remains honest and free from interference from the politicians. On this account the present lateral entry proposal fails miserably. The question is why a committee under the chairmanship of Cabinet Secretary has been asked to select the lateral entry JS level officers, and why UPSC was not tasked to select these lateral entry Joint Secretary level officers. Fortunately Union Public Service Commission, for all these years, has been able to establish its credibility as an honest and transparent organization in the eyes of people. The government must recognize the fact that in public life perception is more important than reality. In this case there is a wide spread perception that the present day Central Government wants its own people stalled in important positions in the government through this exercise which is not going to yield any result but this action is going to open up a new chapter in administrative history of India establishing a wrong precedent of getting committed people in senior positions.
The argument that the present system has failed to perform and fulfil the aspirations of common people is valid but the question that needs to be asked is who allowed incompetent and corrupt officers to not only flourish in our system for decades but to dominate it ? Why the political executives failed to weed out incompetent and corrupt and failed to prevent them from occupying important positions, thereby making the whole administration and delivery system corrupt and rent seeking ?
Changes in any system are essential to keep it vibrant but any change which does not pass the test of “honest intention†needs to be discarded. The Government must look inside quickly and modify the selection process otherwise further serious damage will be caused to the otherwise inefficient, corrupt and self- serving administrative system.
