Twenty-eight million applications, more than the population of Australia, that was the response for Indian Railway’s recruitment drive for 90,000 posts.

Management Professionals, Engineers, Lawyers, etc. queued up to compete with the illiterate to become sanitary workers and sweepers that don’t require any formal education. 

Ironically, industrial associations that propel the growth of India lament about the shortage of employable talents. 

It creates a baffling situation for a country with rapidly growing unemployment rates.

At one end, we see a massive influx of candidates for government jobs even for a lower salary, that too for undesirable titles in Indian parlance. But on the other hand, the private sector, even with better benefits, fails to attract and retain the desired talents. 

What makes government jobs in India attractive? 

Is it the sheer feeling of altruism to help the underprivileged and contribute to the nation-building process? Or is it a passion to be the new colonial bosses of brown skin?

The Legislature, Executive, and Judiciary are the cogwheels of Indian democracy. 

Legislatures are people’s representatives. They work with the people and resolve their issues through effective interventions and policy formations. The default tenure for the post is five years, and they have to secure the mandate of the electorate to continue.

In principle, they are answerable for the people for all their deeds.

 Judiciary deals with the enforcement of law using the constitution as the guiding star. Unlike in the case of the legislature, they enjoy better immunity from public scrutiny. But they are responsible for upholding the constitutional moralities to ensure a fair and just environment for the citizen.

Executive, as the name suggests, is responsible for the execution of policies and administration of day to day activities of the nation. They are involved in everything from the purchase of paper clip to spectrum allocation and has an omnipresence in the policy-making process as well.

They are the window of governance for the common man. He deals with them for his requirements from getting a residence certificate to death certificate on a daily basis. No government can function without the support of bureaucracy. It makes bureaucrats privileged and powerful.

They are the ones who move the governance, and it gives them great proximity to the power centers. Naturally, they have cultivated an ecosystem that protects their interests alone, irrespective of the social or political affiliations of people’s representatives. The service laws give them great impunity from any form of loss and make them the real rulers of India. 

Cracking the recruitment process is the only requirement to be in the mighty kingdom of civil servants or the omnipotent Indian Babus. Hardly any recruitment process checks the aptitude of the applicant for serving the people or their ability to be part of the nation-building process. 

 Your salary grows with your age without any performance evaluation, and hence, no skill upgrade is necessary. In the event of your untimely death, your children are going to inherit the job as if an ancestral property. Your salary, increments, positions, and pension will be regular even if half of the nation is washed away in flood. 

So it’s not astonishing that people spend their most productive years in the confinement of training institutions to get a job that doesn’t align with their personal preferences or traits. 

 Man, you are insane. The politicians are uneducated dumbs. It’s the educated bureaucracy that keeps the country going. 

 Indeed, we still have a significantly large number of lawmakers with dubious backgrounds and abysmally low education levels. But how far these celebrated educated civil servants are contributive to the development of this country is a debatable topic. 

India is a mix of different languages, multiple cultures, varying socioeconomic backgrounds, and complex caste equations. Setting standards for the representatives on their educational levels will sabotage the true intentions of people’s representation. 

If we have rustic, uneducated, and regressive people as lawmakers, it means our people are still living at low levels of human development indices. 

No doubt, education is one of the essential tools for development. But it alone can’t address the burning issues of people. We can’t expect an MP from tribals to speak or behave like a foreign-educated urban representative. But he may make an accurate representation of his people and can devise solutions to suit their requirements.  

Suppose, if the health ministry demands a blanket ban on tobacco products to reduce the health expenses, an MP from Guntur can’t be idle. For him, his people’s livelihood and well-being matter the most, and he needs to raise his voter’s voice to protect their bread and butter. It might not be a progressive approach, but those concerns, too, are relevant and have to be addressed for inclusive growth.  

Throughout the world countries with better Human Development Indexes are having great policymakers. But for a country like India, it will take much more time to become a mature democracy with good governance. The founders of this great nation were well aware of the time it may take for such a transition. They designed the bureaucracy to overcome the shortcomings of the legislature.

But in reality, the babus and the political leaders work as a nexus and loots the public money. It creates a severe resource crunch for development activities and pushes the common man to the walls, for generations. 

An elephant’s share of politicians in India is corrupt. But no corruption can happen without the support of the executive. Take any significant scandals Fodder Scam, 2G Spectrum Scam, or Colgate scam; it was our mighty babus who acted hand in glove with corrupt politicians and made financial gains. 

It proves that the common man’s blind belief in the bureaucracy as a watchdog for the erring political class is a myth. 

How can an officer lock horns with a powerful politician or minister? It will ruin his career

I agree, there is a widespread fear of losing career by standing against a corrupt politician. But in reality, a civil servant seldom faces any severe issues as long as they follow the legal route. Besides, they have competent statutory bodies to approach and can stand for themselves, if they wish. 

 For the All India Services officers, the only dismissing authority is the President of India. So, the maximum punishment an IAS/IPS/IFS officer could get for not budging to the political pressure is a transfer or suspension. The tedious multi-level processes and the inordinate delay force the political class to abandon any such drastic moves, even in deserving cases. There is saying that getting outside of the civil services is ten times harder than getting inside.

Everybody has occupational hazards; a civil servant is in a much better position than anybody else. 

I feel that the reverse is happening now. No government employee loses his job for underperformance. An allegation of corruption can dethrone a politician, not the officer. The eye washing effort of departmental inquiry will take decades and is often ends up as a futile effort.

Shouldn’t we need more government servants to cope with the population growth?

The growth happened not only in population but in different areas such as technology, infrastructure, etc. But our bureaucracy miserably failed to adapt to the ways to make them more productive. 

People consider corruption as the root cause of the bad state of affairs for an Indian citizen. But I believe the rampant corruption is a by-product of inefficiency. 

If the system is efficient to give you an equal opportunity, then nobody will bother to give a bribe. The system is so screwed so that you can’t be sure about the availability of your ration card without any errors. Naturally, you tend to bribe the officer to avoid the complex procedures for a correction. 

 Countries that value a citizen’s life spends more on Health care and education. The majority allocate more than 6% of GDP for these sectors. In India, studies show that allocations for these essential segments are education (3.3%), Healthcare (1.3 %) Defense (1.56%), abysmally low. But our salary expenses are more than 8% of GDP. 

It means this inefficient, lethargic system is eating up the resources for the vital organs of the country without any apparent contributions. This resource crunch is an impeding element for ensuring better living standards for the citizens and reduces the growth prospects of the nation.

The system needs a complete overhaul to make it more productive and beneficial to the taxpayers so that they can deliver their primary responsibility of nation-building effectively. 

Some ways to improve efficiency are : 

Performance Evaluation:  It is high time to discard the time old criteria of service duration for promotions. A more dynamic system based on performance evaluation is the need of the hour.  

Parallel Recruitment: If we can change the policymakers in every five years. Can’t we allow some fresh brains to the middle-level management or for specific projects?

 Sam Pitroda – The man who revolutionized Indian telecom- or Nandhan Nilekani, who spearheaded the massive task of Aadhar implementation- was not bureaucrats. Instead, they were lateral entrants for the process.

Improve Technical Adaptation:  Upskilling is practically an unheard thing in the corridors of power. They know they have the job until their retirement age. Instead of succumbing to their pressures, the government should implement procedures such as computerization on a war footing.

Making a citizen visit the village office to make the land tax payment during this era of digitalization is not just an inconvenience, but is an embarrassment for the nation.

Stop Hating Privatization: 

 Distrust in any form of privatization is part of our DNA, dating back to the East India Company era. We are obsessed with government intervention in all areas of human activity, from garbage collection to satellites.

Restricting government intervention only to decision making levels and utilize the professionalism of the private sector in non-critical areas can improve efficiency significantly. 

If you are still not convinced, check and compare the quality of service rendered at a panchayath office and the Passport Seva Kendra. Passport Seva Kendra deals with more sensitive data; naturally, one has ample reasons to expect long queues and delays. But privatization makes the entire process smooth, fast, and efficient with a focus on customer amenities. 

I don’t have any personal grudge against govt employees. But as citizens of this country, we need better governance and living standards.

 The core segments, such as health care and education, should get the highest allocations for improving the quality of life. Developments in these areas will bring up a new breed of politicians who can design and deliver a better India to the coming generations.