THE issue of reforms in governance and administration has become the focus of attention in recognition of the fact that good governance is necessary for ensuring success of development schemes, bringing improvements in the quality of life of citizens, eradicating poverty and for realization of the goals of equity and equality enshrined in our Constitution. With rapid and fundamental changes taking place in the political, economic and technological fields, the need for major reforms in our system of governance and public administration have assumed greater urgency.

Far-reaching changes in the global economy have made it necessary to build a competent and well-functioning civil service and as a result of recent changes induced by globalization, countries are competing inter-nationally not only in the market place but also on the quality of their governance structures. The changed policy of deregulation, liberalization and competition has suggested a new role for the civil services, emphasizing the strategic management of the economy in less prescriptive and more market-driven approaches. The changes in the economic structure have raised new demands related to control and accountability of the civil services as well as new definitions of professional obligations. In addition, the role and importance of civil society organizations and the private sector in the Indian economy and in society in general have increased substantially over the years, leading to the demand for a more participative government.

It is in recognition of the above mentioned realities that the Second Administrative Reforms Commission was set up in August 2005 with a wide ranging mandate to prepare a blueprint for revamping the public administration and to suggest measures to achieve a pro-active, responsive, accountable, sustainable and efficient administration for the country at all levels of government.

 

Administrative reforms is a complex subject. While civil services reforms is a key component of administrative reforms – because the quality of public service is critical to determining outcomes – administrative reforms would require addressing a number of legal, structural and procedural issues in not only the executive but also in other organs of government, i.e. the legislature and the judiciary. Perhaps because these were not comprehensively addressed in the past by the several commissions and committees that had been set up, the reforms undertaken so far have been somewhat incremental and ad hoc.

In this context, the mandate given to the Second Administrative Reforms Commission seeks to address reforms in a much more holistic manner on issues and institutions which have a direct bearing on a transparent inclusive and accountable system of governance. The commission has thus inter alia given far-reaching recommendations in respect of ethics in governance, social capital and trusts, crisis management, conflict resolution, apart of course from issues pertaining to reforms in the police and the criminal justice system, further strengthening the Right to Information Act, empowering local self-government institutions so that they meaningfully function as the third tier of government and so on. All these reforms are interconnected and interrelated and when implemented would play a major role in transforming our entire system of governance.

 

Civil services reforms itself encompasses a wide range of areas starting from the recruitment to the civil services, capacity building, system of placements, relationship between the political and the permanent executive and most importantly, the ethical values that the civil services must inculcate. Because of existing systemic deficiencies in these areas, our administration in general and the civil services in particular, are perceived to have become wooden, inflexible, self-perpetuating and inward-looking.

While the bureaucracy responds to crisis situations with efficacy and has admittedly made major contributions in strengthening our democratic polity, there is often tardiness and failure on its part to deal with normal situations and with citizens in a sensitive and responsive manner. One of the reasons for this state of affairs is the belief in the civil services that its authority and legitimacy is derived not from the mandate of the people but from an immutable corpus in rules that it has prescribed for itself, without any correspondence to the needs and aspirations of the people it serves and the democratic ethos. That is why the functioning of the civil services is characterized by a great deal of negativity, lack of responsiveness to what the people want and the dictates of democracy.

It is sad but true that the civil service in India evokes the metaphors of what Michel Crozier calls ‘bureaucratic behaviour’; the normal association that people have with the ‘vulgar and frequent use of the word "bureaucracy",’ which as Crozier explains, ‘evokes the slowness, the ponderousness, the routine, the complication of procedures, and the maladaptive responses of "bureaucratic" organizations to the needs which they should satisfy, and the frustrations which their members, clients, or subjects consequently endure.’

 

While recommending a wide slew of reforms in the civil services, the Administrative Reforms Commission has identified and been guided by a set of core principles which form the raison d’etre for the proposed reforms. These core principles are as follows:

* Setting right the asymmetry of power: There is an imbalance in the exercise of power in governance. Often systemic rigidities, needless complexities and over-centralization make public servants ineffective and helpless in achieving positive outcomes. On the other hand, negative power of abuse of authority through flagrant violation of law, petty tyranny and nuisance value is virtually unchecked. This situation is further aggravated by the asymmetry of power in our society. The ‘privileged’ government position gives even the lower government functionaries enormous power over most of the citizens given their abject poverty, illiteracy and a lingering feudal culture. This needs to be set right in any effort towards public services reforms through sustained capacity buildings and training which can change mind sets.

* Insulating civil servants from undue political interference: In a democracy, the civil service has to be answerable to the elected government. There is criticism, however, that increasingly partisan intervention and cronyism are undermining the rule of law, distorting incentives and condoning corruption. This is adversely affecting the morale of public servants. The relationship between the political executive and the civil services needs to be transformed on the basis of mutual understanding, respect and recognition of each other’s distinct roles and responsibilities.

* Professionalization with stability of tenure and competition: There is need to recognize the complex challenges of modern administration in various spheres of activity. Meeting such challenges require domain expertise and long experience in the sectors concerned. There is also need to foster excellence in the public system. Existing procedures and practices do not adequately help in developing domain expertise, nor do they help in utilizing the available domain expertise.

* Citizen-centric administration: The fact that the functioning of the civil services has an impact on the quality of governance and thus on the well-being of the citizen and the welfare of the community as a whole is often forgotten. The perception of the civil services today is of a vast impersonal organization without commitment to human needs and values. It is necessary to redress the situation, particularly in this era of participative democracy, by making the governance apparatus an instrument of service to the people.

* Accountability: There is a general feeling that existing mechanisms of accountability are inadequate. On the one hand, there are alibis for non-performance and on the other, competence and integrity are not adequately recognized or rewarded. Therefore, innovative and effective mechanisms need to be put in place to protect public money, guarantee intended outcomes and enforce accountability.

* Outcome orientation: Monitoring in government is primarily through measurement of expenditure against outlays and at best through defined outputs. Clearly, there is need to move towards measurement of outcomes. A change in this direction has already started with the initial outcome budgeting exercises. In order to engineer this shift to outcomes, major changes in attitudes, monitoring and evaluation systems, incentives and accountability measures are necessary.

* Promoting public service values and ethics: Apart from the traditional civil service values of efficiency, integrity, accountability and patriotism, it is necessary for civil servants to inculcate and adopt ethical and moral values including probity in public life, respect for human rights and compassion for the downtrodden and commitment to their welfare.

Based on these core principles, a set of reforms has been suggested to cover the following broad areas:

a) Recruitment and capacity building.

b) Placement and transfer policy.

c) Performance management and accountability.

d) Ethical code for civil servants.

 

The quality of governance is critically dependent on the quality of public servants and a major determinant of the quality of civil servants is the rigour and integrity of the recruitment process. The commission has suggested reforms in the system of recruitment focusing on substantially lowering the age of entry of candidates into the civil services so that candidates can be groomed at an early age to take up the responsibility of becoming public administrators – a concept it has designated as a system of ‘post school grooming’ of civil servants. The commission has to this end, suggested establishment of national institutes of public administration to run bachelor degree courses in public administration/management.

Selected centres at other universities should also be assisted to offer such graduate level programmes which should cover core subjects that are materially relevant for the civil services such as the Constitution of India, Indian legal system, administrative law, Indian economy, Indian polity and Indian history. Only graduates completing their degrees in public administration from these national institutes of public administration and the selected universities would be eligible to appear in the civil service examination. However, in order to keep the process inclusive and attract talent from all fields; graduates in other disciplines would also be eligible to appear in the civil service examination provided they complete a bridge course in the core subjects mentioned above at the designated institutions.

 

The commission has suggested that an expert committee should be set up in consultation with the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to develop the curricula for these proposed new courses so that these can be started early. In the meantime, the commission has also suggested major reforms in the existing system of civil services examinations so that the concept of evaluating aspiring civil servants on a set of above mentioned core subjects will become institutionalized and replace the existing regime which has allowed the proliferation of a huge variety of unrelated and often esoteric subjects that are not relevant for the publics services and are not comparable for the purpose of evaluation.

In addition, the commission has suggested conduct of the preliminary and main examination either simultaneously or within a period of two months of each other so that the present trend of a nearly year long recruitment process is substantially compressed. The commission has also suggested lowering the permissible age for appearing in civil service examination to 25 years for general candidates, 28 years for OBCs and 29 years for SC/ST and physically handicapped. The commission has suggested these age reductions because such age concessions actually amount to double jeopardy for the socially backward students since their late entrance into the public service de facto ensures that they would retire before they can reach the senior most positions in government while at the same time many unsuccessful candidates end up spending and wasting a large segment of their most productive years repeatedly appearing for these exams.

The commission has also suggested changes in the cadre allocation policy to ensure that for the north eastern state cadres, at least one insider vacancy is available for successful candidates from those states at all times. Finally, the commission has suggested a written exam for induction of officers of the state civil service into the All India Services to ensure greater transparency and objectivity in the process. For the purpose of capacity building, the commission has recommended that mandatory training at the induction stage should be ensured for all categories of government servants including Group-D staff where there is maximum interaction with citizens, before they are assigned postings, combined with intensive periodic training programmes to inculcate domain knowledge, civil service ethics and discipline among public servants. Successful completion of these trainings has been linked with career progression.

 

The commission has emphasized the selection of ‘the right person for the right job’ in public administration and providing them with security of tenure so that they can deliver results in the jobs entrusted to them. To this end, the commission has recommended creation of an independent five member Civil Service Authority comprising of persons of eminence in public life and professionals with acknowledged contributions to society, to be appointed by the President on the recommendation of a collegium comprising the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. Domains or designated areas of specialization would be assigned by the proposed authority to officers of the All India Services and Central Civil Services on completion of 13 years of service. The assignment of domains would be done through a consultative process including interviews. Thereafter, posting at the level of Deputy Secretary/Director in government of India should be done in one go for the whole year rather than on an ad hoc basis as at present.

 

For higher positions in government, the commission has also suggested incorporation of some elements of an open, position based Senior Executive Services (SES) system at the top management level. This would be achieved in the following manner: In place of the present empanelment system for short listing officers for posting at the Joint Secretary and above levels in the Government of India, a competitive system would be put in place for such postings under which the independent Civil Service Authority would invite applications, conduct interviews and short list suitable officers whose names would be recommended to the government of India for making the final selection on the basis of this short list.

For the posts at Joint Secretary level, applications would be invited for the eligible officers from the All India Services and the Central Services whereas for posts at the Additional Secretary and above levels, applications would be invited from the open market as well as from serving eligible officers of the organized services. The commission has also recommended that senior positions (SAG and above) would be opened up for such competition based selection across the board in all ministries of government of India including posts that are at presently encadred with any of the Group A services to ensure that the posts at the highest level are filled through a competitive process. All these changes in the placement process should lead to a more objective, transparent and fair system of staffing of leadership positions in government.

 

The commission has made detailed recommendations for expanding the scope of the present performance appraisal system of government employees to a comprehensive performance management system which would link individual contributions to the strategic objectives of the organization to which he belongs. Annual performance agreements have also been prescribed between departmental ministers and secretaries for providing verifiable details of the work to be done.

To ensure greater accountability, a system of two intensive reviews, one on completion of 14 years of service and another on completion of 20 years of service, has been proposed to be established with the first review aimed at warning those who need to improve their performance and the second review serving the purpose of a fitness bar to weed out non performers. To meet this objective, the ARC has recommended that appointment letters for new entrants into government service should specify that the term of appointment is for 20 years only. For serving officers, it has been suggested that recourse may be made to Section 56(j) of the Fundamental Rules (FR) for this purpose.

The commission has also made detailed recommendations for simplifying disciplinary procedures following on its suggestion to repeal Article 311 of the Constitution (which it had recommended in its report on ‘Ethics in Governance’) to bring about a sea change in the institutional ethos of public administration so as to promote greater discipline in our government offices. In the present report, the commission has gone into the details of the disciplinary rules and procedures and suggested much greater delegation of disciplinary powers to all levels in the system, conversion of the present oral inquiry process that is modelled on court proceedings into simpler and more rational procedures (disciplinary meetings or interviews, as in other countries) and rationalizing the present regulations relating to repeated consultation with the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and the UPSC in disciplinary proceedings.

 

Ethics is a set of values and principles that helps guide behaviour, choice and action. Organizations as well as individuals have certain ethical standards. Civil servants have a special responsibility because they are entrusted with managing resources on behalf of the community, delivering services to the community and taking decisions that affect a citizen’s life. The community, therefore, must be able to trust the integrity of the civil service decision-making process. Civil servants are expected to maintain high standards of professionalism, responsiveness and impartiality. In India, civil service values have evolved over years of tradition and are presently codified in a set of conduct rules. The code of behaviour outlined in the conduct rules is generally in the form of a catalogue of acts that are considered undesirable for government servants. There is no code of ethics prescribed for civil servants in India which lays down a clear and concise statement of the values and ethical standards that a civil servant should imbibe.

A comprehensive civil service code can be conceptualized at three levels. At the apex level, there should be a clear and concise statement of the values which should reflect public expectations from a civil servant with reference to political impartiality, maintenance of the highest ethical standards and accountability for actions. At the second level, the broad principles which should govern the behaviour of a civil servant may be outlined. This would constitute the code of ethics. At the third level, there should be a specific code of conduct stipulating in a precise and unambiguous manner, a list of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and actions. Accordingly, the commission has recommended that a code of ethics for civil servants should be incorporated in a proposed new civil service law and the conduct rules should also be redrawn based on the same.

 

The challenges of refurbishment of personnel administration in India are substantial and critical to improving our governance which, in turn, is the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development. It is our hope that with the implementation of these reforms India will have a civil service that is a valuable resource of expert and objective policy advice, which delivers high quality citizen-oriented services, which attracts, best talents from society, where objectivity, impartiality and accountability are the norm and not the exception and which commands the confidence and respect of the people.