Appraisal of civil servants

Given the fiscal impact of implementing the Seventh Pay Commission, the extra money being spent on the bureaucracy must be accounted for. One cannot expect civil “masters” to start behaving like “servants” overnight, but some pressure may be for their own good in pulling them out of the laid-back mould. The pay commission and the government seem to have very high hopes from them. It is said “non-performing” employees will be denied the annual increment. Maybe a small number of powerless, “unconnected” employees still depend on increments for their well-being. Most don’t work for, or look forward to, increments. 

Calling for a paradigm shift, the pay commission has said “civil servants today need to be focused on outcomes, not processes, and have to be more accountable for delivery. They have to be agents of change…” They can either work for change or do what the political leadership wants them to do. Who wants change? Civil servants happily carry out the biddings of their political masters and enjoy benefits flowing from obsequious compliance. Babus’ fate is often ‘linked’ with politicians in power. During the recent appraisal of the Modi government only a handful of ministries — Power, Foreign Affairs, Railways and Transport etc — got a good ranking; it does not mean bureaucrats in the non-performing ministries do not work. 

The steel frame was expected to stay apolitical but in practice civil servants can be easily identified with the parties and politicians they work for so much so that sometimes it becomes difficult to pin the blame for a glaring lapse. When administrative machinery collapsed in Haryana during the Jat agitation in February this year, the lowliest district-level officials got the blame. They did not know in the battle for survival their own would turn against them. That is the way the system works. Few understand it better than Punjab's bureaucrats who know how to use politicians to their advantage in getting post-retirement assignments. Far from being “agents of change”, they are the status-quoist. The system suits them. For change, PV Narasimha Rao brought in outside talent in 1991; today the leftist CM of Kerala has hired a Harvard Professor.