The Steel Frame has lost its sheen
THERE is nothing surprising about Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde demanding that he be allotted the Home portfolio. Equally, there is nothing surprising that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis would want to keep that all-important charge. Across the country, every CM, from Yogi Adityanath to Pinarayi Vijayan and Mamata Banerjee to Chandrababu Naidu, has retained this portfolio.
Every state and district-level politician knows that effective political power resides in the control of the instruments of law and order and intelligence-gathering. There was a time when Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel echoed the view of British Prime Minister Lloyd George that the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) was the country’s ‘Steel Frame’. Today, in every district across the country, most folk know that the superintendent of police counts for more than the district collector or magistrate.
The Home Ministry has a different profile in the Union Government, as former Home Minister P Chidambaram once explained to me. When his colleague Pranab Mukherjee, then Union Finance Minister, opted to move to Rashtrapati Bhavan, Chidambaram sought to return to the west wing of North Block that houses the Finance Ministry. The Home Ministry is located in the east wing.
I asked him why he wished to do so. After all, from the days of Sardar Patel, Home was regarded as the second most important portfolio. Senior BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani kept Home and allowed lesser mortals like Yashwant Sinha to be allotted Finance. Chidambaram’s reply was sharp and quick: “There’s no work in the Home Ministry except when there is some crisis. Finance is a 24x7 job. I am still young. I don’t need a sinecure.”
What Chidambaram did not spell out is that the real power of a home minister resides in the control of key investigative agencies. However, with the creation of the post of national security adviser (NSA), the heads of most intelligence agencies have been reporting directly to the NSA and through him to the PM. On the other hand, the finance minister had a couple of intelligence agencies under his/her command, most importantly the Enforcement Directorate. Today, many of these agencies, including those dealing with external intelligence, periodically report to the Union home minister, making that post a powerful one.
At the state level, the control of the home ministry is not just about managing law and order and securing intelligence. The police have become the most powerful segment of all civil services. Officers of the IAS may have a higher social profile in the Union Government, presiding over economic ministries and still retaining control of the two top jobs — cabinet secretary and principal secretary to PM (though PN Haksar and Brajesh Mishra were exceptions to the rule) — but their status is below that of key police officers in state capitals.
For its part, the Indian Police Service (IPS) has not only secured the office of the NSA but also increased its control over several investigative agencies and gathered considerable power within the bureaucratic system. More IPS officers have become governors of states and union territories than IAS officers. In the present dispensation in New Delhi, the Union home minister derives de facto power by ensuring that heads of investigative agencies under other ministries also report to him. Both at the state and Central levels, the police have acquired considerable power relative to other members of the civil services. They have done so by becoming willing instruments of political power.
Here is a true story from four decades ago. I was at the time on the faculty of the University of Hyderabad. A student of mine wished to register for a doctoral programme after completing his master’s degree. His father, who had a non-IAS secretarial job in the CM’s secretariat, was keen that the boy take the civil services examination and become an IAS officer. The son was adamant. So, the father requested his boss, then Andhra Pradesh CM Chenna Reddy, a legendary and powerful Telangana politician, to drive sense into his son’s head.
Reddy summoned the boy and heard him out. He asked the father to leave them alone. With the young man seated in his room, he called his principal secretary, an IAS officer. The officer entered, seated himself, heard the CM out and walked out. Reddy then summoned his chief of security, an IPS officer. The uniformed officer walked in, saluted the CM smartly and continued to stand. Reddy admonished him about some lapse. The officer, still standing, apologised, saluted and asked for leave.
Reddy then turned to the young man. “Yesterday, one of your professors came to meet me," he told the boy. “He submitted a memorandum full of all kinds of charges. He gave me a lecture on how my government was inept and corrupt. I had to hear him. I even offered him a cup of tea. Today, you have seen how my officers relate to me. If you do your PhD and become a professor and visit a chief minister, you will be treated with due regard. If you get into the IAS, you may have interesting responsibilities to handle. If you become a police officer, you will have to salute politicians like me. You decide what life you want.”
The young man was stunned, while his father was left dissatisfied with the CM’s little tutorial. He subsequently migrated to the US. When I heard this from the boy, my respect for Reddy went up steeply. His was, however, an altogether different generation of politicians. They did not wield power as nakedly as today’s do.
Thirty years ago, NN Vohra, a distinguished civil servant who served as the Union Home Secretary, Defence Secretary and the Governor of Jammu & Kashmir, wrote a report commissioned by then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao that examined “the nexus between the police, politicians, crime syndicates and the mafia”. A summary of this highly sensitive 1993 report was made public, but not its full contents. While the nexus between criminals, politicians and the police is now a nationwide phenomenon, the focus of the Vohra committee report was on Maharashtra. Not surprising then that the Home portfolio has become a matter of contention between allies in power in that state.
