Open Forum

Institutional Atrophy

DEBASEMENT OF GOVERNANCE

By Ashok Kapur (IAS Retd)

The cancer of corruption is spreading unchecked throughout the body politic of the nation. The problem has become particularly acute in the last few years, amongst the public servants. The malaise has spread to the highest categories.

Till the other day, corruption in the public services was largely confined to the lower echelons that were viewed as customarily, may be even incurably venal.  The police inspectors, the ticket examiners, the junior engineers, and minor revenue functionaries are at the cutting edge of administration. Of late, however, hardly a day goes by when the national media does not report the spread of this cancer to the highest level.

The spread has been quite secular; in a perverted way. It has engulfed sections of judiciary, the civil service, the armed forces and the police at the top levels. The very fact that charges are being levelled against a Chief Justice of India, Chief Secretaries, Chief Commissioners, District Magistrates and the Directors General of Police tells its own unsavoury tale. In the armed forces, looking to the large number of reported cases involving senior generals and the equivalent ranks, the joke has gained currency that the general court martial has become the generals’ court martial.

The reasons for such widespread corruption are deep and more complicated than would appear at first glance. The very fact that accusing fingers have been raised at all is more a slur on the government of the day than the individual public servants involved. The situation is truly embarrassing, as it appears that the main task of the government has been reduced to setting CBI against its own senior public servants. This is indeed a debasement of good governance.

The main reason for this vertical spread of corruption to the highest levels is inadequate compensation paid by the Government to its senior-most functionaries.  The net take- home pay of senior officials and members of the judiciary has been reduced to a pittance, looking at the market reality.

The problem has to be analyzed in the perspective of history of governance in independent India. The nation was indeed fortunate that it inherited a system from the British wherein the higher echelons of public servants were largely free of venality and could maintain a standard of living which was somewhat comparable with the other sections of the society, whether in private employment or in business or professions.

A healthy differential was in place between the lowest and the highest categories of public servants. A respectable level of net emoluments was ensured in the judiciary; the civil service, the armed forces and the public sector. This was done to ensure a certain comfort level among the senior-most officials at the supervisory levels. They have greater responsibility, are frequently rotated and made to suffer the highest income tax burden.

The recent Hota Committee on administrative reforms, headed by the respected former Chairman, UPSC, which examined the problem in some depth, was aghast at the gradual erosion of the healthy differential among various levels of public servants, to the detriment of senior most functionaries.

After Independence and till recently, though the curse of socialism afflicted the entire polity, its visitation was selective. The emoluments at the lower categories were gradually raised, whereas at the highest levels, these were either frozen if not actually reduced! All in the name of a defunct ideology worldwide. The curse was selective in other ways too. The emoluments of senior public servants, for that mater the entire body of government servants are revised only after a decade or more. The embargo is applicable to the political executive. It dutifully revises its own emoluments periodically.

Another deception is artfully practiced by the political class. Whereas their monthly ‘pay’ is kept relatively low, perquisites, facilities and incentives are liberally moved north. To cite just one example, whereas the fixed pay of senior-most officials was frozen at Rs 26,000 per month, the elected representatives grossed anywhere between Rs 1,00,000 to Rs 1, 50, 000. In the annals of government functioning,’ “socialism” was never so self-serving. Obviously, it was meant only for lesser mortals.

All along, the more vocal sections of public services with substantial clout which could virtually bang at the table of the political class, like the armed services, the teaching community and even a state-level service composing the subordinate judiciary, looked after themselves. From time to time, they enhanced their perquisites, facilities etc., while maintaining a façade of horizontal parity with the civil service. There is now no upper limit to vertical levels of perquisites.

To obviate this legacy of the socialist curse, the Hota Committee has recommended a Federal Pay Comparability Act, on the lines of the similar law in the US. Believe it or not, the said Act was the handiwork of the US Congress when it discovered that the child that does not cry does not get the milk. In India, such legislation is sorely needed; as the milk bottle is being taken away from the child that does not cry.

It is hoped that a similar law in India can alone remedy the intra-public services disparity and restore the inter-group parity amongst the legislature, the judiciary and the permanent executive.

With the legacy of the socialist curse lingering, the situation today is hopeless. The difference in the net take home pay between the highest and the middle level is marginal. And the net differential between class-I, the class-II officials is hardly Rs 2000-Rs 3000. In stark comparison, the level of responsibility, tough service conditions and the tax burden on senior officials is virtually unbearable. Little wonder that corruption has become rampant even among the senior-most functionaries of the government. A fact little noticed, has escaped the attention and the concern of civil society at large. It is no longer individual cases of rotten apples.  The institutions they head are decaying, which would render the very functioning of democracy virtually impossible.

The Sixth Pay Commission is examining the overall emoluments of various categories of public services. It is hoped, it examines the total emoluments structure particularly of senior public servants comprehensively. Otherwise, the cancer could prove to be terminal. ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)