Upsetting the applecart, the Bhola Singh way

The MP says hiring of retired bureaucrats can affect the morale of younger officials in the administration

What does the state of India’s bureaucracy have to do with British writer George Bernard Shaw? A beautiful actress who proposed to him and the qualities of a child of an imagined union of the two? The answer to this question, which caused much laughter in the Lok Sabha, was put forward by Bhola Singh, BJP member from Begusarai.

Mr. Bhola Singh was posing a question to Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh on the re-employment of retired bureaucrats in the government and how this could affect the morale of younger people in the administration.

He started by quoting Gunnar Myrdal’s

Asian Drama. “Indian society is change-resisting society,” he said, coming out with another quote: “The vested interest in ideas is more dangerous than an atomic bomb.” When this too didn’t help to illustrate his point, he fell back on Shaw.

“The bureaucracy is an essential tool of governance, and if you are re-employing people, or keeping them on, on the basis of seniority and specialisation, why should that not be extended to politicians? Instead, let me recount a story related to George Bernard Shaw, who was approached by a young actress, who proposed marriage to him. Shaw said he was 75 years old, and wasn’t up to much. The actress, however, insisted that she wanted to marry the writer, to produce a child who would have Shaw’s brains and the actress’s body. Shaw demurred and said it could well be that the child could have Shaw’s body and the actress’s mental faculties,” Mr. Singh said. This elicited laughter from Prime Minister Narendra Modi too. Speaker Sumitra Mahajan asked him to get to the point.

The match-up between the bureaucracy and representatives of the people was important, he said. “Would you tell someone you want to train as a swimmer [referring to young bureaucratic recruits], why don’t you learn to swim on dry land? Or drink some water, that should help you swim?” he said.

Dr. Jitendra Singh termed the MP’s supplementary questions a “philosophical” recounting of a problem. In fact, he spoke of the advanced cut-off age for taking the civil services examinations. He then gave details of how the rules were being made stronger for recruitment of consultants.