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“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong”.
~ H.L. Mencken
A permanent civil service appointed through a competitive examination, known as the Merit System, was adopted by the British in India in 1858 — 12 years before it was adopted in the UK and 25 years before it was adopted in the United States. The Indian Civil Service (ICS) was considered one of the finest public services in the world and a model for others. The Merit System has been continued after Independence, and the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) has done a commendable job over the years by insulating recruitments from political patronage and selecting the best and the brightest through open competition and transparent procedures. No less a person than Professor Lant Pritchett of Harvard University paid this handsome compliment in 2010: “I have worked for the World Bank and it employs really brilliant people. I think the Indian elite and many Indian government officials in the IAS are even better than the World Bank brains.”
Why then is Indian bureaucracy seen as generally tardy, inefficient, unresponsive and uninterested in public welfare? Why do government programmes fail to deliver the promised results and government projects have huge cost and time overruns? It is important to note that dissatisfaction with government performance is universal and not confined to India alone. The key to understanding governments’ underperformance is not the personal attributes of civil servants but the environment of severe constraints that they have to operate under. For instance, as government is a very large organisation, it must have detailed rules for conduct of its business. As government deals with public money, it must account for every rupee. As government wields enormous authority, it must have many checks and balances. As government is the provider of last resort, it must do a lot of things that the private sector either can’t or won’t do. As government has to satisfy all classes of citizens, it cannot concentrate resources on a small number of priorities the way businesses do. As political leaders want to win elections at any cost, they often make suboptimal or even bad decisions. These are some of the core things about the way government functions that are never likely to change.
It follows that government can never have the nimble efficiency of the best of the private sector. At the same time, it is simplistic to think that government can be made more efficient by bringing in successful business executives, because they will have to operate under the same constraints and less knowledge of how to game the system. In a seminal essay titled “Managing the Public Service Institution” (1973), management guru Peter F. Drucker noted: “There is no reason to believe that business managers, put in control of public service institutions, would do better than the bureaucrats. Indeed, we know that they immediately become bureaucrats themselves.” Drucker cited the example of American experience during World War II, when large numbers of business executives who had performed very well in their own companies had moved into government positions. But in government they found themselves bogged down by procedures and red tape — and deeply frustrated by the experience. Things have been the same after World War II. A recent high profile ‘flameout’ is Rex Tillerson who was a successful Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil for 11 long years but an abject failure as U.S Secretary of State and got fired in March 2018 after a stint of just 13 months. Even where a handful of business executives made the transition from success in business to success in government, none achieved the kind of striking success that they had shown in the private sector. The same holds good for lateral entrants from universities, research institutions and international organisations.
It is against this backdrop that we need to examine the advertisement issued on June 10, 2018, by the Department of Personnel & Training (DOPT), Government of India (GOI), calling for applications from “talented and motivated Indian nationals” with expertise in the areas of Revenue, Financial Services, Economic Affairs, Agriculture, Road Transport & Highways, Shipping, Environment & Forests, New & Renewable Energy, Civil Aviation, and Commerce for lateral induction to 10 posts of Joint Secretary . According to the advertisement, the proposal of lateral entry is “aimed at bringing in fresh ideas and new approaches to governance and also to augment manpower”. Applicants should be graduates from a recognised university, over 40 years of age (with no upper age limit) and possess at least 15 years of experience. They should be “working at comparable levels” in State/Union Territory Governments, Public Sector Undertakings, Autonomous Bodies, Statutory Organisations, Universities, Research Institutes, Private Sector Companies, Consultancy Organisations and International/Multinational Organisations. The appointments will be on contract basis for a period of three years initially, extendable to up to five years in case of satisfactory performance.
Since the advertisement has been issued by the DOPT and not by the UPSC, it means that the selections will be done by the DOPT or the departments concerned, and not by the UPSC. This may be technically legal because the proviso to Article 320(3) of the Constitution of India enables such exceptions but, considering the importance of the post of Joint Secretary, it is not correct and will not carry credibility. There is a perception that such ‘extra-UPSC lateral inductions’ could multiply in future and at all levels. This has caused apprehension that India’s 160-year old Merit System of recruitment is being undermined and that ‘lateral entry’ is simply another name for the nefarious Spoils System.
The UPSC norm is to have a Recruitment Test “when some skill or proficiency of the candidates is to be assessed”. So, if the government is serious about appointing only “talented and motivated” experts by lateral entry to the posts of Joint Secretary, then a Recruitment Test in the specific area of domain expertise followed by an interview is an absolute imperative. But the advertisement states that “the shortlisted candidates will be called for a personal interaction with a Selection Committee”. It is highly doubtful if the domain expertise and aptitude of the candidates can be assessed properly through a ‘personal interaction’ lasting a few minutes. The proposed mode of evaluation doesn’t inspire confidence about its fairness and transparency and is open to serious abuse, more so since the recruitments will not be done by UPSC but by DOPT or the departments concerned.
An officer from the IAS or other civil services has to pass UPSC’s Civil Services Examination — one of the toughest of its kind in the world — and then put in about 20 years of service before he becomes a Joint Secretary through a stringent, if somewhat opaque, empanelment process. But a lateral entrant can hope to become a Joint Secretary with just 15 years’ experience through a mere ‘personal interaction’. This is not a ‘level playing field’ and, apart from seriously demoralising the permanent civil service, it may attract legal challenge on the grounds of violating Article 14 of the Constitution of India.
The educational and experience qualifications prescribed in the advertisement are so low and so general that for each post of Joint Secretary, there are likely to be hundreds of applications, if not thousands — especially from the private sector. The UPSC norm is to have a Recruitment Test “when the number of applicants is high”. Without such a test, shortlisting a few candidates for ‘personal interaction’ will neither be easy nor correct. No objective and transparent criteria for shortlisting have been announced. It is not clear as to who will do the shortlisting and whether they have the competence to do it. Not fixing an upper age limit is a mistake, and it will increase the number of applications received and complicate the shortlisting process. Moreover, it is difficult to apply the condition “working at comparable levels” to applicants from the private sector simply because there are no comparable levels. Even a lowly functionary may have a designation like ‘Senior Vice President’ or be drawing a high salary.
At the level of Secretary, the lateral entrant may have the stature to significantly influence policymaking but at the level of Joint Secretary his influence will be rather limited and he will be just another file-pusher and probably a worse one. So, lateral entry should be the rare exception and not the rule.
Therefore, one sees immense scope for litigation on the ground of ‘arbitrary and improper shortlisting of candidates’ unless a Recruitment Test is held.
The advertisement is rather bald and doesn’t indicate the specific area of domain expertise required for each post of Joint Secretary and refers applicants to the websites of the respective Departments. But even as on June 19, 2018, four days after the start date for receipt of applications, none of the Departments have notified the specific area of domain expertise required. For example, if the Department of Shipping were to identify ‘Harbour Engineering’ as one the of domain areas where in-house expertise is presently lacking, then the same must be notified and applications invited only from those candidates who have expertise in ‘Harbour Engineering’. This will also reduce the number of applications received. Further, the Selection Committee can be constituted properly only if the specific area of domain expertise is known upfront and top experts from that branch are invited to be on the committee. The Selection Committee cannot be expected to do a comparative evaluation of candidates with different domains of expertise. When the raison d'être of the entire exercise is to bring in new domain expertise to government, not notifying or undue delay in notifying the specific area of domain expertise required can raise valid suspicion and invite litigation.
In India, the idea of lateral entry into senior bureaucracy is not new. In the past, several eminent technocrats such as V. Krishnamurthy, D.V. Kapur and R.V. Shahi and renowned economists such as Manmohan Singh, I.G. Patel and Vijay Kelkar had served as Secretaries in GOI. At the level of Secretary, with 30 or more years of experience, assessing the domain expertise and eminence of the candidates is easier; their records usually speak for themselves and they can be invited directly or the selection for lateral entry can be done by an interview. But this is not the case at the levels of Joint Secretary or below where most candidates are still ‘works-in-progress’ and there are not likely to be any standout performers. Further, at the level of Secretary, the lateral entrant may have the stature to significantly influence policymaking but at the level of Joint Secretary or below his influence will be rather limited and he will be just another file-pusher and probably a worse one. So, lateral entry into senior bureaucracy should be only at the level of Secretary where necessary, and not at the level of Joint Secretary or below. Lateral entry should be the rare exception and not the rule.
In sum, lateral induction at the level of Joint Secretary — as presently proposed — fails when evaluated on the touchstone of legality, fairness, transparency, objectivity and bona fides. It has all the trappings of the Spoils System. It is important to note that ‘government underperformance’ is a complex problem that calls for wide-ranging political, administrative and judicial reforms; simplistic solutions like ‘lateral entry from the private sector’ will not work and may end up doing more harm than good.
