Despite the universal bad rap for sloth and corruption that India?s bureaucracy gets at every opportunity, the fact remains that it is understaffed at the all-important senior levels where leadership and innovation appear to be required. The steel framework of India, numbers comprehensively prove, has missing rivets and rods and is tottering rather alarmingly. Despite the fact that much of the reforms debate of the 1990s focused on the retreat of the government from several areas of economy and governance, the picture in 2010 proves that now good governance is required at all levels.

From regulatory work in fraught areas of private sector enterprise to combating the Naxal threat and specialised negotiations needed in India?s diplomatic initiatives, these were the areas where the government found it had to make do with far fewer numbers for increasingly specialised jobs. The following statistics would illustrate the situation quite clearly. According to the ministry of personnel, the total sanctioned strength of posts requiring IAS personnel was 5,689, where only around 4,534 posts have been filled. The shortage of police personnel at the class-I officer level is an alarming 1,694 officers, while the shortage in the diplomatic service is legendary. Needless to say, the government is overstaffed at the lowest levels.

The government, in recent months, has applied its mind to the question of bridging this gap. A proposal by the home ministry of holding a mid-term exam for state police officers below the age of 35 to recruit them into the IPS was mooted and got political clearance from the highest levels. Although the entrenched hierarchy of the IPS has not taken well to this invasion of their bastion, it appears to be an idea whose time has come. The logic being forwarded for this upgrade of provincial services is that in a similar situation during the immediate post-Independence period, this is how shortages were bridged. While it could work as a short-term measure, its efficacy in the long run is questionable.

The government would be better served by first assessing where they need to deploy their people, even if recruitment is increased and whether a graduate or a post-graduate generalist, who would spend two to three years preparing for a fiercely competitive exam, is exactly the right kind of person required for some really specialised jobs. If the reforms process shrunk government, it also removed the aura of desirability around a government job. The question of whether the civil services is attracting the best of the best is moot, and whether an exam, which has such huge odds stacked against an individual, is the best way to find this talent is also a question mark.

How can specialists be attracted to the government? There has always been space at the top for specialists in some fields, like Sam Pitroda and Nandan Nilekani who were invited to head special projects. How can this process be democratised?

Will a short-service commission, like in the defence services, work in the civil bureaucracy? The temptation is to say a resounding yes, but the answer I am afraid is a no. Civil bureaucracy works on different principles, where continuity is important and generalist skills the norm. And frankly, income differentials between the private and public sector are a major deterrent. What is needed is a change in the way the bureaucracy is recruited. Instead of a common civil service exam that recruits diplomats, administrators, economic policy shapers and the police, each of these services should have a separate recruitment process?those interested in specific services would only study for particular exams, and the odds of competing against a diffused mass of lakhs of applicants is also ameliorated. The lessening of the odds, in fact, would attract a much larger cross section of young people, many of whom give up on the exam without having tried looking at the size of the competition.

This way the debate about the generalist versus the specialist would also be resolved, with both kinds of candidates being available to the government. The government, which works on the principle of ?if it ain?t broke, don?t fix it?, will meet with resistance to any proposed change in this system, inherited from the British. The letters written by the IPS Association to the state chief ministers resisting the recruitment of state policemen into the IPS is a case in point. But it has been commonly acknowledged by people at the highest level of government that the biggest reform needed now is not of any sector in particular but specifically of governance. The behemoth of Indian bureaucracy is infirm, and needs to keep up with the winds of change.

?nistula.hebbar@expressindia.com