A recent survey finding by Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy that India?s bureaucracy is the stiflingly worst in Asia comes as no surprise. Our debate on bureaucracy reform gets nowhere because it rests on simplistic assumptions. Much of the focus tends to be, paradoxically, very bureaucratic, focusing excessively on corruption and less on efficiency. And there is the illusion that reform is largely a matter of new rules, more oversight, new institutional designs and getting incentives right. But this is only a small part of the story. It ignores the fact that sometimes more and more oversight makes the system less efficient. Even more egregiously, it ignores how bureaucratic behaviour is embedded in larger socio-economic structures.
First, the relationship between growth and bureaucratic reform is complicated. It is no accident that in the survey, all countries that rank higher than India also have higher per capita GDP. Which way does the causality run? There is good reason to think both ways. Contrary to popular perception, India does not invest enough in its state. While we can draw on horror stories of overstaffing, in most departments that matter the Indian state is understaffed, underequipped and undertrained. This leads to the syndrome best captured by the brilliant novel Raag Darbari, that there is often so much work that all work comes to a standstill. Arguably, some growth produces the kind of resources that allows states to invest in themselves and make reform possible.
Second, the link between corruption and growth is complicated. If one can put the matter bluntly, the problem in Bihar and Orissa is not that they have more corruption than Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh. It is that poorer states have fewer opportunities to be intelligently corrupt. Much of the corruption comes out of programmes that affect the poor. Whereas in states like Haryana or Tamil Nadu, rents can be extracted more efficiently from areas like real estate, telecom, roads, or be disguised under the new euphemism: public private partnerships. In short, they have forms of corruption that affect the poor less. Paradoxically, it gives politicians an incentive to do more development.
Third, the real problem with the Indian state is its social location in three different ways. Quite frankly access to state power is seen as an instrument of social mobility and this legitimises all kinds of uses of state power. Second, in a deeply hierarchical society, the attraction of state power is precisely that it gives you power over others; it is the intrinsic delight of the exercise of power that animates individuals more than any idea of reciprocity. Third, the internal social hierarchies within the state are severely debilitating. Where else in the world do old caste-like norms of who can sit in whose presence etc still exist? How can you expect a low level official to act on ideas of reciprocity when he has never experienced it? Even more egregiously, when were the lower levels of the state ever given ownership of its decisions? Is it any wonder that they don?t understand the objectives of the state in any terms other than more rules? Too much is spent on exposing the IAS, very little on giving a sense of professional identity to lower level officials. As the classic study on American anti-corruption measures The Pursuit of Absolute Integrity pointed out, a sense of professional identity is far more productive of integrity and efficiency than rules or incentives. Reforming the state will require nothing less than a social revolution.
Fourth, there is a reason why there is little pressure on the state to reform. Frankly, big business in India can get away with almost anything. It has the resources to manipulate the system and can absorb the costs of government rules. It is small business that really suffers. But the result is that big business has never been a serious lobby for genuine bureaucratic reform. It is a lobby for special exemptions for itself and will never put collective pressure on government to reform.
Finally, there must be ideological clarity in the state. The bureaucracy confuses ends with means, rules with outcomes, control with efficiency because we do not often ask the question: what is the state for? The more tasks that are indiscriminately given to the state, the more distorted its priorities and functioning. If the question of objectives is confused, the level at which decisions are taken is even more confusing. We are still amongst the most centralised states in the world. If we are serious about bureaucratic reform we need to ask questions about the character of our state and society; merely having more commissions will not do.
?The writer is president and chief executive, Centre for Policy Research