Bureaucracy Gone to the Dogs

Akansha Mehta


Why a hue and cry over Durga? Is it the first time that the post of an honest Civil Servant has been subjected to convenient alteration by the state? The answer is in negative. Where were these sentiments when a stone-laden tractor trolley (belonging to the illegal mining mafia )crushed a young IPS officer, Narendra Kumar, posted in Madhya Pradesh's Morena district and when an Additional District Collector (ADM) was burnt alive by the petrol and diesel mafia at Manmad in Nashik district?  It’s unfortunate but the reality, as a part of the system you either play along or let people play according to their own rules. The moment you do anything other than this, you are executed. That’s the state of affairs of the Indian bureaucratic system which for the reader’s knowledge has also been ranked the worst in Asia.

This sort of blatant manipulation and corruption in the Bureaucracy has amounted to the break-down of the very constitutional framework on which our democracy stands. The overreaching power of the legislature over the executive has only made the very reason of its existence frivolous and infructuous. The scope of accountability and answerability of the executive is lost making it the most ineffective organ of the state. In our country, the glaring problems in the society are intelligibly understood by the lawmakers, laws are intricately drafted, schemes are successfully planned but sadly its very purpose is not met as it never reaches its intended end. The loophole here is the large scope of vulnerability attached to the offices of these public servants from the direct influence of the politicians. While such influence has penetrated in almost all sorts of public office today, bureaucracy remains most deeply affected by it where in the cost that the nation pays is too high. This calls for a need of a system of checks and balances, wherein firstly the code of conduct of each public officer is defined and strictly regulated; there is a huge amount of discretion in the hands of such officers which gives them a large scope of taking arbitrary decisions. Secondly, these arbitrary decisions can never be challenged as such officers have no answerability, this in-turn makes their office more corruption friendly. Lastly, the situation worsens as there is no mechanism in place for the protection of the honest officers who deny bending the rules as ordered by the politicians. They are either immediately posted out or killed. While we do have a shaky remedy to bring a case against a public servant for anything that he does as a part of his official duty (provided there is a written permission from his superiors which makes it extremely difficult to ever initiate a case), there is possibly no way to shield a public servant from the pressure that he receives from the people at top to commit fraud.

Let’s look at the brighter perspective for the moment, Durga Shakti Nagpal has indeed been lucky as till now she has been the only public servant who has had such a massive public support, media attention and popularity unlike Ashok Khemka and various other like him. She has been fortunate enough that her life has been spared at least till now. The treatment that she and many others like her have been subjected to is only the tip of the iceberg; the real problem lies deep beneath the system; the system which is in need of dire attention, protection and revival.

In recent Mujaffarnagar riots, officers were first shielded and then transferred like goats. Durga has now been reinstated after she met CM. She may have secured her job, but Akhilesh Yadav ensured that bureaucracy, once again, proves itself to be a class of political servants rather than public servants.