The turf war between the ‘elected’ and the ‘selected’ representatives of the people is turning ugly as they increasingly engage themselves in abusive exchanges and physical aggression.
Elected representatives of the people face acid test for survival in elections every five years. Civil servants, who are selected from the people to join the All India and other services, are better off because they pass the crucial acid test only once in the form of a competitive examination, and thereafter have an assured career of four decades or so. Both sides claim to be patriotic, honest, public spirited and working under an oath of allegiance to the same Constitution. That all is not well in their mutual relationship is the worst kept secret of Indian polity.
Elected representatives feel tormented because they suffer continuing tyranny unleashed upon them by their electorate; and they go all out to appease every voter and pressure group at any cost. In the process, they feel compelled at times even to dilute the fundamentals of public policy, resort to competitive populism and questionable interventions. They feel a dire need to showcase their activities and claim credit for whatever possible because of an inherent lurking fear of rejection by their electorate in the next elections.
Though Sardar Patel perceived the services as ‘Steel Frame’ of the Union, and the officers as valuable instruments of governance, but compulsions of electoral politics and pressures from the electorate often bring up expectations that the instruments must turn flexible, and even pliable; sometimes for bona fide spontaneous response to a given situation in public interest, and sometimes for reasons patently indefensible.
While the journey from base level politics to elevated statesmanship has been too long and unsurmountable for some politicians even after seven decades of our democracy at play, unfortunately the ICS legacy and ways still remain indelibly etched on upon some of the civil servants of independent India too. That’s the bane of the present situation.
The present day criticism of civil servants by the elected representatives in legislative assemblies and other public fora is not new. Even in the Constituent Assembly debates in various contexts in 1949, the ways of the ICS officers, their brand new motor cars, their inordinately high remuneration and perks, their fashionable wives, their posh bungalows and their failure to change their behaviour and outlook found mention as a reflection of bitterness between the law makers and the civil servants.
Elected members seem to have forgotten Sardar Patel’s profound advice not to keep quarrelling with the very instruments from whom they have to take work, because every man wants some sort of encouragement, and nobody wants to put in work when every day he is criticised and ridiculed in public. He also pointed out a growing malady of an arbitrary tendency in several provinces where the services were set upon and told, ‘No, you are servicemen, you must carry out our orders’.
The answer to the strife is that both the sides need to appreciate and respect the role of one another. Legislation, policy formulation and overseeing the roll-out of policy programmes are the prerogatives of the elective representatives in a democracy. They are answerable to the people and their performance is judged by people every five years. In a democracy, they have higher protocol precedence than the civil servants they work with. Civil servants are the instruments of just, fair and transparent governance as per the Constitutional mandate, laws of the land and public policy.
A positive response to the statesman-like expectations of the elected representatives by public spirited civil servants brings out the best in governance. That’s an ideal situation. However, in lesser times, a raving and ranting base-level politician on the one side, or an equally reticent, obdurate or stiff necked civil servant on the other side, can contribute to vitiate the milieu.
It is time the elected representatives understand that a civil servant must never be pushed to a corner with an option to ‘collude or collide’, and the officers need to understand that an elected representative must never be pushed to an unbearable level of frustration in a genuine public cause; for that marks the beginning of the end of good governance.
*The author is a former Chief Secretary to Government of Punjab (India)
