The Founding Fathers felt that India needed a responsible government more than an efficient one
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What is the issue?
- The DoPT recently issued a notification inviting lateral entry at joint secretary-level posts.
- Lateral entry may impact the basic governance principles of the country.
What is the rationale?
- It is based on assumption that generalists are ill-suited to deal with emerging policy implications.
- It is in terms of dealing with new technologies and new modes of thinking.
- Hence the country is in dire need of domain experts.
- The recent lateral entry policy also aims to augment manpower in the bureaucracy.
- This means that the process would become a part of the regular recruitment.
What are the concerns?
- Understanding - Neither the DoPT nor Ministries concerned cared to define ‘domain expertise’.
- Most of the 10 posts open for lateral entry are generalist in nature.
- Therefore, domain expertise is salient only in a very narrow context.
- But clearly, there cannot be joint secretaries in all branches of a given Ministry.
- Accountability - Most democracies train their higher civil servants to be accountable rather than efficient.
- A civil servant is cautious of answering to a quo warranto writ against alleged action/inaction.
- In any case, a civil servant is expected to follow the decisions taken by the political executive.
- How far will this be practised by lateral entrants is doubtful.
- Training - Private sector experts becoming joint secretaries may be given a training or orientation.
- However, it may not match the 15-20 years of acculturation/on-job training that regular officers receive.
How will it affect the fundamental principles?
- The Constituent Assembly preferred the parliamentary over the presidential system.
- The parliamentary system is more responsible but less stable.
- The presidential system is more stable but less responsible.
- The country thus opted for responsibility over stability.
- There are methods at disposal to ensure that the government is responsible:
- independence of judiciary
- subjecting the executive to constant scrutiny of the legislature
- maintaining bureaucratic neutrality
- Accountability is a complementary principle to responsibility.
- But the idea of lateral entry seems to be opting for efficiency at the cost of accountability.
- There is no assurance of accountability, bureaucratic neutrality and conformity to due process.
Source: The Hindu
