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Special Feature
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B&E
IAS: Indian Asphyxiated Service
The once formidable steel frame is now a rotten hulk and the biggest hurdle in India’s march towards prosperity and social welfare. It is time the IAS system was completely dismantled before it inflicts more damage!
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 Priyabrata Patnaik is one heck of a colourful IAS officer of the 1976 batch. Posted in Orissa, he is currently being interrogated by the Bhubaneswar police for his alleged role – if any – in the murder of Biranchi Das, who became famous as the coach of the child marathon runner Budhia. Many years ago, his IPS officer friend accused him of running away with his teenage daughter. He is the President of Bhubaneswar Club that attracted unusual media scrutiny recently because the club applied for mining licenses in Orissa! Used to chain-smoking expensive cigarettes, Patnaik is rated as a ‘can do’ and efficient operator.
That’s one face of Indian bureaucracy. There is another face to it.
Meet J.N. Jayashree of Karnataka, wife of IAS officer M.N. Vijaykumar, a man who has been in hiding because of several credible threats to his life. Says Jayshree, “Our family is going through a phase of extreme hardships because my husband exposed corruption amongst senior IAS officers. This is what happens to honest officers”.
Welcome to the Kafkaesque and surreal world of Indian Asphyxiated Service, the once proud steel frame of India that is now devouring the nation and its institutions like termites. In this world, the honest get killed, or harassed endlessly or leave. The pliant sycophants and the corrupt make merry. Magsasay Award winners Arvind Kejriwal and Aruna Roy were once civil servants who quit. A straight talking bureaucrat like Harsh Mander quit. An upright officer like Arun Bhatia was hounded out. And another straight talker Jay Prakash Narain quit and now runs an anti-corruption campaign from Hyderabad. Says Kejriwal, “During my stint in bureaucracy I never found the attitude of public service among IAS officers. The need of the hour is to dismantle the system and create some new system in its place.” Kejriwal is a Right to Information activist and spends hours telling you horror stories of how babus obstruct, deny, obfuscate and sabotage the RTI Act.
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 The most significant promise made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2004 was ‘administrative reforms’. That
is also his single biggest failure. Far from reforming, IAS officers have dealt
such a cruel blow to other branches of government through the Sixth Pay Commission that the Indian armed forces, police, para-military and forest services are on the verge of open revolt against
the State. Many years ago, when N. Vittal was the Vigilance Commissioner, powerful bureaucrats were shocked when he put up the names of officers facing vigilance enquiries publicly on the web site. Since then, the wings of the Vigilance Commissioner have been cruelly clipped. And of course, the names of corrupt
officers have been buried deep in the
web site, away from the eyes of citizens and activists.
Quite clearly, the Indian bureaucracy seems to have emerged as the single biggest obstacle to India achieving the twin goals of prosperity and social welfare. Not only are bureaucrats arrogant, they are so full of themselves that they stubbornly remain oblivious to what India needs. Take the BRT fiasco in Delhi where commuters face harrowing traffic jams after bureaucrats ‘improved’
the road. Take the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Rahul Gandhi himself admits now that barely 5% of the intended money reaches actual beneficiaries. And yet, IAS officers have the gall to lecture and hector the destitute to work hard and not be dependent on the government!
How did the steel frame of India descend and fall into such disgraceful disrepute? Dozens of Commissions and Committees have been formed over the years and decades to look into the issue. Their conclusions lie forlorn in forgotten cabinets and almirahs in dusty offices, with not a hope in hell of being implemented. That is quite simply because Indian politicians and bureaucrats (along with criminals and mafia) have formed such a sinister cartel of vested interests, patronage, corruption and crony socialism that they will never allow the system to be reformed-unless they are forced
to do it. Even when IAS officers manned traditional departments like Home,
Education and Health, the damage they inflicted was immense and incalculable. Now, like termites and bacteria, they
are gate crashing into every conceivable activity. Says a top secretary level IAS
officer who obviously wishes to remain anonymous, “There is immense political pressure in the states. So IAS officers don’t want to serve there. So they tried
to extend their catchment area. They started grabbing top positions and plum postings in PSUs. An IAS officer is appointed as CMD, Managing Director
or chairman of ONGC, NTPC or BSL. It is ridiculous.”
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