Thursday, March 19, 2009

Why do we have such appalling bureaucrats?

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1240793
Municipal commissioner Jairaj Phatak was criticised by the High Court for equating the case of a newborn that went missing from Sion Hospital to instances of stolen mobiles and ornaments on Wednesday.
...because our babus are not accountable to ordinary citizens in any way. At least netas have to get votes every 5 years!

The epitome of this creed is the IAS, whose officers have no accountability to the people they are supposed to serve. This is, however, not surprising, since the IAS is the direct descendant of the Imperial Civil Service (ICS) whose sole intent was to keep the white man above the native, giving him free reign to exploit and suborn. Saheb was answerable only to the queen. We have merely replaced the white man with a brown one, the queen with the CM/PM.

Which explains Phatak's grossly callous statement.

The IAS is a failed institution, way past its expiry date. It needs to be taken behind a barn and shot. Roles like the 'MC' need to be handled by professional managers selected competitively and held in place with performance contracts. Incompetence such as this should ensure that the person remains unemployable for life.

1 comment:

sanjaya said...

Mr Phatak seems to have distinguished himself on multiple occasions now, recall some of his remarks during the floods also.

As an aside, Sardar Patel had created the IAS out of the ICS to serve as the steel frame that will unite the fragile Indian nation.

Indeed, the transferrability of the IAS officers has proven to be a boon in linking the nation together. Further, many IAS officers coming from other regions are indifferent to local politics, and hence deliver better eg the collector of Kadalur in TN, Mr Bedi, did a great job during the Tsunami. In fact, Tamil Nadu continues to grow solely on the strength of IAS officers, given that local politicians are no different in quality than Bihar.

Howeve,r you are right in that the britishness of this institution, and the heirarchical view of life need to be demolished. I am, in fact, a stong votary of demolishing every single reflection of Britishness in India. Contrary to popular belief, there is not a shred of evidence to prove that any British custom has done us even a bit of good.