July 13, 1998

Unfriendly bureaucrats add to Vajpayee's woes

Prabhu Chawla

Atal Bihari Vajpayee has a problem. The well-knit, well-entrenched bureaucracy seems to be waging an undeclared war against his already wobbly government. The prime minister, as everyone knows, hates confrontation. But now he has to decide: to don a pair of boxing gloves or wave the white flag. In the past three months, he has consciously avoided tinkering with the top echelons of the bureaucracy and has made only six secretary-level changes. None of the key secretaries in departments like finance, home, revenue, defence and petroleum have been moved. Unlike his predecessors, Vajpayee feels that a committed bureaucracy is alien to a parliamentary form of democracy. The Indian civil service, he avers, serves the Constitution and not the party in power.

After over a 100 days in office, Vajpayee is gradually realising that nothing drives the current crop of civil servants more than politics. Like politicians, most senior officials have mastered the art of survival. But what has amazed the inexperienced BJP ministers is the total lack of transparency in various departments. None of them get to know about pending administrative and legislative matters till the last minute. For example, the file regarding the appointment of the new chief for Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited was not moved three months before the retirement of the current incumbent, which is the normal practice. As a result, the Government had to make only an ad hoc arrangement. There are over 50 director-level vacancies in various public sector undertakings for which none of the ministries concerned have taken even initial steps.

But Vajpayee is most upset over the bureaucracy's attempts to either hide or play down the decisions taken by the new Government. For instance, during the Congress regime, the decisions of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) were widely publicised by the ministries concerned through specially convened press briefings. But during the past three months, no such attempt has been made to share the decisions of the FIPB with the press. In the past, a letter of appreciation written by the prime minister to a schoolteacher in a remote village or a grant from the Prime Minister's Relief Fund would find its way into both electronic and print media. But now, even Vajpayee's communication to heads of government abroad or chief ministers in the states are either kept a secret or are dismissed as of no consequence. During earlier regimes, senior bureaucrats went out of their way to project the achievements of the government as if they were a part of it. Now, most of them not only disown the BJP Government, but they also seem to despise it.

Vajpayee is partially responsible for this growing chasm between the political leadership and the civil service. He is not quite on the same wavelength with the bureaucracy. Unlike his predecessors, Vajpayee has not taken any initiative to open a dialogue with the mandarins in South and North blocks. Both P.V. Narasimha Rao and H.D. Deve Gowda were in direct touch with most of the secretaries. In the beginning, he did meet a few of them in groups. The practice, however, was soon stopped. Vajpayee is not willing to play the conventional prime ministerial role of a guide, leader and friend; he would prefer to be the master of the bureaucracy. But with a daily-wage government, can he afford to open yet another front without trying to change them?

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