Edits

Editorials

India Today
Sep 21,1998

Control Those Babus

Vajpayee's ministers have to stop being sitting ducks for crafty civil servants

Edits If a measure of a political leadership's success is its ability to control the bureaucracy, the BJP-led Government can already be written off. Most recently, it went through the ignominy of being accused of "misleading" the Supreme Court and had to reinstate M.K. Bezbaruah as chief of the Enforcement Directorate because it had not adhered to the rules of the transfer game. Worse, its affidavit before the apex court was patently untrue. Only a few days ago, the Government subverted the Law Commission's recommendations on the composition of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). Instead of creating a multi-disciplinary body, the final ordinance only succeeded in making the CVC an IAS sinecure. Add the "typographical errors" in the Action Taken Report on the Jain Commission's findings -- and the plethora of amendments to original budget proposals. What India is left with is a ruling coalition extremely adept at being led up the garden path by the civil service.

True, there has been the stench of scandal to Bezbaruah's transfer. Even so, the Government's intentions are less in doubt here than its competence. The issue Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has to confront goes far beyond the petty details of individual cases or of minister-secretary wranglings. The essential question relates to governance. No doubt, the bureaucracy lends a certain continuity and, occasionally, expertise to administration. The Indian experience, however, has been that of the bureaucracy converting itself into a self-perpetuating and self-empowering machine. The "IAS lobby" is a tiger which only a decisive political executive can tame. Willy nilly, Vajpayee has to accept that many of his ministers are seen as soft targets for a manipulative civil service. Without this perception being remedied, his regime will only lurch from one public relations disaster to another. After all, a government which can't control its babus can hardly be trusted with the rest of the country.

Hawala Humbug
Is the CBI capable of nothing more than dubious charge-sheets?

The acquittal of nearly all politicians implicated in the Jain hawala case by the designated court brings back into focus the palsy that has gripped the country's anti-corruption machinery. The original CBI investigation began in 1991. It would probably have passed into oblivion if the Supreme Court had not decided to wrest the initiative two years later, bombarding the CBI with direct orders to probe and report back to the court. However, instead of spurring the CBI to quickly obtain clinching evidence in the cases, such an issue of "continuing mandamus" attracted unnecessary public attention. It led to a trial by the media. The reputation of seasoned politicians was trampled upon in an act of gross pre-judgement. The hawala cases cast a shadow on the 1996 general elections -- in effect ostracising even senior leaders like L.K. Advani merely due to a dubious charge-sheet. If, for example, this past week's exoneration of Arif Mohammed Khan had come a few years earlier, he would not have spent a considerable period of his political career under a cloud of suspicion.

The CBI's hands have traditionally been tied by a politician-bureaucrat nexus prone to using the special power enjoyed by the agency to further vested interests. In matters involving genuine corruption, the concerned persons can still bargain, to their advantage, for a shoddy investigation that will have little chance to pass muster in court. However, investigations have on several instances been started without sufficient evidence -- with the sole purpose of tarnishing the image of the targeted person. Much of this aberration is expected to go as the CVC exercises its superintending power over the CBI. But there should be a provision within the law for prosecution on the charge of misleading the agency into frivolous investigation. Blackmail and calumny should come in for special punishment.

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