Mending with the times

The Government’s intention to open up 10 joint secretary posts to mid-career professionals has brought the Luddites to the barricades. Their opposition is couched in political phraseology, stoking fears that the first lot of 10 is the beginning of the breach with the current regime's end goal being to pack the bureaucracy with its handpicked people. There are several arrows in the quiver of disapproval: the three-year contract period is too short, the existing bureaucracy will shut out the new inductees, it will put a spanner in an efficiently running system and  that this is a new ploy to circuit the social justice component via reservations in regular selection through the UPSC. 

For the most part, the censorious are missing the wood for the trees. The current lot of 10 is too small to warrant reservations or raise the flag of favoritism. All regimes regularly induct much higher numbers during its tenure as consultants with some such as Montek Singh Ahluwalia and V. Krishnamurthy staying on to serve the country without jumping through the UPSC hoop. In any case, the quarter century of liberalisation has invested a variety of experience among Indians that needs to be harvested for greater national good. What better way than to have people who have prospered and survived in the cut-throat private sector to bring their ideas and attitude to governance, especially of specialised government departments?  

There is little doubt that the concept of an “iron bowl” that has protected the bureaucracy’s privileges from induction to grave has become an anachronism and fostered a taken-for-granted attitude. It is also not fair to assume that lateral inductees will in any way be short of gravitas or the national spirit as compared to UPSC entrants. However, given the proclivity of political arrangements to bend the rules, the Centre needs to unveil transparent recruitment criteria that will also enhance the acceptability of the lateral recruits among the existing lot.  This is an idea whose time had come but it is incumbent on the government to invest the process with sufficient acceptability for it to be adopted in greater numbers.