Posts Tagged ‘Chief Secretary’

14 Jan

India – still very much a man’s world

Posted by vramani in government, public affairs, public policy. Tagged: , , , .

2024 ushered in a new head of the civil services in Maharashtra. Part of the usual routine, except that this change in guard saw the claim of a lady officer to the top post being given the go by yet again. When most states in India have had lady officers helming the state bureaucracy, it is rather odd that Maharashtra, a state that prides itself on its progressiveness and gender parity, is yet to appoint a woman to the coveted post of Chief Secretary. The question is – why was Sujata Saunik, with a good track record, overlooked for the post a second time? She is the fourth woman after Chitkala Zutshi, Chandra Iyengar and Medha Gadgil to be overlooked for promotion to Chief Secretary.

The conclusion is inescapable – seventy six years after independence, the Indian establishment is still slow and grudging in allowing women to shatter the glass ceiling. It took the prodding of the Supreme Court for women to be given permanent commission in the armed forces; inducting them in combat formations has taken even more time, never mind the legacies of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and Rani Chennama of Kittur. The private sector is little better, with independent women directors being appointed to corporate boards in recent years. It is heartening to observe that the appointment of women as District Magistrates and Superintendents of Police is now fairly common, a far cry from when I joined government service over four decades ago.

But the reality of womens’ place in Indian society is still far removed from the paeans sung to their exalted status as mothers, sisters and daughters. A patriarchal society still assigns the woman a place subordinate to her male cohorts. Girls are to be married off once they come of age (and, in many communities, even before that). Even in more educated environments, the female is expected to subsume her ambitions to fit into the role of wife and mother. Recent studies reveal the disturbing fact that the participation of women from higher income families in the labour force actually diminishes.

It is in the efforts to free herself from the straitjacket of patriarchalism that the woman faces her greatest hurdles. The female students of the Government Medical College, Kozhikode had to move the Kerala High Court in 2022 against the restrictions imposed on their movement outside their hostel after 9.30 PM, when no such restrictions applied to male students. Authorities justify such restrictions on grounds of safety of women students, a damning confirmation of the insecurity that pervades the lives of women even today. In an earlier blog (see here), I had mentioned a book “Why Loiter?” by three women researchers that highlighted how public spaces were out of bounds for women to enjoy, untroubled by the prurient attention of men.

It is not just in the public space; women face ordeals even in their homes. Sections 63 to 92 of the recently enacted Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita detail crimes against the female sex, ranging from sexual offences to dowry demands, domestic abuse to unwanted male attention and rape. Despite the Supreme Court guidelines in the Vishakha case as far back as 1997, and the enactment of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act in 2013, it took till the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century for the MeToo movement to find its feet in India. With the fear of loss of employment and of ostracism, both from their own gender and from society, women were hesitant to publicly name those harassing them. The ongoing episode of India’s women wrestlers fighting sexual harassment by those running their federation reflects the sobering reality of the continued dominance, socially and politically, of the rich and powerful male. The MP accused of sexual harassment continues in Parliament while the wrestling federation continued to be his fiefdom through his trusted lieutenants, till, thankfully, the government stepped in to try and put an end to this unsavoury chapter.

The enquiry by the Ethics Committee of Parliament against the now former MP, Mahua Moitra, is another example of how a hierarchical male-dominated society firmly tries to stifle the independence of women, especially if they are single, “modern” and with strong opinions of their own, which do not gel with the prevailing orthodoxy of their social milieu. The questions put to her by the Chairman ranged from wanting to know the nature of her relationship with the male who had access to her parliament questions login, the number of her visits to Dubai, the hotel she stayed in in Dubai and whether she met that person there. When the issue under examination was only the access of a private individual to an MP’s parliament questions login, these questions would clearly cast aspersions on her character (as perceived by a patriarchal society). Had the MP in question been a male who had given access to his parliament questions login to a female, these questions would never have been asked. Obviously, the Indian male escapes the scanner for behaviour that is not tolerated in a female.

The Indian male is nurtured in a milieu that, while paying lip service to the female, expects her to subordinate her aspirations to her family expectations while tolerating behaviour that would raise eyebrows in gender-progressive societies. Domestic violence at the hands of her husband and in-laws is a feature in many families. The birth of a girl child is often not welcomed, leading to instances of foetus abortion and female infanticide. The girl child has the last priority in access to health, nutrition and education, causing intergenerational deficits in the healthy development of the girl child. Boys are given a lot of latitude in the parental home. This leads to a sense of entitlement: there is no sharing of household chores and responsibilities, an attitude that is evident even after marriage: witness the rampant alcoholism in males and the abandonment of women post-marriage. The Government of India has rightly given primacy to the slogan “Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao” : checking sex-selective abortions/female infanticide and educating the girl child will improve the female:male sex ratio as also enable women to be active in social, political and economic life. I suggest the addition of “Beti Badhao” to the slogan, to enable the girl child to function as an independent agency, free of patriarchal restrictions.

 

11 Oct

Towards a Headless Bureaucracy

Posted by vramani in government, public affairs. Tagged: , , , .

When I joined the IAS in 1980, the Chief Secretary (CS) of the State was a figure inspiring awe and reverence. Summons to the great man’s (it was never a woman) presence inspired the same dread as a visit to the office of the headmaster of an English public school for receiving six of the best on one’s tender backside for some transgression. Fortunately, being so far down the pecking order, there was little occasion to meet (or even see) him, save at some annual gathering of the IAS Association or at some meeting where one could safely wallow in one’s anonymity. A combination of circumstances catapulted me to serve as Staff Officer to the CS of Maharashtra in the mid-1980s. I was fortunate to serve under two stalwarts, Mr. B.G. Deshmukh and Mr. K.G. Paranjape, with hugely contrasting styles of functioning. Mr. Deshmukh was a stickler for propriety. He was keenly conscious of the critical role of the CS in ensuring a smooth administration. More to the point, he was watchful in ensuring that the position of the CS was never devalued by the political executive. When called by the CM for a discussion, he expected to sail into the CM’s inner office like a breeze, without loitering about the corridors, as many unfortunate successors of his from the 1990s onwards were wont to do. At times, I was sent to verify from the CM’s office the exact moment when the CM was free so that the CS could directly enter the inner chambers. On one occasion, when the Minister for Tribal Development called the CS for a meeting (an unheard of occurrence in those days), yours truly was despatched to attend the meeting as the CS’s representative. I survived the meeting under the baleful glare of the Minister and the inscrutable looks of the Finance, Planning and other Secretaries, who were aware of the reasons for the absence of their boss. Mr. Paranjape was more informal in his approach but was equally conscious about preserving the dignity of the post of the CS. He was forthright in his written and oral communications and never hesitated to frankly express himself.

Cut to 1996, when I returned to Maharashtra after a stint in the Government of India, and the situation had undergone a sea change. A change in government had taken place and CSs were no longer secure about their position at the top of the hierarchy. As I moved up the ladder to Secretary-level posts, I was privy to the pressures brought on the top bureaucrat by Ministers, more so because the seat of power had moved outside the Secretariat. The CS was also no longer the arbiter of bureaucratic postings — the Principal Secretary to the CM had developed as the new power centre. If I thought the position of the CS had worsened in Maharashtra, my realpolitik education was vastly enhanced when Uttar Pradesh (UP) introduced the innovation of the Cabinet Secretary, a sort of super CS, during the Mayawati regime (2007-2012). Apparently starting his working life as a helicopter pilot, this worthy had held various civil service posts without having to bother about going through a Public Service Commission recruitment process. That the UP bureaucracy tolerated this direct assault on its independence should not occasion any surprise, given the depths that the bureaucracy in UP (and elsewhere) has plumbed in the years after the Emergency.

The same fate that befell the bureaucracies in the states was also to confront the bureaucracy at the central level. The P.N. Haksar era saw the Cabinet Secretary being gradually sidelined by the powerful Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister (PM). With occasional exceptions, the subsequent decades saw the dominance of the PM’s Office (PMO) and its numero uno, the Principal Secretary. During my Delhi days, I could see the power exercised by the Principal Secretary to the PM, with even Ministers ensuring they stayed on his right side. The culmination was the role played by Brajesh Mishra as Principal Secretary to the PM and National Security Adviser during the Vajpayee era.

All this time, the importance of the Cabinet Secretary fluctuated depending on the influence of the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister. No doubt, he still chaired the meetings of Committees of Secretaries and was part of the appointments process. But it was becoming increasingly clear to resourceful bureaucrats that the path to career advancement passed through the PMO. Postings in important Ministries and to international assignments depended on who one knew in the PMO and on one’s proximity to the Principal Secretary.

The undesirable practice of granting extensions to the Cabinet Secretary has been in vogue from the UPA-I era. From 2004 to date, only four persons have occupied the post, all well past their retirement ages. Not only did this foreclose the progression of their juniors to the top civilian post, it also raises the uneasy issue of the motivations of the government. While we may well be past the era when a retired CS of Madhya Pradesh could cheerfully refuse an offer of extension before zooming off on his motorcycle, bureaucrats, especially those at the top, would do well to be suspicious of too many compliments from the political class about their competence and indispensability. In one Yes Minister serial, the Political Adviser to the British PM rebukes the Minister, James Hacker, saying that his bureaucrats find him “a pleasure to work with”. In India’s Yes, Secretary setting, a bureaucrat who seems to fit in too well with her/his political bosses must reflect on whether (s)he is giving them the right advice, which may often need to be unpalatable.

What has occasioned all the above reflections has been a rather innocuous news item titled Major Revamp of India’s National Security Architecture. While one may have no bones to pick with strengthening India’s National Security apparatus, given a rather fluid environment around India’s borders, what gave pause for thought was the Cabinet Secretary being downgraded from the position of Chairman (a position held by him since 1999) to a member of the Strategic Policy Group (SPG), which is now to be chaired by the National Security Adviser (NSA). The media has witnessed meaningless wrangles about who is senior to whom in the Warrant of Precedence and whether this is another IAS vs. IPS battle. What has been lost sight of is the unique position of the Cabinet Secretary as the head of the Civil Services. If it was genuinely felt that the SPG required an expert, who commanded the confidence of the PM, to be its head, nothing would have been lost by keeping the Cabinet Secretary out of the SPG and by the NSA liaising with the Cabinet Secretary whenever departmental coordination issues needed to be sorted out.

The Cabinet Secretary is the Secretary to the Union Cabinet and is their Adviser on all policy issues. As such, (s)he needs to be free of association with any particular Committee chaired by a Minister (or a person of equivalent rank). Making the Cabinet Secretary a member of Ministerial Committees would dilute her/his ability to give an independent, frank opinion on major national issues to the PM and the Cabinet.

What give rise to unnecessary controversy and speculation are the sudden changes in time-honoured conventions, without apparently enough thought being given to their implications for an independent, professional civil service. Norms for a time-bound tenure for the top post and a selection process that affirms the selection of the most competent (and generally senior most) bureaucrat for that post would reassure the civil service (and the public) that only considerations of merit and competence have played a role in the selection. Discipline in a hierarchical organisation like the Indian civil services is possible only when the top bureaucrat is seen to have the moral and administrative authority to govern. Trends developing over the past couple of decades seem to indicate a fondness of the political class for departing from established conventions and procedures. The casualties in such a process will be the bureaucracy and, ultimately, the public, which can access their rights and entitlements only through an efficiently managed bureaucracy.