Sir, I appreciate your observation and suggestion to present govt. But believe me it is not an easy task to tame bureaucracy. If we go back to history- Mr L P Singh, the then Home Secretary got Mr Gulzari L Nanda failed. Any other all India service can be clipped but not IAS. Hopefully Mr Modi will be able to control, as essentially required.Anand P SethSent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
From: Jagjit AhujaSent: Wednesday, 15 July 2015 23:12Reply To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.netSubject: Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS downLet us not have any sympathy for Modi who has not maintained any of his promises . The main problem with him has been that he could not tame bureaucracy , which was not a difficult task. This could have been done by inducting men of integrity from all services in his PMO and at higher level professionals in other departments . All these years IAS have been trying their best to head all the departments even if they may not be knowing their basics.In addition there is a need to bring ACCOUNTABILITY , RESPONSIBILITY and TRANSPARENCY as part of their job profile.This would have given him leverage in taming the so called steel frame of the country now fully rusted.Above all he must sustain his decisions , where he has miserably failed.On Sun, Jul 12, 2015 at 11:15 PM, Anil Kumar Dhir <dhiranil@hotmail.com> wrote:Forwarding as received, for it makes a lot of sense, sharing this article specially with those among us, who love welfare of our Society, our Armed Forces, and above all, our country as a whole. It is an open fact that they are also the creator of the problem that is existing and around the widely known subject matter as OROP issue !Anil Dhir
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 19:34:09 +0530
Subject: Fwd: It's time to shut the IAS down
From:
To:It's time to shut the IAS down
( A forward as received)
Last updated on: June 08, 2015 13:17 ISTThe IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern. Mihir S Sharma explains.If Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will not be entirely his fault.After all, he has moderated his promises.The shining vision of India's future he outlined in early 2014 has been replaced by the -- still inspiring -- set of aspirations listed in the 2015 Budget.A house for everyone by 2022, with 24-hour power, clean drinking water, a road and modern sanitation; one job per family, medical and skilling facilities close by, and much else of that nature.You cannot fault his targets, and you cannot fault his energy.If he seems to have little idea of how to get there, well, he was never asked for such details about implementation on the campaign trail, so it's a little late to complain now.The problem is that he is trying to drive the country to these oh-so-distant targets by 2022, but he still has the same old car with which to do it.Today, in the middle of 2015, it is doubly, triply, quadruply clear that changing the driver was not enough -- the driver was never the biggest, the realest problem. The real problem is the car.Modi might have the will, the energy, the sincerity and the ambition. But unless he fundamentally changes the system that implements his will, that realises his ambition, he is doomed to fail.And that system is the Indian government and its bureaucracy. I want you to pause for a moment to think, as objectively as you can, about how farcical it is.We, the world's fastest-growing economy and its largest democracy, have a state structure basically unchanged from the extractive system set up to rule a vast, pastoral country on behalf of a distant island nation.We have a twice-born bureaucracy that holds so much power.Why? Because they are the happy inheritors of a system in which civil servants would have been loyal to Queen and Whitehall, but ministers may have been dangerously nationalist -- and thus needed to be easily vetoed or blocked.We still have a tenured, generalist civil service, organised on Victorian public-school principles, even as our economy and governance become fiendishly more complex.Every single foreign investor, foreign do-gooder, foreign diplomat, is astounded by both the intelligence of their Indian bureaucratic interlocutor and their -- much of the time -- complete and utter ignorance of the issues at hand.What else can you expect?The person having to deal with FIIs today may have been dealing with water harvesting yesterday.No matter how high your rank in a deadly dull competitive examination in the early 1980s, you will not handle that transition seamlessly.It is natural, therefore, that you take no risks and show no imagination; you are, after all, always a step behind those you are regulating or governing.It is less natural that you are incredibly arrogant even while being that step behind. (Or to suppose that anyone else in government being paid more than you would be a colossal, extraordinary insult to the Indian Republic, equivalent to Bangladesh annexing most of Eastern India. Imagine if a tax expert or a lawyer was hired from the private sector and paid more than the Cabinet Secretary! The whole edifice of government would collapse! Anarchy would rule! Four southern states would sink into the sea! Etc, etc)We have an un-fire-able, unaccountable civil service, which can screw up as much as it likes -- consider, for example, the monumental error that was the FII-MAT (minimum alternate tax) imbroglio -- and still will face no consequences.This is the largest cause of the institutionalised mediocrity that holds this country back. Even promotions are largely dependent on seniority and not record; nobody would run any other organisation thus, but it's OK to run a complicated, under-governed country like this?Ah, we are told, but insulating administrators is necessary to ensure they are not subject to politicisation -- to ensure they are "independent".This laughable claim can only be the product of wilfully refusing to actually read even one newspaper headline over the past 20 years.Who can claim that bureaucrats are not politicised, given contemporary history? How many have simply refused to sign what they are supposed to? There are some such glorious names, but vanishingly few.Combine these three factors, and you have a government machinery that is unaccountable, under-informed, and all-powerful. It lacks creativity. It automatically stifles innovation (witness the colossal idiocy underlying its shutdown of Uber in the capital).There is no alternative but to shut these people down. Root-and-branch reform, beginning with an end to the imperial-era privileges of the Indian Administrative Service.The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern.The prime minister, sadly, agrees with that.He, too, seems to imagine that his transformative promises can be operationalised and implemented by the same people who have failed us for 70 years.His first action on entering 7, Race Course Road, was to tell the secretaries to the Union that they could speak to him directly, cutting out their ministers.Subsequently he took over all appointments. This is in a way natural; when Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he had no experience of -- or history of interest in -- policy.Guess who he turned to? Perhaps that's why the bureaucrats other Indians see as obstructive, backward-looking monuments to institutional arrogance are seen by our prime minister as gentle tutors in the art of governance.This is a pity, since the only way he will actually transform India is by first transforming its hopelessly out-of-date government.Actually, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will be entirely his fault. He should have started by ending the IAS.
__._,_.___
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Thursday, July 16, 2015
Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down
Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down
On 16-Jul-2015, at 11:17 am, Harbhajan Singh (via indiaresists Mailing List) <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net> wrote:Post: "indiaresists@lists.riseup.net"My Dear Gaur,How are you?I wonder if this topic is discussed in the NDC!!!!!We require Administrative and political reforms. But dear Gaur all the Governments are being managed by the IAS!!! Does any one think IAS would let any such reforms take place and above all be implemented!! Just look at OROP case!!!We need a military/Presidential take over for two years in which the agenda should be administrative and political reforms and then hand over the reigns back to the new dispensation. I agree it is an Utopian idea but if we need to achieve some thing such ideas have to come up.My considered view is that India is going to go down the drain and China-Pak combine will subjugate us in a decade or two may be. Things on the ground for common people including our types are very bad indeed and deteriorating fast.Harbhajan SinghLt Gen
From: Gaur J K <gaurjk@hotmail.com>
To: "indiaresists@lists.riseup.net" <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 July 2015 3:26 PM
Subject: RE: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down13/7/15Yes, but will it not be a piece-meal change?Our whole system of governance is based on the colonial british model.Our judicial system is based on the same.Our laws are based on the same. Some laws are as old as 1860 just after it was taken over by the Imperial power.
Our Constitution is primarily drawing upon the British Model.Yet the realisation that changes are needed in the institutions of Governance should lead to the desired changes sooner or later.Hiring of experts/advisors outside the IAS system could be one way to dilute their dominance. Mr. Modi seems to have realised and doing so in some areas.JKGaur
From: dhiranil@hotmail.com
To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.net
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 23:15:59 +0530
Subject: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS downForwarding as received, for it makes a lot of sense, sharing this article specially with those among us, who love welfare of our Society, our Armed Forces, and above all, our country as a whole. It is an open fact that they are also the creator of the problem that is existing and around the widely known subject matter as OROP issue !Anil Dhir
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 19:34:09 +0530
Subject: Fwd: It's time to shut the IAS down
From:
To:It's time to shut the IAS down
( A forward as received)
Last updated on: June 08, 2015 13:17 ISTThe IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern. Mihir S Sharma explains.If Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will not be entirely his fault.After all, he has moderated his promises.The shining vision of India's future he outlined in early 2014 has been replaced by the -- still inspiring -- set of aspirations listed in the 2015 Budget.A house for everyone by 2022, with 24-hour power, clean drinking water, a road and modern sanitation; one job per family, medical and skilling facilities close by, and much else of that nature.You cannot fault his targets, and you cannot fault his energy.If he seems to have little idea of how to get there, well, he was never asked for such details about implementation on the campaign trail, so it's a little late to complain now.The problem is that he is trying to drive the country to these oh-so-distant targets by 2022, but he still has the same old car with which to do it.Today, in the middle of 2015, it is doubly, triply, quadruply clear that changing the driver was not enough -- the driver was never the biggest, the realest problem. The real problem is the car.Modi might have the will, the energy, the sincerity and the ambition. But unless he fundamentally changes the system that implements his will, that realises his ambition, he is doomed to fail.And that system is the Indian government and its bureaucracy. I want you to pause for a moment to think, as objectively as you can, about how farcical it is.We, the world's fastest-growing economy and its largest democracy, have a state structure basically unchanged from the extractive system set up to rule a vast, pastoral country on behalf of a distant island nation.We have a twice-born bureaucracy that holds so much power.Why? Because they are the happy inheritors of a system in which civil servants would have been loyal to Queen and Whitehall, but ministers may have been dangerously nationalist -- and thus needed to be easily vetoed or blocked.We still have a tenured, generalist civil service, organised on Victorian public-school principles, even as our economy and governance become fiendishly more complex.Every single foreign investor, foreign do-gooder, foreign diplomat, is astounded by both the intelligence of their Indian bureaucratic interlocutor and their -- much of the time -- complete and utter ignorance of the issues at hand.What else can you expect?The person having to deal with FIIs today may have been dealing with water harvesting yesterday.No matter how high your rank in a deadly dull competitive examination in the early 1980s, you will not handle that transition seamlessly.It is natural, therefore, that you take no risks and show no imagination; you are, after all, always a step behind those you are regulating or governing.It is less natural that you are incredibly arrogant even while being that step behind. (Or to suppose that anyone else in government being paid more than you would be a colossal, extraordinary insult to the Indian Republic, equivalent to Bangladesh annexing most of Eastern India. Imagine if a tax expert or a lawyer was hired from the private sector and paid more than the Cabinet Secretary! The whole edifice of government would collapse! Anarchy would rule! Four southern states would sink into the sea! Etc, etc)We have an un-fire-able, unaccountable civil service, which can screw up as much as it likes -- consider, for example, the monumental error that was the FII-MAT (minimum alternate tax) imbroglio -- and still will face no consequences.This is the largest cause of the institutionalised mediocrity that holds this country back. Even promotions are largely dependent on seniority and not record; nobody would run any other organisation thus, but it's OK to run a complicated, under-governed country like this?Ah, we are told, but insulating administrators is necessary to ensure they are not subject to politicisation -- to ensure they are "independent".This laughable claim can only be the product of wilfully refusing to actually read even one newspaper headline over the past 20 years.Who can claim that bureaucrats are not politicised, given contemporary history? How many have simply refused to sign what they are supposed to? There are some such glorious names, but vanishingly few.Combine these three factors, and you have a government machinery that is unaccountable, under-informed, and all-powerful. It lacks creativity. It automatically stifles innovation (witness the colossal idiocy underlying its shutdown of Uber in the capital).There is no alternative but to shut these people down. Root-and-branch reform, beginning with an end to the imperial-era privileges of the Indian Administrative Service.The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern.The prime minister, sadly, agrees with that.He, too, seems to imagine that his transformative promises can be operationalised and implemented by the same people who have failed us for 70 years.His first action on entering 7, Race Course Road, was to tell the secretaries to the Union that they could speak to him directly, cutting out their ministers.Subsequently he took over all appointments. This is in a way natural; when Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he had no experience of -- or history of interest in -- policy.Guess who he turned to? Perhaps that's why the bureaucrats other Indians see as obstructive, backward-looking monuments to institutional arrogance are seen by our prime minister as gentle tutors in the art of governance.This is a pity, since the only way he will actually transform India is by first transforming its hopelessly out-of-date government.Actually, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will be entirely his fault. He should have started by ending the IAS.__._,_.___
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Re: [IAC#RG] IPL SCAM - ARE COSMETIC PUNISHMENTS ENOUGH ?
Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone
-----Original Message-----
From: Venkatraman Ns <nsvenkatchennai@gmail.com>
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Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2015 19:39:10
To: <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net>
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Subject: [IAC#RG] IPL SCAM - ARE COSMETIC PUNISHMENTS ENOUGH ?
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Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down
Couldn't stop myself from replying to that astonishing observations made by author , pertaining the interesting ideas and finally claiming the only way to save the country is to shut IAS down. Before getting to my points, I wish to note that I am not in service or don't belong to any of the bureaucratic family.
Though I may agree to some subtle observation made on system, its unrealistic in larger details. Being a common man citizen of this hailed fastest growing democracy, I genuinely believe that only department where some inspirations are left for doing something to change life of common people around you is the administrative services. Majority may have entangled in complexities of bureaucracy and politics around them but beneath the ashes there is fire for sure. Its the duty of good administrators to make use of them. They are people with power ,agreed. But at least they earned it. Not because they were born into wealthy family or some special caste with political stranglehold. This people are getting through one of the toughest exams in our country and I believe they have the power to adapt and survive accordingly. Not like if they got transferred to water harvesting overnight, they would sit alone mute or sit in corner and cry.
As one other reply pointed out.. Its a single stem of our so called cog wheel of democracy , which has been manipulated, tortured, twisted and raped in shameless ways possible. The entire system is a farce not just bureaucracy. To repair it there are other things to be taken care at first.. Like the unstandardized educational system, caste based politics, honoring capabilities rather than reservation . An entire culture has to be brought up not by remodeling but thrashing existing system. Bureaucracy comes as last of stem in wheel to dismantle.
Is this the only system which we inherited from our colonial cousins?? Every thing we follow is based upon their preset. Our constitution, education, law even our never ending urge to westernize, for being like them is an idea successfully implanted in us by them, not to forget we allowed it whole heartedly.
One of the few hopes for young dynamic people who actually cares about helping others in our twisted country is to enter service and do matter in at least implementing the polices which may bring some solace to common.Yes you are right , the car is the real problem. But its not bureaucracy to be blamed for that .. It s lame policy making and in effective administration and corruption. After all this we can think about remodeling the colonial concept and blaze into future.
| From: Jagjit Ahuja Sent: Wednesday, 15 July 2015 23:12 Reply To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.net Subject: Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down |
Forwarding as received, for it makes a lot of sense, sharing this article specially with those among us, who love welfare of our Society, our Armed Forces, and above all, our country as a whole. It is an open fact that they are also the creator of the problem that is existing and around the widely known subject matter as OROP issue !Anil Dhir
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 19:34:09 +0530
Subject: Fwd: It's time to shut the IAS down
From:
To:It's time to shut the IAS down
( A forward as received)
Last updated on: June 08, 2015 13:17 ISTThe IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern. Mihir S Sharma explains.If Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will not be entirely his fault.After all, he has moderated his promises.The shining vision of India's future he outlined in early 2014 has been replaced by the -- still inspiring -- set of aspirations listed in the 2015 Budget.A house for everyone by 2022, with 24-hour power, clean drinking water, a road and modern sanitation; one job per family, medical and skilling facilities close by, and much else of that nature.You cannot fault his targets, and you cannot fault his energy.If he seems to have little idea of how to get there, well, he was never asked for such details about implementation on the campaign trail, so it's a little late to complain now.The problem is that he is trying to drive the country to these oh-so-distant targets by 2022, but he still has the same old car with which to do it.Today, in the middle of 2015, it is doubly, triply, quadruply clear that changing the driver was not enough -- the driver was never the biggest, the realest problem. The real problem is the car.Modi might have the will, the energy, the sincerity and the ambition. But unless he fundamentally changes the system that implements his will, that realises his ambition, he is doomed to fail.And that system is the Indian government and its bureaucracy. I want you to pause for a moment to think, as objectively as you can, about how farcical it is.We, the world's fastest-growing economy and its largest democracy, have a state structure basically unchanged from the extractive system set up to rule a vast, pastoral country on behalf of a distant island nation.We have a twice-born bureaucracy that holds so much power.Why? Because they are the happy inheritors of a system in which civil servants would have been loyal to Queen and Whitehall, but ministers may have been dangerously nationalist -- and thus needed to be easily vetoed or blocked.We still have a tenured, generalist civil service, organised on Victorian public-school principles, even as our economy and governance become fiendishly more complex.Every single foreign investor, foreign do-gooder, foreign diplomat, is astounded by both the intelligence of their Indian bureaucratic interlocutor and their -- much of the time -- complete and utter ignorance of the issues at hand.What else can you expect?The person having to deal with FIIs today may have been dealing with water harvesting yesterday.No matter how high your rank in a deadly dull competitive examination in the early 1980s, you will not handle that transition seamlessly.It is natural, therefore, that you take no risks and show no imagination; you are, after all, always a step behind those you are regulating or governing.It is less natural that you are incredibly arrogant even while being that step behind. (Or to suppose that anyone else in government being paid more than you would be a colossal, extraordinary insult to the Indian Republic, equivalent to Bangladesh annexing most of Eastern India. Imagine if a tax expert or a lawyer was hired from the private sector and paid more than the Cabinet Secretary! The whole edifice of government would collapse! Anarchy would rule! Four southern states would sink into the sea! Etc, etc)We have an un-fire-able, unaccountable civil service, which can screw up as much as it likes -- consider, for example, the monumental error that was the FII-MAT (minimum alternate tax) imbroglio -- and still will face no consequences.This is the largest cause of the institutionalised mediocrity that holds this country back. Even promotions are largely dependent on seniority and not record; nobody would run any other organisation thus, but it's OK to run a complicated, under-governed country like this?Ah, we are told, but insulating administrators is necessary to ensure they are not subject to politicisation -- to ensure they are "independent".This laughable claim can only be the product of wilfully refusing to actually read even one newspaper headline over the past 20 years.Who can claim that bureaucrats are not politicised, given contemporary history? How many have simply refused to sign what they are supposed to? There are some such glorious names, but vanishingly few.Combine these three factors, and you have a government machinery that is unaccountable, under-informed, and all-powerful. It lacks creativity. It automatically stifles innovation (witness the colossal idiocy underlying its shutdown of Uber in the capital).There is no alternative but to shut these people down. Root-and-branch reform, beginning with an end to the imperial-era privileges of the Indian Administrative Service.The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern.The prime minister, sadly, agrees with that.He, too, seems to imagine that his transformative promises can be operationalised and implemented by the same people who have failed us for 70 years.His first action on entering 7, Race Course Road, was to tell the secretaries to the Union that they could speak to him directly, cutting out their ministers.Subsequently he took over all appointments. This is in a way natural; when Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he had no experience of -- or history of interest in -- policy.Guess who he turned to? Perhaps that's why the bureaucrats other Indians see as obstructive, backward-looking monuments to institutional arrogance are seen by our prime minister as gentle tutors in the art of governance.This is a pity, since the only way he will actually transform India is by first transforming its hopelessly out-of-date government.Actually, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will be entirely his fault. He should have started by ending the IAS.
__._,_.___
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Wednesday, July 15, 2015
RE: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2015 23:25:09 +0530
From: anandpseth@gmail.com
To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.net; indiaresists@lists.riseup.net; dhiranil@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down
| From: Jagjit Ahuja Sent: Wednesday, 15 July 2015 23:12 To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.net; dhiranil@hotmail.com Reply To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.net Subject: Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down |
Forwarding as received, for it makes a lot of sense, sharing this article specially with those among us, who love welfare of our Society, our Armed Forces, and above all, our country as a whole. It is an open fact that they are also the creator of the problem that is existing and around the widely known subject matter as OROP issue !Anil Dhir
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 19:34:09 +0530
Subject: Fwd: It's time to shut the IAS down
From:
To:It's time to shut the IAS down
( A forward as received)
Last updated on: June 08, 2015 13:17 ISTThe IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern. Mihir S Sharma explains.If Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will not be entirely his fault.After all, he has moderated his promises.The shining vision of India's future he outlined in early 2014 has been replaced by the -- still inspiring -- set of aspirations listed in the 2015 Budget.A house for everyone by 2022, with 24-hour power, clean drinking water, a road and modern sanitation; one job per family, medical and skilling facilities close by, and much else of that nature.You cannot fault his targets, and you cannot fault his energy.If he seems to have little idea of how to get there, well, he was never asked for such details about implementation on the campaign trail, so it's a little late to complain now.The problem is that he is trying to drive the country to these oh-so-distant targets by 2022, but he still has the same old car with which to do it.Today, in the middle of 2015, it is doubly, triply, quadruply clear that changing the driver was not enough -- the driver was never the biggest, the realest problem. The real problem is the car.Modi might have the will, the energy, the sincerity and the ambition. But unless he fundamentally changes the system that implements his will, that realises his ambition, he is doomed to fail.And that system is the Indian government and its bureaucracy. I want you to pause for a moment to think, as objectively as you can, about how farcical it is.We, the world's fastest-growing economy and its largest democracy, have a state structure basically unchanged from the extractive system set up to rule a vast, pastoral country on behalf of a distant island nation.We have a twice-born bureaucracy that holds so much power.Why? Because they are the happy inheritors of a system in which civil servants would have been loyal to Queen and Whitehall, but ministers may have been dangerously nationalist -- and thus needed to be easily vetoed or blocked.We still have a tenured, generalist civil service, organised on Victorian public-school principles, even as our economy and governance become fiendishly more complex.Every single foreign investor, foreign do-gooder, foreign diplomat, is astounded by both the intelligence of their Indian bureaucratic interlocutor and their -- much of the time -- complete and utter ignorance of the issues at hand.What else can you expect?The person having to deal with FIIs today may have been dealing with water harvesting yesterday.No matter how high your rank in a deadly dull competitive examination in the early 1980s, you will not handle that transition seamlessly.It is natural, therefore, that you take no risks and show no imagination; you are, after all, always a step behind those you are regulating or governing.It is less natural that you are incredibly arrogant even while being that step behind. (Or to suppose that anyone else in government being paid more than you would be a colossal, extraordinary insult to the Indian Republic, equivalent to Bangladesh annexing most of Eastern India. Imagine if a tax expert or a lawyer was hired from the private sector and paid more than the Cabinet Secretary! The whole edifice of government would collapse! Anarchy would rule! Four southern states would sink into the sea! Etc, etc)We have an un-fire-able, unaccountable civil service, which can screw up as much as it likes -- consider, for example, the monumental error that was the FII-MAT (minimum alternate tax) imbroglio -- and still will face no consequences.This is the largest cause of the institutionalised mediocrity that holds this country back. Even promotions are largely dependent on seniority and not record; nobody would run any other organisation thus, but it's OK to run a complicated, under-governed country like this?Ah, we are told, but insulating administrators is necessary to ensure they are not subject to politicisation -- to ensure they are "independent".This laughable claim can only be the product of wilfully refusing to actually read even one newspaper headline over the past 20 years.Who can claim that bureaucrats are not politicised, given contemporary history? How many have simply refused to sign what they are supposed to? There are some such glorious names, but vanishingly few.Combine these three factors, and you have a government machinery that is unaccountable, under-informed, and all-powerful. It lacks creativity. It automatically stifles innovation (witness the colossal idiocy underlying its shutdown of Uber in the capital).There is no alternative but to shut these people down. Root-and-branch reform, beginning with an end to the imperial-era privileges of the Indian Administrative Service.The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern.The prime minister, sadly, agrees with that.He, too, seems to imagine that his transformative promises can be operationalised and implemented by the same people who have failed us for 70 years.His first action on entering 7, Race Course Road, was to tell the secretaries to the Union that they could speak to him directly, cutting out their ministers.Subsequently he took over all appointments. This is in a way natural; when Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he had no experience of -- or history of interest in -- policy.Guess who he turned to? Perhaps that's why the bureaucrats other Indians see as obstructive, backward-looking monuments to institutional arrogance are seen by our prime minister as gentle tutors in the art of governance.This is a pity, since the only way he will actually transform India is by first transforming its hopelessly out-of-date government.Actually, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will be entirely his fault. He should have started by ending the IAS.
__._,_.___
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Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down
From: Gaur J K <gaurjk@hotmail.com>
To: "indiaresists@lists.riseup.net" <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 July 2015 3:26 PM
Subject: RE: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down
Our Constitution is primarily drawing upon the British Model.
From: dhiranil@hotmail.com
To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.net
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 23:15:59 +0530
Subject: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 19:34:09 +0530
Subject: Fwd: It's time to shut the IAS down
From:
To:
It's time to shut the IAS down
( A forward as received)
Last updated on: June 08, 2015 13:17 ISTThe IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern. Mihir S Sharma explains.If Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will not be entirely his fault.After all, he has moderated his promises.The shining vision of India's future he outlined in early 2014 has been replaced by the -- still inspiring -- set of aspirations listed in the 2015 Budget.A house for everyone by 2022, with 24-hour power, clean drinking water, a road and modern sanitation; one job per family, medical and skilling facilities close by, and much else of that nature.You cannot fault his targets, and you cannot fault his energy.If he seems to have little idea of how to get there, well, he was never asked for such details about implementation on the campaign trail, so it's a little late to complain now.The problem is that he is trying to drive the country to these oh-so-distant targets by 2022, but he still has the same old car with which to do it.Today, in the middle of 2015, it is doubly, triply, quadruply clear that changing the driver was not enough -- the driver was never the biggest, the realest problem. The real problem is the car.Modi might have the will, the energy, the sincerity and the ambition. But unless he fundamentally changes the system that implements his will, that realises his ambition, he is doomed to fail.And that system is the Indian government and its bureaucracy. I want you to pause for a moment to think, as objectively as you can, about how farcical it is.We, the world's fastest-growing economy and its largest democracy, have a state structure basically unchanged from the extractive system set up to rule a vast, pastoral country on behalf of a distant island nation.We have a twice-born bureaucracy that holds so much power.Why? Because they are the happy inheritors of a system in which civil servants would have been loyal to Queen and Whitehall, but ministers may have been dangerously nationalist -- and thus needed to be easily vetoed or blocked.We still have a tenured, generalist civil service, organised on Victorian public-school principles, even as our economy and governance become fiendishly more complex.Every single foreign investor, foreign do-gooder, foreign diplomat, is astounded by both the intelligence of their Indian bureaucratic interlocutor and their -- much of the time -- complete and utter ignorance of the issues at hand.What else can you expect?The person having to deal with FIIs today may have been dealing with water harvesting yesterday.No matter how high your rank in a deadly dull competitive examination in the early 1980s, you will not handle that transition seamlessly.It is natural, therefore, that you take no risks and show no imagination; you are, after all, always a step behind those you are regulating or governing.It is less natural that you are incredibly arrogant even while being that step behind. (Or to suppose that anyone else in government being paid more than you would be a colossal, extraordinary insult to the Indian Republic, equivalent to Bangladesh annexing most of Eastern India. Imagine if a tax expert or a lawyer was hired from the private sector and paid more than the Cabinet Secretary! The whole edifice of government would collapse! Anarchy would rule! Four southern states would sink into the sea! Etc, etc)We have an un-fire-able, unaccountable civil service, which can screw up as much as it likes -- consider, for example, the monumental error that was the FII-MAT (minimum alternate tax) imbroglio -- and still will face no consequences.This is the largest cause of the institutionalised mediocrity that holds this country back. Even promotions are largely dependent on seniority and not record; nobody would run any other organisation thus, but it's OK to run a complicated, under-governed country like this?Ah, we are told, but insulating administrators is necessary to ensure they are not subject to politicisation -- to ensure they are "independent".This laughable claim can only be the product of wilfully refusing to actually read even one newspaper headline over the past 20 years.Who can claim that bureaucrats are not politicised, given contemporary history? How many have simply refused to sign what they are supposed to? There are some such glorious names, but vanishingly few.Combine these three factors, and you have a government machinery that is unaccountable, under-informed, and all-powerful. It lacks creativity. It automatically stifles innovation (witness the colossal idiocy underlying its shutdown of Uber in the capital).There is no alternative but to shut these people down. Root-and-branch reform, beginning with an end to the imperial-era privileges of the Indian Administrative Service.The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern.The prime minister, sadly, agrees with that.He, too, seems to imagine that his transformative promises can be operationalised and implemented by the same people who have failed us for 70 years.His first action on entering 7, Race Course Road, was to tell the secretaries to the Union that they could speak to him directly, cutting out their ministers.Subsequently he took over all appointments. This is in a way natural; when Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he had no experience of -- or history of interest in -- policy.Guess who he turned to? Perhaps that's why the bureaucrats other Indians see as obstructive, backward-looking monuments to institutional arrogance are seen by our prime minister as gentle tutors in the art of governance.This is a pity, since the only way he will actually transform India is by first transforming its hopelessly out-of-date government.Actually, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will be entirely his fault. He should have started by ending the IAS.
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