Case Studies (GS IV)

The case reflects the growing concerns about the civil servant’s ethical standard and integrity. The given three areas encompass all the dimensions to be looked into to ensure the integrity and ethics in civil services.
The institutional measures to address specific threatsto ethical standards and integrity in the civil services:

• Adopting simple procedure to reduce red-tapism for effective service delivery.
• Periodic revision of remuneration:
  • As Kautilya had talked about good salary of civil servant to reduce the propensity towards corruption.
  • e.g. government set-up pay commission
• Ensuring non-partisanship and impartiality of civil servant:
  • Constitution has adopted permanent bureaucracy as it envisioned the non-partisanship along political line.
• Reducing elitism and rnsuring non-biasness along caste or class line by:
  • People’s partnership in program implementation
  • Strengthen grievance redressal mechanism, adopting social auditing, laying down citizen charter etc.
• Ensuring security and safety of civil servant:
  • The impartiality and uprightness of civil servant may hurt the vested interests. For example Satyendra Dubey was murdered when he fought corruption in the Golden Quadrilateral highway construction project.
  • So, safety concerns have to be addressed for fearless working.
• Reducing Political-bureaucratic and criminal nexus:
  • Recent case of Vikas Dubey in U.P. highlight the existence of such nexus.
  • N N Vohra committee suggestions should be implemented for deal with this menace.
• Doing away with the culture of secrecy:
  • e.g. The RIT act should be implemented in letter and spirit.
• Autonomy backed by accountability:
  • e.g. For reducing political interference with the police, the supreme court laid down directions in prakash singh case.
  • While providing operational autonomy the accountability should also be ensured through oversight institutions e.g. parliament, strong Lokpal, CVC etc.

The institutional measures for strengthening the ethical competenceof civil servant:

• The recruitment process should adopt measured to ensure high standard of ethical competence among the civil servant. For example case study based questions, interview etc of UPSC are inteded to judge the ethical competence of the candidate.
  • Recruiting civil servants at younger age as it is easier to inculcate values (as recommended by both Baswan committtee and 2nd ARC). Older candidates have to un-learn and then re-learn about the ethical conducts which is more difficult.
• Civil servants should go through frequent periodic trainings and be familiar about the expected course of action they are expected to take depending on the scenarios.
• Incentivising the honest civil servants. ARC reports had pointed that honest officers sometimes gets punished for his honesty.
  • Reward and honours will infuse competition in the civil services to perform better and develop innovative solutions for public service.
• The process of accountability should differentiate between bona fide and mala fide errors. It the civil servant goes outside to the limits of law to help the needy, he should not be punished for it.

The institutional measures for developingadministrative processes and practices which promote ethical values and integrity in civil services

• Currently, there is no Code of Ethics prescribed for civil servants. It should be laid down.
• Implementing, citizen charter, code of conduct etc  should be clear and implemented in letter and spirit.
• Fast court may be formed to address the cases of corrupt practices.
• Bringing in competition and reducing the discretionary powers:
  • Ac to DoPT: Monopoly+discretion- transparency= corruption.
  • Government has already started lateral entry to bring in competition.
• Adopting 360 degree performance appraisal: is a process through which feedback from an employee’s subordinates, colleagues, and supervisor(s), as well as a self-evaluation by the employee themselves is gathered.
• Intra-departmental Grievance redressal mechanism for honest civil servant being harassed for his honesty.
• Promoting inclusive work culture which include the partnership of all employees in decision making.
• Giving voluntary retirement to the civil servant facing serious corruption charges and have bad track record of performance.  

The above measures will take us a long way towards goal of having people friendly bureaucracy and bring in a healthy work culture in bureaucracy.