Hearsay Administration
तुम्हारा ख़ून ख़ून और हमारा पानी, a famous dialogue of Hindi film somehow applied to Indian bureaucracy. It has major three layers of hierarchy: permanent, semi permanent and temporary. The permanent staff is the lower bureaucracy recruited for the department, serve and retire mostly from the same department. The semi permanent are the top executive officers come and go with an average tenure of 2-3 years. The temporary are the elected representatives, the ministers who stay for the term of office.
Lord Cornwallis the Governor General of Bengal is called the father of Indian bureaucracy as he introduced bureaucracy in India through Cornwallis Code. It took a new shape of governance with the Chartered Act of 1833 through which the Governor General of Bengal became Governor General of India and the government run by him referred as Government of India. Lord William Bentinck became the first Governor General of India in the end of 1833. The "Governor-General in Council" were given exclusive legislative powers. The act introduced a system of open competitions for the selection of civil servants. The East India Company rule was replaced by the British Crown in 1858 following the First War of Independence 1857. The British run the administration for 190 years till India became independence on 15th August 1947. With few changes in the names and jobs charts, the model of British bureaucracy continued in India post independence. It’s a constitutional bureaucracy of a welfare state is loyal to the Constitution of India. But the bureaucracy is made of humans does carry cultural burden of Indian heritage of castes and creed, though objective in principle turns subjective sometimes.
It’s a hierarchical set up where officers are inducted at certain level grow higher up based on their performance reports and hearsay images. The Reporting Officer and Reviewing Officer have the right to evaluate their subordinate as the previous knows more from the first hand information and the later mostly dependent on the previous does keep check over subjectivity if any by the reporting officer. But other than these two, the rest are the lot of opinion builders through hearsay material sales fakelore of the market, make or mar the career of an officer. In a cadre of 300-400 officers, there are seniors, peers and subordinates. There are sub groups made of batches, regions or like minded individuals. Few of them may turn into कूथली केन्द्र, talk loose about other colleagues and spread false narratives of hearsay. One may argue that there is no smoke without fire, but true or false, an image builds of an officer other than his/her performance becomes a burden he/she carries in service and post retirement.
The bureaucrats that way are more a bundle of colleagues rather than a group of friends. It is good to become colleagues so to become objective but its subjectivity through hearsay sometimes promote a rogue and discard aboveboard. One of the CMs used to say that PR works more than the performance in public administration.
Punamchand
3 January 2025
