How All India Are The All India Services?

Dr M N Buch, 

Dean, Centre for Governance and Political Studies, VIF

Article 1 of the Constitution makes India a Union of States and the Seventh Schedule framed under Article 246, by containing List 1, the Union List, List 2, the State List and List 3, the Concurrent List prescribes the legislative bounds of Parliament and the State Legislatures in what is basically a quasi federal structure. Part XI, which refers to the relations between the Union and the States, whether legislative or administrative, defines the extent to which the legislative and administrative jurisdictions of the Union and the States extend and to what extent the Union writ prevails over the States. The Union, while giving constitutional autonomy to the States within their respective executive and legislative competence, is centripetal in that under Article 248 residuary powers of legislation vest in Parliament.

The quasi federal structure of India is somewhat different from that of the constitutional structure of other Federations, for example, the United States of America. In the United States, separation of powers between the Federal Government and State Governments is complete in that in matters legislative, executive or judicial, the Federal Government functions through federal officers and federal judges, as also Congress in matters within the federal competence and the State Governments function through their own set up in matters within State competence. The Federal Government has its own civil servants who administer the areas which come within the legislative competence of Congress and the States have their Civil Services which operate in areas within the competence of the State Legislature. However, the Indian Constitution has a unique structure embodied in Article 312 which permits Parliament to make laws for the creation of what are known as All India Services. The same Article states that the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service which predate the Constitution would be deemed to be created under Article 312. The same Article also permits the creation of an All India Judicial Service, though none has been constituted so far. The All India Services are covered by the All India Services Act, 1951 and rules have been framed under the Act, including the Cadre Rules, the Conduct Rules and the Discipline and Appeal Rules. Under the Cadre Rules, posts in the Central Government and the State Governments in the two initially constituted All India Services, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Police Service (IPS) and the subsequently created Indian Forest Service (IFS) are prescribed and against these posts only an IAS, IPS or IFS officer can be appointed. There is provision for lateral entry by promotion from State Services or by induction through limited special recruitment, but the fact remains that the senior posts in the General Administration, which include Revenue and Development Administration, the Police and the Forests, including wildlife, can only be held by an officer of the IAS, IPS or IFS respectively. The uniqueness of this constitutional provision is that whereas India is a Union of States, it is a union or federation in which the senior Civil Service posts, including the Police and the Forest Department, are held by officers who are under the direct rule making control of the Union Government. The officers are assigned to a State Cadre and normally serve under the State Government, but they are liable to transfer either for service under the Union Government or, under certain circumstances, on deputation to other State Governments, public sector undertakings and as the rules stand today, to international bodies or even to private undertakings.

An All India Service officer is appointed by the President and can be removed from Service or awarded a major penalty only by the President. An All India Service officer is recruited through the Union Public Service Commission, his promotion through a departmental promotion committee even within the State is done through such a committee, which has representatives of the Union Public Service Commission and of the Government of India. The State Government’s authority over the All India Service officers is limited by the provisions of the rules framed under the All India Services Act.

One need not discuss in detail why the All India Services were thought necessary and were created in a quasi federal structure, but some knowledge of the background does help. British India was governed as a unitary state in which for administrative purposes, the country was divided into Provinces, each headed by a Governor. Elements of federalism were there even under the 1919 Government of India Act and were strengthened under the 1935 Government of India Act and the Provinces did enjoy a fairly high degree of autonomy because a country as large as India cannot be administratively managed from one power centre alone. In fact, in those days of poor communication links, the districts were fairly autonomous and the D.C. and S.P. were required to take decisions on the spot, which government invariably supported. Therefore, the provincial governments had considerable freedom of action, including the setting up of provincial services, but the country was held together by what were known as the Imperial Services of which the Indian Civil Service, or ICS was at the apex. The other major Imperial Service was the Indian Police or IP, but there was an Indian Forest Service, Indian Service of Engineers and an Indian Medical Service of all India nature. The Imperial Services were appointed by the Crown and not by the Viceroy and Governor General. When India became independent and the provinces became States which had constitutional legitimacy, the Indian Civil Service was carried forward as the Indian Administrative Service. In some ways, the legal provisions of the Government of India Act 1935 were carried forwarded into the Constitution, with cast iron constitutional autonomy being enshrined in lieu of the surrogate autonomy of the provinces granted by the Government of India Act 1935.

The reason why we provide for an All India Service in a quasi federal constitution, apart from the need to have continuity in the administrative set up in India after we became independent, was Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s clear understanding that India had major fissiparous tendencies which needed to be controlled and countered by building into the Constitution centripetal features which would hold the country together. A unified judicial hierarchy, the All India Services, a single independent audit organisation under the Comptroller and Auditor General, with constitutional power of the Central Government to give directions to the States under certain circumstances and the power of the President to take over the administration of the States under Article 356, are all parts of the centripetal features of our Constitution. Sardar Patel was firmly of the opinion that if the executive government of the States and the Union was carried out through officers of All India Services, who were protected and immunised from arbitrary action by the political class, then not only would we have a nonpartisan administration where officers work without fear or favour but a united India would also be ensured through these Civil Services whose ultimate rule making control is vested in the Central Government. Hopefully this would eliminate political whimsicality from the administration.

Upto 1967, the system worked extremely well and this was possible because, by and large, the Governments, both at the Centre and in the States, were formed by the same party. In 1967, suddenly the politics of defection through purchase of power was introduced and now power was up for grabs. Thus began an era of political uncertainty in which the politicians, in order to remain in power, had to use bribery as a major weapon. Money for bribes can only be made by misusing the instrumentality of State power and obviously an impartial and fearless Civil Service would be an obstruction in obtaining such money. The Civil Service had to be tamed and the politicians proceeded to do this with vim and vigour, using the instrument of posting and transfer as a major weapon. In 1975, when Indira Gandhi declared a state of Emergency and concentrated all power in herself, a new slogan of a committed Civil Service was added to our administrative lexicon. A committed Civil Service meant that civil servants would no longer necessarily be servants of the law and would be prepared to carry out the will of the political masters, even if it meant that the administration became partisan. At this stage, intimidation of civil servants was added to the armoury of the politicians and not only were honest, impartial civil servants sidelined, many of them were subjected to humiliation through suspension and worse. So long as the Central Government continued to be under a single party, some element of protection was available to the civil servants, especially the All India Services.

However, when the Central Government became weaker and we entered into an era of unprincipled coalitions, narrow political interests very often overtook the legal provisions relating to the All India Services and in many States the local satraps arbitrarily decided the fate of civil servants because the ruling coalition in the centre needed their support in order to remain in power and hesitated to protect the civil servants. In some States, the politicians went berserk and Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are two glaring examples of how the All India Services were hounded, bullied and bludgeoned into virtual servility by totally arbitrary actions of Chief Ministers such as Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mayawati. In West Bengal and in Kerala, the Left Front Governments did not act in a crude manner but they did take political decisions whereby in areas of interest to the party in power, the civil servants were rendered helpless. Industrial unrest is one area where the police and the magistracy were reduced to impotence where the interests of the Left Front were concerned. Here it is what the party dictated which mattered and not the law. In Tamil Nadu, whereas both the DMK and the AIADMK Governments left the cutting edge level of the district administration more or less alone because the Collector was used for efficient delivery of such services as were politically ordained, at senior levels the All India Services were made subservient.

This was a total negation of Sardar Patel’s ideal of an impartial Civil Service, immunised from undue political influence and, therefore, in a position to give advice without fear and favour and to administer without bias. Over the years, the position has worsened. The standard joke in Uttar Pradesh is that the Annual Confidential Report of an IAS or IPS officer serving in the districts is seldom written because hardly any officer serves for even three months in a district before being transferred and the ACR must span at least a three months tenure. There is total whimsicality in such transfers. The Queen of Hearts in the book ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ was in the habit of going around shouting, “Off with his head”. That is how Mayawati behaved, that is how Mulayam Singh Yadav operated. It is unfortunate that senior officers at the level of Chief Secretary and D.G. Police have been silent spectators to the virtual destruction of the Civil Service hierarchy and have not had the courage to open their mouths in protest.

I have a theory about this which is based on my own experience. After I was removed from the Delhi Development Authority towards the end of 1979, I spent a whole year without a posting in Delhi and somehow the impression was created that I was dissatisfied or disgruntled. The fact is that I was being paid my full salary without having to do a stroke of work and was personally very comfortable, but it is true that being on the shelf is never a good feeling. There were several of us who were similarly placed, including Hari Pillai and Ved Marwah of the IPS and JC Jaitley of the IAS. Krishnaswamy Rao Sahib, who was then Cabinet Secretary, sent for me and wanted to know why some IAS officers were disgruntled. I asked him whether he wanted an honest answer and when he said that that was what he wanted, I told him that the real reason why there was some dissatisfaction is because a whole succession of Cabinet Secretaries had not put their heads on the chopping block. He was a little taken aback and wanted to know why I said this. I told him that there were a number of us without a posting for no fault of our own except that some politicians were annoyed with us and that even for postings at junior level, officers were being informally advised to find a political godfather. I said that successive Cabinet Secretaries were probably looking for their governorship on retirement and, therefore, were hesitating to stand up for these Services. In my view, the Cabinet Secretary should have told the Prime Minister that personnel management was his job and not that of the politicians, whose job was to frame policy. Anyway, the meeting ended inconclusively, though to give the Cabinet Secretary his due, he did not hold my acerbic remarks against me.

Recently, a young IAS officer with two years service, Durga Shakti Nagpal, has been placed under suspension by the Uttar Pradesh Government because she took on the powerful political and commercial interests behind illegal sand mining. There are innumerable decisions of the Supreme Court and the High Courts calling upon government to control illegal mining and it is the duty of civil servants to implement these orders. If, however, the politicians are to harass civil servants doing their duty, how will the rule of law prevail? Javed Usmani, the Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, should have stood up to the Chief Minister and opposed the suspension of this young officer. Instead, he has become a party to framing a false and frivolous charge-sheet against the officer to try and justify the suspension. Durga Nagpal’s case is one of many in which civil servants of the All India Services are being harassed. The IPS is a major target because politicians want to use the police for furthering their own ends. I remember a case in which Mayawati, because she was annoyed with the SSP of Lucknow, suspended him and transferred the DG Police, Zonal IG and the Range DIG and this happened in the presence of the Chief Secretary. Did that worthy protest at these totally irrational orders? He preferred to be a silent spectator. This weakened his own position also. What a contrast with RCVP Noronha, the then Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh, who not only resisted the wholly unjustified suspension of R.S. Khanna, the then Sales Tax Commissioner, by P.C. Sethi, Chief Minister, but refused to issue orders and when Sethi asked whether or not orders would be issued, replied, “They probably will be issued, but by my successor”. It is P.C. Sethi who stepped back.

How do we remedy the situation? The Supreme Court, in a writ petition filed by Prakash Singh, IPS (retired), has been pressing the Central Government and the State Governments to immunise the police from undue political influence. The Supreme Court wants the Police Act to be amended to give the police autonomy, to provide tenure for officers from the rank of Station Officer up to DG Police and to protect officers from arbitrary action by government. Why is the Supreme Court suo motu not extending this to all the Civil Services and in particular the two other All India Services? It is about time that we put in place a set of laws and rules which, whilst accepting that it is the elected representatives through the Council of Ministers which will have the final say in all matters relating to policy of governance, the Civil Services are also be given due protection against arbitrary action by the politicians so that they can perform their task of implementing lawful orders without fear or favour. One set of rules which need immediate amendment is the All India Services (Discipline and Appeal) Rules 1969. Rule 3 relates to suspension. Under this rule, a State Government may suspend an All India Service officer serving in that State Cadre. The opening words of Rule 3 are important and they read, “If, having regard to the circumstances in any case, and where Articles of Charges have been drawn up, the nature of the charges, the government of a State or the Central Government, as the case may be, is satisfied that it is necessary or desirable to place under suspension a member of the Service, against whom disciplinary proceedings are contemplated or are pending, that government may, if the member of the Service is serving under that government pass an order placing him under suspension…” The same rule, however, says that if there is a difference of opinion between the Central Government and the State Government about the suspension order, then the opinion of the Central Government shall prevail. In the Durga Nagpal case, the order of suspension and the grounds of suspension are so flimsy and so obviously contrived that the Central Government should have treated this as a case of disagreement with the State Government and should itself have quashed the suspension order. It is not necessary to wait for ninety days, within which period a charge sheet has to be served.

Considering the fact that there are many State Governments which are misusing the power of suspension, we need to amend the rules on the following lines:-

The State Government should have no power to suspend an All India Service officer except on the following grounds:-

(a) The officer’s conduct is under investigation in a criminal case, in connection with which the officer has been arrested and remanded to custody in excess of forty-eight hours.

(b) The officer’s actions are so prejudicial to public safety or national integrity that he must be neutralised without delay. However, in every such case, the State Government must submit a report within forty-eight hours of the order to the Central Government, which may then decide whether or not to continue the suspension of the officer.

(c) In every other case, if the government feels that the suspension of an officer is in the public interest it must make a report to the Central Government, which may decide whether or not the officer is to be placed under suspension.

Other than this, the State Government should have no power whatsoever to place an All India Service officer under suspension. This is all the more so because the power to impose a penalty on an All India Service officer vests in the Central Government and can be imposed only in consultation with the Union Public Service Commission. This would go a long way in ensuring that the All India Service officers function without fear and favour.

There is another set of reforms that we need if we have to make the All India Service truly national in character. At present there are many officers who, after allocation to a State Cadre, never serve outside that State. This must immediately end. In the approximately thirty-five years span of service, an All India Service officer should serve outside his cadre for at least ten years. Every All India Service officer should have one stint of five years of service in a cadre other than the one to which he is allotted, that is, he must serve under a State Government other than the one to which he is allotted. He must also put in an additional five years stint in any post under the Central Government. Thus, in his thirty-five years of service, at least ten years will be spent outside his parent cadre. The idea is that an All India Service officer must serve anywhere in India and not be confined to just one State. This would widen his horizon and give him an all India perspective, which is very necessary if our All India Services are to have a national character.

There is another suggestion I have to make, which is that the All India Services must be made to realise that they are servants of the law and not the personal servants of a politician. Therefore, if a civil servant has acted in a manner which promotes the interests of a politician or a political group and in doing so has been in violation of the law, then, if the State Government does not take action, the Central Government must charge-sheet the officer and take disciplinary action against him. Every All India Service officer must be made to realise that if in order to curry favour with State politicians, he acts in a manner prejudicial to law, he will have to face the consequences because the Central Government will intervene. This is the only way to curb the whimsicality of wayward Chief Ministers who are under the false notion that they are above the law and can, therefore, expect senior civil servants to even ignore the law to serve the interests of the Chief Minister. If condign punishment is awarded in a few such cases, it would have a salutary effect in reminding the All India Services where their duty lies.

Maintenance of Public Order

Dr. M.N. Buch
Visiting Fellow, VIF

It is the fundamental duty of the State to maintain public order. The definition of public order is given in section 31 of the Police Act of 1861 and requires that order will be maintained on public roads and in public places, obstruction will not be caused by assemblies and processions and, when this is read with section 34 which make it an offence for any person to cause obstruction, inconvenience, annoyance, risk, danger or damage and section 23, which makes it incumbent upon the police to maintain the public peace and prevent the commission of offence and of public nuisance, it is clear that public order really means that the actions of a group of individuals should not impinge on the rights and convenience of any other group. An assembly of persons who use criminal force in order to cause a public servant to desist from his duty, resist the execution of any law or legal process, commit mischief or criminal trespass, deprive any other person of his property, enjoyment of a right of way or peaceful enjoyment of rights by use of criminal force, or use criminal force to compel a person to do an illegal act automatically becomes an unlawful assembly under section 141 of the IPC if it consists of five or more persons. For the purpose of maintenance of public order and tranquility an Executive Magistrate or a police officer is empowered under Chapter X Cr,P.C. to cause the assembly to disperse, if need be by use of civil force or with the help of the armed forces. Every act of disturbance of public order is a cognisable offence, to prevent which a police officer may arrest the accused under section 151 Cr.P.C. Under Chapter VIII Cr.P.C. such persons can be bound over for keeping the peace, be of good behaviour and generally behave in a lawful and orderly manner. The duty of the Executive Magistracy and the Police to maintain public order is thus clearly laid down by law.

Apart from arrest, binding over a person for good behaviour or using force to disperse an unlawful assembly, the Executive Magistracy and the Police have the legal authority to regulate assemblies, public meetings and processions. Whereas under Article 19 of the Constitution the right to assemble peacefully is guaranteed, reasonable restrictions by law on such assembly is permissible under the same Article. After all, the enjoyment of one’s fundamental rights is limited by the requirement that this should not impinge on the fundamental rights of other citizens. If, therefore, there is an assembly of people or a procession which obstructs the public way, prevents citizens from going about their lawful work or endangers the public peace, the authorities are duty bound to step in and prevent any disruption of public order. The authorities are not only empowered in this behalf by law, they are duty bound by law to ensure that every assembly of persons works directly within the confines of what the law permits. If the Executive Magistracy or the Police lays down certain conditions or prescribes the minimum requirement of what an assembly of persons can or cannot do, then disobedience of such lawful order is an offence. Apart from the provisions of the Police Act disobedience of an order promulgated by a public servant lawfully empowered to promulgate such order is an offence under section 188 IPC. If the defiance of such order leads to serious offences such as rioting, then it can invite the provisions of sections 147 and 148 IPC. If public servants are assaulted in the process this will be a more serious offence under section 152 IPC, which would carry a penalty of up to three years rigorous imprisonment. If arson is caused, property is damaged, citizens are assaulted and grievous hurt and death is caused to any persons or persons then the provisions of sections 302, 304, 324, 325, 436,438, etc. would all be attracted. The scheme of the law is that citizens will maintain public order, will be liable to punishment if they cause disorder, damage, hurt or death that the authorities charged with the maintenance of public order will take necessary steps and issue necessary orders to maintain public peace and, where necessary, use force to bring offenders to book, disperse unlawful assemblies and restore public peace.

The British administration was quite clear about the duty of the authorities to maintain peace. The rebellion of 1857, during which atrocities were committed on both sides and after which terrible retribution was exacted by the victorious British, left an administrative legacy in which the obedience by Indians of every order of a government official was demanded and every act of disobedience was looked upon as mutinous behaviour. The Rowlatt Act and what happened in Amritsar in 1919, leading to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre were all part of the post mutiny syndrome from which the British suffered. Undoubtedly the Civil Disobedience Movement of Mahatma Gandhi, followed by the Quit India Movement, severely questioned this doctrine and created a situation where on the part of the British there was insistence on obedience and on the part of the Indians there was an equal determination not to obey the orders of the British rulers. The fact that ultimately the British had to moderate their response to the Civil Disobedience Movement is the ultimate tribute to the Mahatma‘s call for the movement to be totally nonviolent and based on the principle of ahimsa.

I joined the IAS in 1957, that is, just ten years after independence. The post 1947 doctrine of public order had undergone substantial change during the Independence Movement, but we were still told in the IAS Training School at Metcalfe House that whereas one should impose a prohibitory order under section 144 Cr.P.C. only in extreme circumstances, once such an order was promulgated it had to be obeyed and enforcement had to be rigidly done, if necessary by the use of lethal force. It was drilled into us that the State would collapse if we allowed prohibitory orders to be disobeyed because that would bring the entire administration into disrepute. Firing in the air was totally prohibited because stray bullets could hit innocents and partly because such firing is ineffective and could encourage the mob to indulge in greater violence. Now one finds that the Police is reluctant to fire at specified targets, firing in the air is resorted to frequently and this does cause unwanted casualties because some innocent is hit at a distance from the scene of the incident.

With independence the political process was strengthened and parties with different ideologies came to power in different States. For example, in West Bengal the Left Front came to power, whose specific aim was to establish the hegemony of peasants and workers. Thus, despite the fact that wrongful restraint and wrongful confinement are offences under the Indian Penal Code, gherao of business and industrial establishments by workers, prevention of free movement by the management and even intimidation of the management became quite normal, with the police being give orders not to intervene despite the fact that a crime being committed. This brought another dimension to the question of law and order. Public agitations against shortages of essential commodities, inadequacy of municipal services, in support of demands of students, etc., brought the people on the streets and such assemblies could not be treated in the same manner as unlawful assemblies of hooligans or agitators bent on mischief. Now a new dimension of public assembly and public order had to be faced by the Executive Magistracy and Police.

As the years passed religious processions and events have proliferated in India and whereas in the past religious processions were strictly regulated, as time passed and political support began to be given to such processions, the Magistracy and the Police also became inert in regulating such processions and events. Now any wretched marriage procession also results in obstruction of public streets and the Police stand by as helpless spectators. When political processions and agitations take place, as they frequently do in our cities, the Police seem to be almost totally helpless and have virtually given up any attempt to regulate such assemblies. At almost every political meeting, especially of radical groups, the scene degenerates into a near riot situation in which passers by are threatened and intimidated, shops are forced to close, public transport is attacked and quite often the Police and peaceful citizens are physically assaulted. Unregulated public meetings, therefore, are often an invitation to rioting.

Let us take the case of two cities, Delhi, the capital of India and Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra. I have a quarrel with the name of Mumbai for a city whose authentic name really is Bombay. Where the present city is located there was no habitation, with such habitation as there was being located to the north at Vasai, which the Portuguese, who owned the territory, had named Bassein. The Bay around which the present city of Bombay is located was Bom Bahia, or Beautiful Bay. When the Portuguese Princess Catherine of Braganza married King Charles II of Britain she brought as part of her dowry Bom Bahia, which the British promptly renamed as Bombay. It is said by the Shiv Sena that the name Mumbai has come from the Goddess Mumba Devi. This temple itself was established long after the first British settlement of Bombay and, therefore, can hardly form the base of the name Mumbai for the city. My view is that either the city should continue to be called Bombay or it should be renamed as Vasai, the original settlement in the region. I have elaborated this issue because the Shiv Sena is prone to extreme violence on the question of this name. The name of the city is really a non-issue because in Gujarati and Marathi it is always called Mumbai and for the Hindi speaking people it has always been Bambai. The fact remains that if a name can arouse passions, including street violence, we should really be worried about the health of our polity.

To return to the main issue, because Delhi is the national capital and the police is not under the control of the elected government of the National Capital Territory, but is under the superintendence of the Lieutenant Governor, himself a central government appointee, it is less susceptible to pandering to local sentiments when dealing with a situation relating to public order. Therefore, processions to Parliament are stopped at least two kilometers from Parliament House. Whether it is Baba Ramdeo or Anna Hazare, a kisan agitation or labour strife, processions and assemblies are strictly regulated and the authorities do not hesitate to act firmly. Of course the same Delhi Police failed miserably in 1984 to check the anti Sikh riots, but that was an exceptional situation. Of course that is no excuse for what happened and it is unfortunate that even 28 years after the event no civil officer, no police officer, no instigator of the anti-Sikh pogrom has been punished. The Delhi Police has no special competence in crowd control, but its objectives are clearly defined and, therefore, it is an effective instrument for the maintenance of public order in Delhi.

In Bombay, by contrast, the Police are subject to the superintendence of the State Government of Maharasthra. By and large Maharashtra has been ruled by the Congress Party and even today there is a coalition between the Congress and its offshoot, N.C.P. Maharashtra has been subjected to some murky political manoeuvrings and just as Vasant Dada Patil was a creation of S.K. Patil, the Shiv Sena is also a creation of Vasant Rao Naik, who used it to counter the militant trade union leader, Datta Samant. All such noxious creations grow into monsters, as experienced by Indira Gandhi whose government built up Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale as a counter to the Akalis. The Shiv Sena has turned into such a monster because its avowed policy is that it will not hesitate in the use of violence to force its will upon the people of Maharashtra. This has taken the form of violence against restaurant owners from Udupi and Mangalore, harassment of Bihari migrants and exploitation of any communal situation in which Muslims are involved. The handling of Shiv Sena by the Maharashtra Police in Bombay has been so weak-kneed as to be an absolute disgrace and a blot on the face of a Force which once claimed to be the best in India. In the matter of communal riots, inaction by the Police at one end and uncontrolled action at the other have resulted in Bombay being a city which from time to time is torn apart by riots.

Let us take the recent case of August 11^th when the Azad Maidan became the venue of extremely ugly rioting by a group of Muslims who had gathered to protest against what was happening in four Bodo Districts of Assam. The gathering had the approval of the Police, but it soon degenerated into a situation in which two people were killed, several policemen injured, vehicles were burnt and weapons were snatched from the Police. This is unfortunate and demoralises the Police. The Police Commissioner of Bombay has been shifted, but only after a very aggressive meeting addressed by the MNS Chief, Raj Thackeray, which held out menace to the Muslims. The Police Commissioner defended himself, but there were certain basic flaws in the manner in which the situation was handled at Azad Maidan on 11th August. He said he desisted from firing because in 1992-93 it had resulted in 188 deaths and it was almost made out as if the deaths had occurred in police firing. In fact had the Police used adequate force at the earliest juncture in 1992-93 the total number of deaths would not have exceeded ten or twelve because the rioting would have been suppressed at an early stage. In the Azad Maidan case certain basic principles of crowd control were ignored by the Police. All Police Manuals prescribe that when faced with a mob armed parties must be organised in a minimum of section strength, to be commanded by a senior officer not below the rank of a Sub Inspector. Under no circumstance should the armed parties be brought into close proximity of the crowd and if the crowd becomes menacing enough to endanger the Force then the armed parties, on appropriate orders from their senior officers duly approved by a Magistrate, must use their fire arms in a controlled manner to disperse the unlawful assembly. In Bombay armed policemen mingled with the crowd and, therefore, could be overwhelmed by it. That is how their weapons were snatched. When an officer of the rank of Additional Director General of Police himself forgets what the Manual prescribes, how can he be forgiven? The senior officers at Azad Maidan, far from controlling the crowd, rendered the jawans vulnerable to mob action and this only proves how incompetent they are. My suggestion to the Maharashtra Government and DGP Maharashtra would be that they very quickly attend to the training and competence of their senior police officers when dealing with a mob. The police action or lack of it on 11th August at Azad Maidan is a prime example of how not to deal with a mob.

The first principle of dealing with a law and order situation is that the officers on the spot have as their first and only priority the very quick restoration of public order. It is possible that people are agitated about an issue with justification and that the issue should be addressed by the appropriate authorities to rectify the situation. That, however, cannot be the determining factor in preventing the officer in charge of a situation to act decisively. If a Muslim mob on an issue relating to injustice against Muslims turns violent, the issue of justice takes a back seat because the mob must be immediately controlled and without inhibition. If a mob dominated by extremist Hindu elements creates public disorder it must be dealt with firmly as a mob and not as a Hindu mob which might have some justification for its agitation. In other words, when the Executive Magistracy and the Police are dealing with a law and order situation they should leave aside moral questions relating to justification of the agitation and instead take all the necessary measures to restore order. It is only after order is restored that wider questions can be addressed. This applies to all situations, including hooliganism by Bajrang Dal on Saint Valentine’s Day.

We need to build in this county an environment in which laws and lawful orders are respected. Instead we are moving more and more towards a state of anarchy in which the strong dominate the weak, mobs rather than the Police rule the streets and the normal life of the people is disrupted from time to time because someone decides to organise a protest or an agitation. Such protests, such agitations, without necessarily promoting their own cause, result in disruption of normal life and must be put down with a heavy hand. People accuse the Police of being an instrument for terrorising of the citizens. My allegation, however, is that we have rendered the Police to a state of impotence, so that it now finds it difficult to maintain public order even under normal circumstances. This is a very dangerous portent.

India’s Health Infrastructure and Policies Need a Revamp

Dr. M.N. Buch
Visiting Fellow, VIF

The Constitution of India, whose framers deserve great credit for the manner in which they have prescribed the duties of the State and laid down Directive Principles of how the State shall conduct itself, states in Article 47, “Duty of the State to raise the level of the nutrition and the standard of living and improve public health care. The State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties…” Just as Article 38 directs the States to secure a social order for the promotion of the welfare of the people, Article 47 makes ‘public health’ the primary duty of the State. In this behalf it has to be noted that the pre-independent government of India, which was administered by the British and the provincial governments had provided an elaborate network of rural dispensaries and health centres, district hospitals and medical colleges and their attached hospitals to provide health care to all Indians. One of the primary duties of the civil surgeon of every district was to ensure prevention and control of epidemics and the provision of universal immunisation against diseases such as small pox. The government health care system was supplemented by dispensaries, health care centres and hospitals run by local bodies, including the district boards and municipalities. Large city corporations such as those of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras even ran major referral hospitals and medical colleges. There were some private health care centres, but by and large it was a system very much in the public domain and the State did not shirk its duty to look after the health of the citizens. Princely India also more or less followed suit.

Let me reinforce my above statement by reference to the district gazetteers of two districts, now in Pakistan and one Princely State, Gondal in Gujarat. The district gazetteer of Montgomery District is of the period 1883-84. At that time Montgomery had a district hospital under the Civil Surgeon and dispensaries (primary health centres in today’s parlance) at Kamalia, Dipalpur, Gurgera and Pak Pattan. In 1930 in Attock District there was a district hospital at Campbellpur, the district headquarters and civil hospitals at Fatehganj and the Jand, apart from mobile dispensaries which toured the district. There was also a jail hospital and a railway hospital at Campbellpur. The District Board ran civil hospitals at Tallagang, Tamman, Ahdawal, Hassan Abdal and Domel, all tehsil headquarters, apart from seventeen rural dispensaries. To this six more were added in 1930, making a total of one district hospital, six tehsil level hospitals and twenty-three rural dispensaries. Besides this, the municipalities ran a women’s hospital and a general hospital at Hazro and a dispensary at Pindigheb, a Sub Divisional town in the district. Moving to Gondal State, we find that as early as 1906 the State hospital at Gondal, the capital of the State was upgraded to a high standard of medical and surgical care and it also became a training centre for nurses and midwives. Besides this a district level hospital was constructed at Dhoraji and smaller hospitals at Upleta, Bhayavadar, Sarsai and Jetalsar. In addition four charitable hospitals opened in the private sector. There was universal vaccination against small pox and very effective control over bubonic plague, influenza and other epidemic diseases which devastated large parts of Kathiawar and the Bombay Presidency. It is obvious that the British and the Princely States took their duty to provide health care coverage very seriously.

When independence came government took a conscious decision to vastly expand the public health care system and to give it multiple dimensions in terms of prevention of disease, control over epidemics, and provision of primary health care down to the last village and expansion of medical education in the public domain, together with world class medical facilities. In this context the medical colleges inherited from the British were strengthened and enlarged and State Governments set up new medical colleges. For example, even in a State as backward as Madhya Pradesh high quality medical colleges were set up at Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior, Jabalpur and Rewa, each with a thousand bedded hospital. The Central Government set up the All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Delhi and such top quality institutions as the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Research and Education, Chandigarh and the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, Pondicherry. The Government of India made available generous grants to medical colleges and medical educational institutions, thus substantially strengthening the health care system in India. Even today, with a large number of high quality health care institutions in the private sector, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi has consistently been considered the best medical institution in the whole of India. So much so that Government of India has decided to set up five more All India Institutes of Medical Sciences, of which one is located in Bhopal and has just begun functioning. There are also super specialty hospitals, such as the Bhopal Memorial Hospital for the Bhopal gas victims, VIMHANS, that is, Vivekananda Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Science for neurological and psychological disorders, the specialist institute in Dehradun for the visually handicapped, Tata Cancer Hospital, Bombay and many others.

In a country as large as India in every field of endeavour there is always room for more and, therefore, in the private sector also specialist health care institutions sprang up. Escorts and Apollo for cardiac care, the Shankar Netralaya for eye disorders and Jaslok Hospital and Breach Candy Hospital in Bombay are early examples of private sector initiative in high quality health care. We already had a long tradition of private sector clinics and poly clinics on a small scale, to which in recent years has been added a whole range of diagnostic centres. All the hospitals, etc., in the private sector are institutes for making profit and the old tradition of business houses running charitable hospitals seems to have died down. The entry of the private sector into health care was initially welcomed by government, but without diluting government’s own predominant role across the board of providing health care to people at large. Notwithstanding the large number of private medical institutions which have come up in recent years, government hospitals are still considered to have a certain uniform standard of medical practices and, therefore, they have been the most popular medical institutions in the country. Even today CGHS institutions have the largest clientele because they are government run and the government servants still find that CGHS dispensaries and hospitals provide them the best health care. This is true of ESIC hospitals and dispensaries also in the field of industrial workers.

The Directorate of Health Services of every State is responsible for running hospitals in the public domain. Gradually the professional heads of the Directorate have been replaced by IAS officers designated as Commissioner for Health. The powers of the Directorate and Civil Surgeon/Chief Medical Health and Officers of the districts have been curtailed and centralised, with the result that there is a distinct drop in the professional competence and efficiency of government medical institutions. It is almost as if government does not want its own institutions to function effectively. Over the years recruitment to the medical service in the States has been deliberately kept restricted, with the result that there is no entry of fresh blood into a district level medical institution. This has created a shortage of doctors even at district level, where the district hospitals are the referral centres for our primary health centres. On paper for a cluster of villages with a total population of thirty thousand (twenty thousand in tribal areas) there is a full-fledged primary health centre and for every three thousand population (two thousand in tribal areas) there is a subsidiary health centre. Most primary health centres and subsidiary health centres have either no staff or are undermanned. In the district level hospitals there are no young doctors who can be trained for taking on higher responsibility and this is affecting their efficiency. There is equipment shortage, inadequate supply of drugs, inadequate maintenance of infrastructure and very little expansion of capacity and generally speaking there is an environment in which patients lose confidence in the ability of these hospitals to provide proper treatment. Diagnostic facilities are obsolete and very often out of repair. Many doctors in the government hospitals prescribe tests and refer the patient to private diagnostic centres which charge high fees, part of which would be shared with the referring doctor. This, in turn, pushes patients away from government hospitals and into the hands of private medical centres whose fees an average person can hardly afford. Ultimately the government hospitals are left only with hopeless cases which private hospitals will not touch and indigent patients come to government hospitals as a last resort because they cannot really afford even moderately expensive health care and treatment. One senses in this a deliberate conspiracy of government to reduce public sector health care to a level where the system dies an unnatural death, to the great benefit and advantage of the private sector. The rich in any case would go to private hospitals, which earn enormous profits. The poor either go to an unsatisfactory public health facility or suffer disease stoically and die without medical care. If this is not a negation of what Article 47 enjoins, then what is it?

I have always felt that except in the first two or three Plans our Planning Commission has been distancing itself from the reality of India in favour of an utopian world of its own imagination. Regardless of jugglery of figures the fact remains that India has huge numbers of poor people who barely subsist. Ever since Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister, surrounded by his Doon School cronies and their ilk, government entered into a new era of what Rajni Kothari called “The Baba Log Government”. I, as Vice Chairman of the National Commission on Urbanisation, had occasion to closely interact with Rajiv Gandhi when my batch-mate Gopi Arora was his Secretary and Mani Shankar Aiyer was his Joint Secretary. Gopi was level headed and had a more realistic view of India. Gopi was a minority of one in that crowd and the impression created was that India is a country of the middle class, who formed a huge group of a hundred million consumers. I remember that in one meeting I told Rajiv that if out of a population of eight hundred millions a hundred millions were consumers, it still meant that seven hundred million people had nothing with which to consume. That meant that seven out of eight persons in India existed only on the margin, whereas the government seemed to think that only the sole exception amongst the eight was a worthwhile Indian. A government whose thinking is along these lines can never understand the problems of the poor and regardless of whatever such a government says, it can never be pro poor. I am sure these people secretly must have thought that if one could only be rid of the seven hundred million non consumers India would be one of wealthiest countries in the world.

The Planning Commission is in the process of finalising its chapter on health for the Twelfth Five Year Plan document. If what the Planning Commission proposes is accepted India would be amongst the ten bottommost countries in terms of percentage of GDP spent on health care. The new Plan document talks in terms of - “Preventive interventions which the government would be both funding and universally providing clinical services at different levels, defined in an Essential Health Package, which the government would finance but not necessarily directly provide”. In other words, government would downgrade its own direct provision of health services and would increasingly fund and encourage the corporate sector. The document further states, “Each citizen family would be entitled to an Essential Health Package in the network of their choice. Besides public facility networks, organised private and NGO providers would also be empanelled to give a choice to the families”.

The above statement presumes that there will be an equitable distribution of health services throughout the country by the private sector. Because the private sector functions only on the basis of profit, the system is bound to degenerate into one similar to the civil aviation sector, that is, the lucrative profit making routes would largely be diverted to the private sector and loss making routes would be serviced by Air India, which would be beggared as a consequence, then held up as an example of the inefficiency of the public sector and ultimately be forced to close. The Planning Commission also presumes that every Indians understands the niceties of an Essential Health Package which, it is presumed, would be operated through a system of health insurance. Whether the Planning Commission likes it or not more than seventy-two percent of the people of India live in villages with poor connectivity and another ten percent of small town population lives in semi rural conditions with equally poor connectivity. Does the Planning Commission seriously expect these people to understand what an Essential Health Package is, identify the service providers in the corporate sector and then exercise a preference regarding the health package? So many people are on the verge of starvation that their only thought is on how to procure the next meal. They do not have the ability, the time or the knowledge to be able to choose between health packages. They can go to a primary health centre and obtain medicines, but they cannot fill up insurance forms and then try and get reimbursement of expenses incurred by them in obtaining medical care. Why villagers alone, talk to any middle class, educated citizen and hear his woes in trying to get payment from insurance companies.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Members of the Commission and its officers are all beautifully serviced by CGHS. They have no idea of how the medical insurance system works in India. Till recently I was Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior, one of the four highly specialised institutions set up by government to promote information technology in India. We decided to provide medical insurance to all our faculty and staff. We ran into such hurdles that we eventually abandoned the scheme and instead opted for full reimbursement by the Institute of any medical costs incurred by the faculty and staff. If this could happen to a high level institute of technology can the Planning Commission even envisage the problems which a villager would have in accessing what the Commission calls an Essential Health Package? Let me give another example. Many States have opted for insurance coverage against crop failure. Obviously the scheme is not working because in many areas, especially Maharashtra, failed farmers commit suicide. In sharp contrast is the scheme of many States to assess crop damage during a natural calamity or major seasonal vagaries which damage crops. The system is that the Collector asks the Tehsil authorities to assess crop conditions and by random ‘annawari’ each Patwari assesses damage to a particular crop in his Patwari Halka. For example, in the winter of 2011-12 there was some ground frost in parts of Madhya Pradesh and some crops, especially gram, suffered damage. My wife has a farm twenty-three kilometers away from Bhopal. She had not applied for compensation but nevertheless the Patwari included the farm in his assessment and must have given a report on his observations. One fine day, my wife received a cheque for rupees eighteen thousand from the Tehsildar by way of compensation for the damaged crop. Every other farmers in the village also received similar compensation, despite the fact that claims had not been filed. I cannot think of any insurance system which the geniuses of the Planning Commission may devise which will provide the kind of quick relief to farmers that Raja Todar Mal’s revenue administration system provides even today in India, corruption and leakages notwithstanding. Even today, there are many areas in which time tested systems in the public sector are more efficient than the private sector and governance in general and health care in particular are a part of them.

The only countries where there is satisfactory universal health care are those in which the equivalent of the national health scheme operates. Much of Europe and the United Kingdom have universal health care provided by the State. The system undergoes fine-tuning from time to time, but the underlying principle always is that it is the duty of the State to take care of the health of all its citizens. The United States, by far the most affluent country in the world, has a poor health care system despite having some of the best hospitals in the world. That is why President Obama had to virtually stake everything in order to widen the scope of medical insurance so that health coverage could be provided to the very poor. This system still does not measure up to the national health service of Britain but it is an improvement on the past. Capitalist United States has begun to take notice of the poor, Socialist India has a Planning Commission which wants to destroy the last vestige of public health coverage because of the peculiar notion of its Deputy Chairman that private is better than public, the rich include the poor and, in any case, the poor can always eat cake. India can survive militancy, terrorism, separatism, Naxalism, Jehad, even violent attacks by extremist Pakistani groups. I am, however, beginning to have serious doubts whether India can survive its own Planning Commission.

Debate on MEA’s Ills is Skewed

Kanwal Sibal

Member Advisory Board, VIF 

The perceived inadequacies of the Ministry of External Affairs(MEA) to handle the ever diverse foreign policy challenges facing India are being publicly aired. Critics are wrong in suggesting that the Indian Foreign Service(IFS) has been ignoring its own deficiencies and resisting an overhaul in recruitment and training procedures, cadre expansion, skill-building in foreign languages, posting and promotion policies etc.

In actual fact, the Ministry has been conscious since long of its functional shortfalls. The N.R. Pillai Committee (1966), the Samar Sen Committee (1983) and the S.K.Lambah report (2002) have recommended structural, administrative and cadre reforms, but the complexity of the problems have resisted easy solutions.

Scenario

Those stirring up a public debate today on the IFS’s deficiencies have taken the cue from an American report which criticizes the service for being small, hobbled by its selection process and inadequate mid-career training, and shunning the use of outside experience. The report advises investment in US-India exchange programmes that build capacity for foreign policy research and proposes steps that both New Delhi and Washington should take to promote India’s rise as a great power.

Its recommendations are largely a rehash of what is already well known; the offer of US collaboration in equipping our diplomats with professional capacities needed to support India’s growing international stature is new. Some articulate Indians impatient with India’s desire to preserve its strategic autonomy endorse such ideas, without thought that training our diplomats in US institutions at formative stages would be undesirable.

Indian diplomats should develop a world view sharply focused on our own national interests, with the mental strength and conviction to defend it. This does not exclude mature diplomats solidly grounded in Indian geo-political perspectives benefitting from exposure to specific foreign programmes.

The ongoing public debate on the MEA’s shortcomings lacks perspective. If the total cadre strength of the IFS remains abnormally small, it is because the system has been against its expansion, relying on perennial financial arguments, the enduring ban on creation of new posts, as well as the unstated reluctance to increase a cadre already seen as a privileged one by other civil services.

A more nuanced view should be taken of the equation between India’s growing diplomatic burden and the IFS’s size. Large portions of India’s diplomatic activity abroad is not within MEA’s remit. The Rules of Business will not allow the Ministry to negotiate FTAs, lead WTO negotiations, deal with the IMF and World Bank, backstop G-20 negotiations, take charge of Climate Change negotiations, sign defence agreements or those in space and atomic energy, decide the country’s energy policies and negotiate energy deals etc.

The MEA can play a supportive role, but even this role is greatly circumscribed by limiting drastically deputations of IFS officers to other Ministries with large international dealings. Those in other Ministries involved in external dealings are part of the larger body of Indian “diplomats” dealing with “foreign policy”. So it is not 700 plus IFS members on whose shoulders all the burden of foreign affairs falls.

The Ministry is no doubt seriously understaffed at New Delhi and abroad in our missions. The ratio between officers at HQs and in missions abroad is highy skewed in Ministry’s disfavour. MEA’s territorial divisions lack sufficient manpower to give requisite attention to all the countries under their charge. Linguistic proficiency suffers because the smallness of the cadre leads to transfer of officers from one station to another irrespective of their language background as available posts have to be often filled by whosoever becomes due for a shift after 3 years of an assignment abroad.

Proposals

Apart from specialization requiring a much larger cadre, officers generally prefer more broad based experience. Specialization in UN work would be attractive as it ensures the New York-Geneva circuit for postings, but that in Africa etc would work against rotation between more comfortable and hardship postings in the interest of equity.

Mid-level lateral entry from think-tanks, universities, media and corporate sector is being proposed for widening MEA’s talent pool. Such entries are on a contractual basis for limited periods would pose no problem, but if absorption in the IFS cadre is intended, existing problems will worsen.

Stricter norms for promotion is an in-service demand also, but while the IAS has numerous parking slots outside the Ministries and at state level for underperformers, what does the MEA do with weeded-out de-motivated officers?

The idea of a separate IFS examination is not new; it has been resisted because of legitimate fears that the service would lose parity with the IAS. It would be desirable to make it compulsory for those wanting to enter the IFS to choose specific subjects for the UPSC examination which bear on diplomacy, including writing the examination in English. The interview marks can be increased as was the case in the past. The MEA would welcome such decisions, but they would have their anti-elitist detractors.

Performance

The IFS has performed well despite handicaps. Critics should point out specific instances where it has failed because of deficiencies in understanding and action. In toto, the Ministry is better run than others, its officers are more committed, largely insulated from political interference and corrupt practices and have a robust sense of India’s national interests.

The IFS is less vulnerable than sections of our political and bureaucratic class to external blandishments and cannot be as easily manipulated. Which is why it is criticized in some western circles for its negative diplomacy, for being wedded to an outdated world view which resists efforts to incorporate India into the West’s sphere of political and intellectual influence. Some who are attacking the MEA today want this resistance to end.