The British did not structure Indian administration to deliver services to the people. The twin foci of ‘collectors’ was to Keep the King’s Peace, that is subdue a conquered people; and to Collect Revenues, that is extract value for the ruling foreign power. The British Home Civil Service had and has a very different ethos.
In fact, the civil service in India were modeled on, and bound to the contingencies of, military rule. Till late in British-Indian history, the Collector could commandeer any regiment within his district if need arose. Even today ‘officers’ rather than ‘officials’ are housed in the district ‘Civil Lines,’ when they are ‘in station.’
At the time of Independence, Pandit Nehru openly admitted he did not have the courage to tamper with the inherited ‘steel frame,’ while Gandhiji, by then out of real political power, wanted even the Congress party to be disbanded and the workers converted to Samaj Sevaks [social workers].
Since that time, the Government has not even wanted to change the title of ‘collector,’ to another people-friendly name, for fear of disturbing the authority structure of elite rule, which grafted well colonial rule on older brahminical caste rule.
In fact the structure of the IAS, modeled on the older ICS, not only offers a template of how all officials are to relate to citizens, it even defines how any elite member of society, in the private sector, in NGOs, in schools and religious bodies, or even their babus behind desks, are to exercise control over the people, standing in front of desks.
In a scarcity-ridden country, where problems are compounded by the justly rising aspirations of people, the focus of action has been to exercise power to allocate scarce resources rather than deliver expanding public benefits to people. This engenders an attitude of suspicion among superiors about the intentions of people, who are to be controlled into obedient subjects, and whose initiatives are to curbed or denied. The proudest story told by an IAS officer in the club would be how he prevented something from happening.
Within the larger Indian society with its 4,500 communities and 28,000 endogamous families, the IAS now becomes a new caste, with its female members almost always marrying only among their colleagues, or remaining single, as per the Manu Dharma Sastra.
In such attitudes we find the subconscious rationale for Indian economists calling for an export-led growth strategy, rather than developing the vast rural internal markets, which will necessarily end up empowering the poor and the lowly.
However, for the Indian elite to neatly balance its own interests to hold on to all real power within Indian society, while accommodating the values of superior external forces, as was done in the past during the days of Islamization or Christianization, we adopt superficial nomenclatural changes in the present days of Globalization. Hence the privileging of 'PRA,' [participatory rural appraisal methods] conceived by a British academic late of Her Majesty’s Civil Service in Africa, and nothing more than the known practice of Collectors sitting under the village tree. Similarly, administration has created almost empty structures like VSS, [village forest association],WUAs [water-users associations], DWACRAs [government departments for the development of women and children in rural areas], which are not founded on people’s own organization strength and competence, building their capacity to develop resources, but structures to receive scarce resources doled out. Most NGO and private sectors initiatives are no different since they all share the same elite attitudes. Hence, also no real attempt to put money at the disposal of PRIs [ constitutional rural or village-level institutions].
Since the country’s and the economy’s development has to be controlled from its commanding heights by its Mandarins,[ many of whom care nothing or know less about people] or its Philosopher Kings [ whose hearts do genuinely bleed for the poor], the eagle’s view-point must necessarily not apply to the majority of real-life conditions of such heterogeneous sets of communities. Hence, the frustration among administration achievers.
To add to problems, the real expected end results of administrative institutions have undergone a disastrous change since colonial days. For instance, the educational structure of Macauley’s was intended to educate a great number of babus to do the Empire’s work; but today it needs to deny education to the vast majority of children to keep the power structure intact under the restrictive conditions of an economy that grows at the Hindu rate of growth at best. Hence, the higher and higher entrance standards, and the greater and greater burdens piled on children so that rural, poorer, vernacular-trained children drop out well before they can compete. Even then, real opportunities are so limited that the best from IITs [Indian Institutes of Technology] must leave the country in a process that is not Brain Drain but in reality Brain Saving.
Like any good Denial System, the Indian one is porous to allow a very few to win through, on the same principle operated by Casinos and Lotteries, to continue to keep the loyalty of the majority of hopefuls.
Top-down elite control of society, even more weighed down by the baggage of swadeshi or leftwing ideologies, can only produce a stunted dependent capitalist system, as we see anywhere in the Third World. Uneven local development, driven from the bottom, and steered by self-managed communities [ a form of Gandhian gram swaraj ] must be allowed, however uncomfortable the feeling may be at the top, among power-mongers, do-gooders, and intellectuals. The Emperor Honorius in the 5th century told the Britons and other subjects of the Roman Empire that they must take care of their own security. Indian leaders must tell people to take care of their own delivery systems; and call the legions back.
Administrative Staff College of India December 28, 2002
