In Defence of Bureaucracy

Context: Despite the problems associated with bureaucracy, they should continue to play their role in Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) even if they are privatized. 

Arguments against bureaucracies playing its role in privatised PSUs:

• Inherent problems of bureaucracy:
  • Delays in operation.
  • The action is centered on opaque standards.
  • Excessive requests for documentation.
  • Countless difficulties in meeting users' or customers’ requests.
• May cause hurdles in achieving the goal of a $5-trillion economy: As it prevents the development of a coherent structural transformation agenda and extraordinary implementation capacity.

Arguments favouring bureaucracies playing its role in privatised PSUs:

• Past Success: In the 1950s and ’60s, civil services were able to successfully establish and manage PSUs
• They are important in the privatisation process: for the transition of PSUs from the public to the private sector and providing the needed state support to make privatisation a success.
• To prevent the development of flabby comprise of a dominant coalition: as a coalition of powerful land-owning class and concentrated set of industrial capitalists who will try to grab public resources.
• To implement the developmental agenda: Markets operate well when there is a complementarity of state structures and market exchange that can be provided only by a competent bureaucracy.
  • According to Max Weber, the operation of the large-scale capitalist enterprise depended upon the kind of order that only a modern bureaucratic state can provide, according to him, capitalism and bureaucracy belong together.
• State without a bureaucracy cannot exist: According to Sardar Patel, without civil services, there will be chaos in the country and All-India Service plays a role in keeping India united.

Way forward: Transform bureaucracy for the privatisation to work.

• Recommendations of Sardar Patel should be made practical: Service must have independence and a sense of security, for which political and permanent executives need to work as team through mutual respect for each other’s roles as defined in the Constitution.
• Should not undermine the impartiality of bureaucracy: in implementing rules & giving frank opinions.
• Abandon corruption-transfer mechanism: At present, power to transfer is weaponized to bring the bureaucrats to heel and force them to be corrupt.
• Promote corporate coherence within bureaucracy: Corporate coherence is the ability of the bureaucracy internally to resist the invisible hands of personal maximisation by undercutting the formal organisational structure through informal networks. 

Conclusion:

• As a society, we must have the ability to fight the increasing tendency to grab public resources and replace them by shared developmental agenda and restore to the bureaucracy its autonomy of action as envisaged in the Constitution.