No, Minister! Why we need an army of Khemkas

When Haryana IAS officer Ashok Khemka made national headlines last fortnight with his cancellation of the mutation order on a plot of land that Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra sold DLF, it was widely perceived to be a rare manifestation of a civil servant acting with the courage of his convictions.

But such a perception is also a reflection of just how corroded India’s bureaucracy, the “steel frame” that ostensibly holds India together, has come to be. Khemka’s action in cancelling the mutation order (on the ground that it was not properly authorised) was entirely a legitimate action, but merely because the land was associated with someone from the First Family of Indian politics (and for that reason believed to immune to bureaucratic nit-picking), it is being seen as extraordinary — and Khemka as some courageous superhero.

Yet, for all the harassment that Khemka has faced over a 21-year career (being subjected to 43 transfers in that period), and for all the clinical efficiency of the punitive transfer regime that keeps bureaucrats overly pliant to the political establishment, the rare upright officer in service actually enjoys an enormous degree of ‘protection’ within the service rules.

Indicatively, while mindless obstructionism is not to be condoned, it is within a bureaucrat’s authority (and in fact even his duty) to flag objections in the event that an illegality or infirmity is being perpetrated. As this report notes , a secretary in a ministry can put down his objections in writing on the file, and even if the minister overrules it, the officer has avenues to record the rationale for his objection. And if a secretary feels that an unconstitutional or corrupt act is being committed, the matter can be referred to the law ministry and taken up at a higher level, in writing.

To that extent, the actions by officers like Khemka, when they intervene to say, “No Minister,” — even in high-profile cases such as this — when they see an illegality or an infirmity, need not be as rare as they are made out to be.

In fact, according to Srivatsa Krishna , who is himself an IAS officer, they aren’t so rare, although not all instances of quiet dissent by civil service bureaucrats make it to prime time television in the way that Khemka’s action did. “There are a thousand Khemkas in the IAS who often dissent quietly, away from the media glare,” Krishna observes.

The right to give voice to dissent (in the public interest), and say ‘No Minister’ when the situation so warrants, is, he reckons, almost a rare privilege that civil servants enjoy. “In the corporate sector, if a subordinate disagrees with his boss on any substantive issue, dissent is tolerated far less and one is often asked to fall in line or quit.”

Yet, it is just as true that officers in the services even today have predominantly internalised the idea of a “committed bureaucracy,” which Indira Gandhi institutionalised in the 1970s, which, many concede, was when the steel frame began to corrode.

It is hard to believe that the technical irregularity in respect of Vadra’s plot (in respect of which the mutation order was cancelled by Khemka) had not been noticed by any other officer. It seems far more likely that another officer in Khemka’s place would have wilfully looked the other way — or, worse, been complicit in the irregularity.

As Lt Gen (Retd) SK Sinha, former Vice-Chief of Army Staff, observes , “corrupt politicians have infected bureaucrats. The latter, wanting undue favours, readily become willing accomplices. The civil servants, known to have been the steel frame of the administration, have become malleable alloy.” Sycophancy, he frets, is now widespread, and civil servants render advice in keeping with the views of their superiors.

It wasn’t always like this, of course. Sinha recalls that Sardar Patel insisted that civil servants serving under him give him “independent advice without hesitation, even if they knew it to be contrary to his views.”

But after an acute attack of Indira Gandhi-itis, large sections of the bureaucracy have either begun to crawl when they were only asked to bend, or have begun to work the system to their advantage. Krishna recalls an observation by former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao: “In my four decades of public life, I’m yet to meet a single IAS officer whose arm has been twisted without them wanting it to be!”

It is in this context that actions such as those by Khemka acquire the hues of heroism. Rare is the bureaucrat who, when he sees a blatant case of illegality being perpetrated in a case involving someone so close to the power centre as Vadra, will pro-actively intervene to spike that illegality.

As Khemka himself observed , civil servants are also an intrinsic part of the government. “And Prime Ministers and Chief Ministers are not our masters but jan sevaks (public servants) like the rest of us. But we begin treating these people like kings and queens who must be followed unquestioningly.”

India’s ‘steel frame’ may be corroded in the extreme, but so long as there are officers like Khemka, who embody that public-spirited sentiment, and who remind the civil service bureaucracy of what it feels like to have a spine, perhaps not all hope is lost.