Ailing State of Bureaucracy

The word ‘bureaucracy’ comes from the Old French word bure, a cloth once used to cover the desks of eighteenth-century French officials. Its stifling connotations soon gave way to the term ‘civil servant’, recorded in the East India Company’s records since 1765. When India became independent, much changed, yet the skeleton of the colonial civil service remained. Over time, the country has seen decorated officers who valued integrity and simplicity. However, what shifted more dramatically was the attitude towards power.

Early leaders, particularly like Lal Bahadur Shastri, lived with simplicity and restraint, setting a moral tone for administration. Over time, that ethic faded. The dictum “yatha raja, tatha praja” began to mirror itself in governance and as politics turned more flamboyant, bureaucracy followed.

Despite an entry-level basic salary of around Rs 60,000, far below corporate jobs, over 1.3 million aspirants appear for the UPSC exam each year, many spending six attempts and nearly a decade preparing. Walk through the lanes of IAS coaching hubs of Delhi, and you see students with mixed emotions: some worn out, some hopeful, and some, like Pooja Khedkar, desperate enough to risk faking disability certificates. Their motivation is no longer service, but the promise of bungalows, VIP access, security escorts, contract influence, and the power to bend the system rather than uphold it.

The civil services were once envisioned as the steel frame of governance- impartial, upright, and driven by constitutional values. Yet, the lived reality seems far more tangled. Officers are seen spending more time observing protocol, managing political expectations, and securing favourable postings than delivering public service. And when a few of them do try, they face political pushback, as have been the reported cases in many states recently. Such incidents highlight the intense political pressure bureaucrats face even when enforcing the law.

Over time, a quiet understanding has settled into the system. Procedures bend not because of individual moral failings alone, but because the system rewards compliance over courage. The recent case of Punjab DIG Harcharan Singh Bhullar, arrested on charges of having assets beyond his income, did not surprise many people. The message is clear: corruption isn’t a breakdown of the system; it is the system. And when exposure becomes inconvenient, the officer is sacrificed, political links vanish, and the cycle resets.

Frequent regime changes only accelerate this cycle. Each new government often brings its own preferred officers and ideas of loyalty. Civil servants, over the period, have started taking more interest in understanding the political mood than the policy. Officers like Ashok Khemka, who has been transferred dozens of times, are often cited as an example of how difficult it is to fit, sustain and grow in a new system. Similarly, an IAS officer who brought piped water to Lahuria Dah after 75 years was transferred soon after the inauguration. Local leaders alleged a protocol violation because elected representatives were not invited.

In such an environment, the human cost of upholding integrity is equally stark. Rinko Rahee, a 2023-batch UP IAS officer, who exposed corruption in Muzaffarnagar’s welfare schemes, was shot six times by local gangsters, leaving him blind in one eye and with a damaged jaw. Stories like his show that the system doesn’t just fail to reward honesty, it actively endangers it.

Over the years, numerous attempts have been made to reform administration. Administrative Reforms Commissions, committees, task forces, and countless experiments like performance budgeting and lateral entry have been tried, leaving little lasting impact.

As far back as 1964, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru acknowledged this enduring challenge when asked about his greatest failure as Prime Minister: “I could not change the administration; it is still a colonial administration.”

The remedy goes beyond procedural tweaks. It requires tenure protections and robust citizen engagement via digital governance and RTI. Digital Governance has empowered citizens and has worked in favour of better administration. Strengthening PPPs like TCS’s work with the Passport Office can improve service delivery. Post-retirement opportunities for civil servants should also be very limited.

The phrase “the water of the head flows to the foot” metaphorically captures the top-down nature of public administration, where values, direction, and conduct originate from the leadership and percolate through the system. In the context of public services, this implies that political leaders must lead by example, through their integrity, transparency, and ethical conduct. Their behaviour sets the tone for the bureaucracy, influencing how policies are implemented and how governance is experienced at the grassroots.

And until then, the civil service’s ideals remain relics of the past.

Views expressed are personal. The writer is a lawyer at the Delhi High Court, a social activist and a legal columnist