The recent proposal to improve promotional vistas for IAS officers above the all-India Police and Forest services is ill-conceived and contrary to the nations’ contemporary needs. Combined as it is with a plan to increase the annual intake of IAS officers, it is imperative that we review the perceived utility of the ‘steel frame of Raj’ and re-position its status in consonance with our national priorities.
Two of the biggest challenges facing us today are also the greatest threats before the international community, namely, terrorism and global warming. The war on both evils demands that we accord due respect and priority to the Police and Forest cadres. For this, it is necessary to correct the unduly exalted status bestowed upon the IAS, a body of overrated babus with inflated egos, responsible for the gross inefficiency and rampant corruption corroding the vitals of the nation. Far more than the politician-businessman nexus, it is the bureaucrat-politician nexus that has unleashed the cancerous culture of corruption and non-accountability in all walks of life, which almost two decades of liberalization have not been able to check.
Jihadi terrorism has its largest footprint in India. Since the era of ISI-funded Khalistani separatism, terrorists have enjoyed the capability to strike at will anywhere in the country. Comparisons with the New York Twin Towers or London underground show that neither America nor Britain suffers constant threat of attacks upon civilian or military targets. Rather, these incidents have helped their political-corporate elites to dampen the unrest of domestic populations and pursue their imperial agendas with impunity. Considering the magnitude of humiliation heaped upon the Muslim world by Western hunger for oil and strategic bases, these strikes were inadequate and politically convenient.
Jihadi attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan are part of an internal struggle for supremacy in these countries. In Iraq, jihad is a response to American occupation, with an element of sectarian conflict. Incidents in other parts of the world are spectacular enough to grab headlines, but do not represent a sustained ability to organize and kill at will. The Madrid train blast that affected the Spanish election results; the Russian school hostage tragedy; the suicide bomber at Glasgow airport – all had an emotional impact worldwide, but took far less lives than a routine blast in India. Jihad, in my view, is struggling for a toe-hold in other parts of the world; here it is on terra firma.
In India, the police, para-military, and armed forces have been in the forefront of the fight against terror, and have also been singled out for demoralizing attacks; the new year attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur, UP, was only the latest such incident. For decades, the army has borne the brunt of assaults in Kashmir; in the ISI-instigated violence in Punjab from the mid-1970s (which spilled over into Delhi), the army, para-military forces and police took a terrible beating. Political pusillanimity and one-upmanship aggravated the crisis to the point that it took the life of a serving Prime Minister and a retired Chief of Army Staff.
It was determined police action under the inspiring leadership of police chief KPS Gill, backed by a wise chief minister Beant Singh, which broke the back of Khalistani terrorism in India. The end of the Sikh problem forced Pakistan to adopt more direct means of aggression against India, and long years of bloodletting have taught politicians to take national security more seriously. Yet the fact that the Indian State has not found the political will to hang the main conspirator behind the attack on Parliament shows we have a long way to go before national security gets the primacy it deserves. Till then, young police officers and jawans in the prime of their lives, often the sole bread-earning members of their families, will be cut down by well-armed and organized terrorists.
As India observes another Republic Day, it would be worthwhile to reshape national priorities and accord top status to the security personnel whose bravery keeps us alive and safe. In the civilizational-historical past, India gave primacy to knowledge and ethical values and bestowed Brahmin preceptors with revenue-free grants to generate, preserve, and propagate knowledge in all the arts and sciences, besides of course, religion. Today, when the integrity of our borders and our lives are at stake, we should consider tax-free salaries for jawans and constables.
Acknowledgement is also due to the Indian Forest Service, which can combat global warming by protecting and regenerating our dwindling forests and help preserve the ozone layer. Environmental protection is a complex task involving many agencies, but forests are critical green lungs and the habitat of valuable species, some of which may still be unknown, like the purple frog found in the Western Ghats some years ago.
There is no merit in the move to grant IAS officers “super-time scale” after 14 years of service, while IPS and IFS officers wait 18 years. We must urgently upgrade services doing more challenging jobs, with their lives constantly in danger. We may need more IAS officers for the increasing number of districts in States; but the growing number of Central schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and various international projects might be better run by Class I officers or civil servants in the States.
Increasingly both Central and international agencies are unearthing huge scandals in the operation of developmental and welfare projects; even funds for flood or AIDS victims are cynically diverted. Instead of corruption-prone IAS officers, the Centre should consider increasing State level recruitment and improve accountability through public participation via rural Panchayats or concerned citizens in urban areas.
The rampant abuse of the NGO sector to launder or divert funds must be checked by treating them as service sector enterprises and bringing them into the tax net. NGOs are more fiercely profit-oriented than any industry and taxation will enhance their efficiency and increase accountability; NGOs who disappear with government advances will be screened out. A complete ban on close kin of IAS officers launching or joining NGOs will end much of the nepotism and corruption in this sector. The practice of serving officers floating NGOs or enjoying lucrative NGO postings on deputation must also be ended expeditiously. The rising Republic must repulse parasitism completely.
The Pioneer, 22 January 2008