Lal Bihari & Babudom

One fine day nearly two decades ago, Lal Bihari, a happy-go-lucky, unambitious farmer in Uttar Pradesh discovers he is dead, officially. With an eye on his small patch of land, his relatives had bribed a corrupt bureaucrat to declare him so. A living ghost now, officially non-existent, he becomes a butt of jokes in his immediate society. He launches a mission to be alive again. A long 19-year struggle ensues.

Dripping in irony and sarcasm, the Pankaj Kapur-starrer Kagaz, a real-life story, makes a telling statement on the bureaucracy. Impersonal, unresponsive and insensitive, it can play havoc in the lives of ordinary citizens. Bihari wins in the end, but not before enduring harrowing experiences.

His experience could well be that of any ordinary Indian unversed in the Kafkaesque ways of the officialdom anywhere. Government offices are intimidating and opaque, to say the least. If the maze of rules and procedures does not leave you confused and frustrated then the attitude of people manning official positions certainly will. And we are not talking corruption yet. The awareness that an official position or any position of authority could be leveraged for personal advantage is what drives corruption.

Lal Bihari’s travail also reveals how the bureaucracy has way too much presence in our lives and too much control over it. The expression ‘public servant’ is a sad joke on the power equation between the public and its supposed servants. It’s an equation completely tilted in favour of the latter.

But it’s an evil no ruled-based societies can do without. It is also the link between the political establishment and people; an instrument through which the rulers’ ideas get translated into reality. So an unproductive, indifferent bureaucracy can create a wide gap between people and the political establishment and alienate the former from the latter altogether.

As we have discussed earlier, the anger visible all around is largely due to the failure of institutions to deliver. Cumulative frustration of decades with them has gone to explosive proportions. It has little to do with the ascent or descent of any specific ideology. The ideological propositions of the Left and the Right are beyond the comprehension of the common man. When angry, he would just like to kick the old out and bring the new in. A poorly functioning bureaucracy had already created great distrust of the political masters among the masses–they are, after all, supposed to control the officialdom–and the consequences had to kick in at some point. The BJP was finally in a position to ride to success on that anger.

What makes our officialdom the way it is? To give credit where it is due, it has too many responsibilities. It has to make decisions which impact the lives of people in a significant way. Mistakes made are difficult to reverse. All matters officials have to put up with on a routine basis may not be honest or in sync with rules. They function within a system that’s not appreciative of or agreeable to creative intelligence. Everything becomes clerical in the end. Any bold decision may face harsh scrutiny from institutions like CVC and CAG. They have to face unreasonable demands from political bosses too. Despite the challenges, there are officers who shine through. But in a hierarchy-driven system, the incentive to be bold is close to zero.

However, all these do not justify the general inefficiency the babudom is accused of, more so its arrogance. Both combine to alienate people. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often made public his dislike of the tendency of senior officials to avoid taking decisions. He has been exhorting them to speed up decision-making and think of the economic growth opportunity lost due to delays. His ire is directed at the upper echelon of the bureaucracy but it could be true for the entire system, beginning at the bottom.

It’s the lower bureaucracy which deals with the general public on a regular basis. The incompetence, insensitivity and corruption at this level hurt people most. Blame it on our feudal-colonial past, every official position is considered a unit of power. The power has to be visible to command respect. Its misuse is brazen as those at the receiving end are too powerless to strike back. In an ideal situation, service for a public servant would be more important than power. But we are not in an ideal world.

There are simple solutions to make bureaucracy more delivery-oriented. Some have been attempted in certain states recently. Time-bound delivery of service is one and service at the doorstep is another. When officials are punished or rewarded for their performance in delivery, it is sure to bring more efficiency to the system. Innovation should be acknowledged and incentivised. The entry to jobs must not be on the sole basis of success in a competitive test and there should be repeat evaluation through career for promotion and financial benefits. Of course, the grandeur associated with offices and official positions — red beacon, orderlies etc — must be toned down.

In short, the sense of power and inviolability inherent in officialdom must go. There has to be a redistribution of power where people are more equal. Public servants should be a part of the public, not miles apart from it.

Now, who’s going to ring in change? Not people like Lal Bihari, of course. It has to be the political class. An alienated public, they must realise, is not good for them too.