Shortage blues

It is difficult to imagine that a country overstaffed with officials from the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is actually short of bureaucratic hands in some of the most crucial states in the country.

While on one hand, various departments have been bifurcated and split to accommodate officers because there are not enough posts for all, certain states are in the grip of chronic shortage of civil servants to man state governments.
In the process, recommendations of various administrative reforms committees to down size governments have continued to remain on paper.

Consider this

• West Bengal is facing an acute shortage of IAS officers. Against a sanctioned strength of 314, the state has only 221 officers. There are 66 departments in the government and 28 districts apart from scores of public sector corporations and boards where IAS officers are required. The state has a total number of 2,017 officers under West Bengal Civil Service (WBCS) cadre including 145 joint secretaries and 18 special secretaries. So West Bengal is left with no option but to use them to fill up posts meant for the IAS.
• Nitish Kumar’s Bihar government has less than 200 officers against the sanctioned strength of 326. As many as 43 IAS officers are away on central deputation.
• In Odisha, the total number of approved posts meant for IAS officers in the state is 226. Of them, 107 positions are lying vacant.

The shortage of officers is not merely a technical problem but is often dictated by political whims and personal choices – like a new chief minister.

In West Bengal for instance, former finance secretary and senior IAS officer C M Bachhawat, was in the headlines just before the last assembly elections when he refused to sign files sent by then finance minister Dr Asim Dasgupta because election dates were announced.

The issue reached the Chief Election Commissioner and Mamata Banerjee, then in the opposition, saw it fit to make a case of harassment against the ruling CPI (M) government.

But surprisingly, after serving under the new Trinamool finance minister Amit Mitra, Bachhawat sought voluntary retirement on ‘health grounds’. After much cajoling, he agreed to stay on but as secretary of a relatively lightweight food processing and horticulture department.

Bachhawat is by no means alone. There is widespread frustration among bureaucrats used to the ways of the Left Front government and who have attempted to do things their way without much success.

Says one officer on conditions of anonymity, “As finance secretary, Bachhawat repeatedly tried to curb runaway expenditure due to faulty policies of the state government but was thwarted at every stage. He felt, he could not offer much to the post.’’

Naturally, with a change in government, there is rush of IAS officers seeking transfers to low profile posts with offices preferably outside state head quarters.

In West Bengal, as many as six IAS officers, presently in the rank of additional secretary or principal secretary, are reportedly lobbying for the low-profile post of director of the Administrative Training Institute (ATI), to escape the day-to-day grind, not to mention administrative hazards, of serving a mercurial chief minister.

The comfort zone provided by the Left Front government for nearly three decades has sent a number of officers into the safety of their cocoons from where they are now trying to escape to much less demanding jobs rather than adjust to the style of the new chief minister.

The state’s hill secretary told a select group of journalists recently, “I have urged the chief secretary to let me move out of Writers’ Building. Why should I stay in a department where I do not have the liberty to discharge my duties?” Fair point.

Officials admit that after years of stability under the old regime, they are confused with the new style of governance which is marked by heightened political turmoil because of the ongoing war of nerves between the Trinamool Congress and the Congress party.

In Bengal, there are increasing signs of rift between senior bureaucrats and the chief minister. According to well placed sources, some of them have officially complained to the chief secretary about the chief minister’s acerbic remarks against departmental secretaries in the presence of junior officers.

Says one officer, “These days state agriculture secretary Hridyesh Mohan and the state panchayat secretary Barun Ray are facing Mamata’s wrath. State PWD secretary A.R. Bardhan was publicly humiliated for the poor condition of roads and power secretary Malay De was chided for no apparent reason.”

A senior bureaucrat told GW that the chief minister Mamata can always express her displeasure about any officer in private. “But the kind of dressing down senior officers have received in the presence of their juniors is insulting and demoralising.

“In her visits to rural Bengal, the chief minister instead of sitting with officers to understand ground realities of a given district has chosen to publicly insult officers at large public gatherings which are uncalled for.” A dicey situation made worse.

Given the circumstances, there is a rush of senior bureaucrats seeking central deputation but the chief minister is not particularly keen to oblige.

The power secretary, after a public tongue lashing, sought central deputation as jute commissioner but was refused. Similarly, secretary environment, RPS Kahlon tried to leave the state and applied for the post of chairman, Coal India. Likewise, additional chief secretary labour, Dilip Rath, who had his eyes on the chief secretary’s post, has applied for voluntary retirement to join a World Bank project.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s plan to bifurcate large districts like South and North 24-Parganas, Burdwan, Midnapore (west), Jalpaiguri and Murshidabad has run into trouble because there are not enough IAS officers to man the new districts.

Out of 72 additional district magistrates, 55 are from the WBCS with state civil cadres manning districts. According to secretary of the WBCS, Sutanu Prosad Kar, their officers are now in charge of south and north Dinajpur districts. The association want at least two more district magistrates from amongst them and by the looks of it, they will get what they want.

The situation was not much different during the Left Front regime, though the shortage of officers was far less. Replying to a question in the state assembly, the then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had disclosed that the state had 237 IAS officers against a sanctioned strength of 296.

On the flip side, Mamata’s request to home minister P Chidambaram to release two Indian Police Service (IPS) officers for her state, Rajesh Kumar Yadav, presently SP of NIA and Suman Bala Sahoo, joint commissioner of CBI, has been turned down by Delhi.

India’s sanctioned strength of IPS is 4,720 officers while their present number is pegged at 3,393, the gap being 1,327 officers.

In neighbouring Bihar, the shortage of civil servants is matched only by their increasing importance in the Nitish Kumar dispensation.

Just how much is their clout? As part of a JNU lecture series, economist and political observer, NK Chaudhary, believes that Bihar is not ruled by a council of ministers as per provisions of the Indian Constitution but ruled by a select group of secretaries led by a super secretary called the chief minister.

Chaudhary told GW that secretaries are being given more importance than ministers as they do not dare oppose the chief minister.

A shining example of this Apartheid: At the Global Summit Bihar 2012, there were very few ministers present while there was a good gathering of secretaries. When asked, Bihar’s deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, told reporters that ministers were present in their assembly segments to sort out problems. “Of course, the secretaries who have to implement policies are here,” Modi declared nonchalantly.

Despite their prominence, the Bihar government has been severely handicapped by a shortage of officers.
Says one source, “Many secretary-level officers are over worked because there not enough IAS officers. There are many secretary level officers holding dual charge and a number of them render their services in more than two or three departments.”

It is common knowledge in Patna that IAS and IPS officers were once looking for excuses to stay out of the state because of excessive political interference and adverse work culture in the Laloo Yadav-Rabri regime.
But the scene has changed with Nitish at the helm. The chief minister made personal appeals to some competent and dynamic officers to come back to the state. While some have obliged, a number of others have politely declined.

As per records available with the Bihar government, as many as 43 IAS Officers are away on central deputation, some of them for very long periods.

ANP Sinha, a 1974 batch IAS officer, is on deputation since January 18, 2001, while AK Upadhyay, 1975 batch, has been away since January 21, 2004; SK Sharma, 1976 batch, has been posted outside the state since November 25, 2003, AP Seth IAS 1975 batch since November 1, 2001 and KC Mitra 1977 batch, is on deputation since November 29, 2005. Quite apparently, Bihar IAS officers are in no tearing hurry to come back and cool off in their state.
In Odisha the story is similar. Chief minister Naveen Patnaik is more at home with erudite civil servants than with his rustic political colleagues.

“Naveen babu gives more importance to his secretaries rather than his ministerial colleagues,” says senior political analyst Basant Das.

This is no hypothesis but a proven fact. The regional media is full of stories about a series of confrontations between ministers and senior civil servants. It is common knowledge that on many occasions, a minister has filed a complaint against his secretary to the chief minister — with the winner invariably turning out to be the bureaucrat.

Sources close to a minister reveal that the situation is so uncomfortable that a minister cannot dare ask for a favourable secretary. Not his master’s voice.

Despite the lack of political interference, Odisha continues to be short of officers. So much so that it has become a headache for the government to fill in vacancies in the upper echelons of the administration.

While no appointments have been made in 54 positions, 53 posts are laying vacant for a long time because officers posted there are off duty due to a variety of reasons like leave, training, deputation and suspension.

While 39 IAS officers are on deputation to the centre, two Odisha cadre IAS officers Tomangapang Aao and Sanjay Singh are on deputation to their home states. Further, six officers belonging to the 2010 batch are now on training in Mussorie.

While Chitra Arumagam of the 1995 batch and Saroj Kumar Jha of 1990 batch are on official leave, one senior mandarin Jayant Dev, a 1976 batch IAS officer is on leave without notice. So if there is no political interference, why do officers not want to return to their home cadre? A million rupee question.

In Punjab, which recently went to polls, there was a different kind of snag. When the Election Commission directed the state government to fill all the posts of sub-divisional officers (SDOs) to strengthen the poll machinery as returning officers, the Punjab government was in a quandary.

The state government had to post senior Punjab Civil Service (PCS) officers to the junior post of SDM as they were short by about 130 PCS officers who constitute the middle level bureaucracy.

Against the sanctioned strength of 280, the state government has a shortage of about 130 PCS officers. Eight of them are on deputation with the Chandigarh administration with many state civil officers in the districts holding on to multiple charges.

The shortage has been so acute that the state government had started hiring retired PCS officers on contract to make up for the shortage till the recruitment of the regular officers.

About a year ago 25 retired PCS officers were taken on contract by the state government to fill up vacant posts of SDMs in various sub-divisions.

However, since officers on contract can not be deputed for poll duty, about 80 PCS officers have either been given extension in service or re-employed on contract.

The hiring process in Punjab was severely hit when the recruitment scam hit the Punjab Public Service Commission with its chairman Ravinderpal Singh Sidhu, a former journalist, having been caught red handed by the state vigilance department while accepting bribe.

According to well placed sources, there is a shortage of around 12 IPS officers in the Punjab Police.

According to Punjab Director General of Police Anil Kaushik, the state government has written to the Union home ministry to provide the requisite number of such officers to fill up the vacant posts.

The response of the home ministry is yet to be known. In a sense, the classic struggle between the states and the centre in a federal set up is manifesting itself in many different ways.