Following the controversy about durga shakti nagpal's suspension, it's a time to ask some serious questions &

needs a introspection about the relations b/w civi l servants & politicians. The questions which comes in every mind after hearing the news are: 1. are these conflicts b/w civil servants & state mafia's(often backed by politi cians) an occupational hazards of regulations in the democracies or is it a deep er malaise which is becoming a trend gradually and needs some strict social acti on. 2. what are the future prospects of Governance in India. Does this open protest & debate suggests that victimisation of civil servants will decline in future as this public scrutiny will embarass the political class or will this embolden th e act & further empower th politicians as Durga Shakti continues to be suspended , his husband transferred without appropriate reasons. When the number of individual instances of corruption are numerous and pervasive , they cant be termed as episodic instances but can be easily inferred as trends . And this is the stark reality.. Tracing back from past 50 years, we can easily see two interrelated developments that points to deeper malaise at all levels of Governments: 1.The rising collusion between the three groups political leaders, business inte rests and civil servants in pursuing short-term gains even if it involves steali ng public wealth directly, or harming the general public good 2.An increasing intolerance within government by the political and civil servant bosses towards the honest civil servant, skewing incentives, in turn, contribut ing to lowered standards of probity and progressive undermining of the greater c ommon good. In public procurement deals of huge commercial value, collusion can operate A sma rt collusion ensures that only cooperative personnel are lined up along the progre ss of the file to eliminate potential disruptions. But when this is not done in advance and a civil servant becomes un-cooperative, s/he is sidelined, and in mo re blatant cases, disciplinary or even criminal proceedings initiated. Honesty i s rebuffed repeatedly Assets with characteristics of public wealth such as the technology-based spectrum or a natural resource like coal, that have very high commercial values, are exa mples in recent times where large losses through policy have been alleged at the central level. At the State level too, licensing of mineral extraction, such as granite, for real estate involve collusive policy actions that have compromised public wealth. Such acts undermine future public revenues, apart from the inevi table environmental damage. These conspiracies cannot have occurred without trip artite connivance. When regulations themselves are fixed, such acts can even be perfectly legal but perfectly corrupt. When the lesson from each case of conflict is that honesty is costly, normal pro bity and resistance to corruption tend to decline. Examples such as a village administrative officer suspended for demanding a tip for a certificate, a forest ranger caught for ignoring illegal tree cutting, a b lock development officer charged for siphoning off part of a subsidy in a microcredit scheme or a school teacher dismissed for demanding payments for grades, d o find their way into local papers. As a matter of course, lower end government employees are more easily charged for acts of relatively petty corruption. Most multilateral assisted projects too, ironically, focus on the local levels for im proving governance (euphemism for anti-corruption in development literature). The implicit assumption is that corruption decreases at higher levels of government with no basis in experience. Sure, the local focus could also be because that is where the visible part of development projects is located, but could also be a

convenient faade due to hesitation in confronting the client at the top. And the focus on petty, rat-like acts at lower levels deflects from serious daco it-style acts of grand corruption and the less visible, insidious state capture at higher levels. It blinds us all to the old proverb that a fish usually rots f rom the head down. The sentiment behind creating the IAS is best summarised by Sardar Patel s argumen ts in the Constituent Assembly debates. Patel argued that an all India Service w as necessary to integrate a highly diverse country through good and unified gove rnance after centuries of colonial rule and fragmented governance standards. Fur ther, these objectives were to be achieved by a composition of IAS officers in s tates consisting of a ratio of insiders-outsiders selected through high entrance requirements. This system (the steel frame) was designed with the expectation t hat it would be less biased, prone to corruption and local influences. It would enable them to implement the union laws on the ground fairly uniformly, combined with their knowledge of local issues from establishing state cadres. Now, around 60 years later, an objective assessment of the IAS with reference to these initial expectations would perhaps show mixed results. As argued earlier, the IAS has both protected public good but also connived to erode it. We now turn to the issue of prospects for the future of governance in India. Cou ld the Durga Shakti Nagpal case be a trend changer that results in serious debat e on genuine governance reform? Would victimization of honest officials decline in the face of political embarrassment from growing public scrutiny? Or does thi s case reinforce a trend that emboldens more such acts? The prospects for change could potentially come from three sources: the bureaucracy itself, the politica l class, or the rising tide of civil society movements that are angrier and incr easingly emboldened. The reaction of the bureaucracy to the Nagpal episode could be, Yes, this is what happens when you are young, you get hit, and there is no one to protect you, so next time walk away from confrontations; there are several sand mines but only one career. This reaction type would reinforce the collusive trends and boost mis appropriation. If the past is an efficient predictor, then the former reaction w ould, over time, subsume the latter. On the other hand, if this case is seen as a wakeup call, and energises all civil services (for example, several IAS associ ations have come forward to condemn the suspension) then the prospects for syste mic reform improve. Over the years more and more sections of the civil society as individual and as groups have accumulated anger against a corrupt system. The widespread disaffection is not only with acts of corruption but with the sta te of public goods, often expressed petulantly as why should I pay taxes from my hard earned money for this corrupt neta-business-babu nexus to spend? This anger, though sporadic and dispersed, is real. It may embed in it the kernel of a chan ce to change the status quo. A catalysing agent may be the new media which make collective action far easier. It can amplify voice and visibility at very low co st in terms of money, time or effort.