2014

BEAURACRACY, A CONTENTIOUS NECESSITY

VINOD NANNAWARE
TATA INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
M2014HRM062

BUREAUCRACY, A CONTENTIOUS NECESSITY

VINOD NANNAWARE, M2014HRM062
Charges of corruption, Policy paralysis like situations and leadership conflicts
resulted in historic downfall of grand old party of the country and new era of governance
started in India. Minimum Government, Maximum Governance, one of the massively used
and successfully scripted election propaganda did wonders for party with difference. No
one ever imagined it would become an election campaign agenda, but astute Narendra Modi
who played all of his cards very smartly in the LS poll 2014, knows the importance of using
right words at right time. Many eminent scholars and economist all across globe blamed
bureaucratic functioning and policy paralysis of UPA-2 as one of the main reasons of this
defeat. Hence this historic victory of Modi led NDA puts number of questions in front of
modern day sociologist, especially those who follows and believes in Marx Weber Ideas of
Bureaucracy. Looking this phenomenon as only one of its kind or merely just an accident will
lead to falsified inference about changing economical and social realities in modern India.
After assuming the power the way in which team Modi has been tackling most of the pending
issues surprised many of us. In fact governments last 2 months report card shows that our
beliefs such as set of rules and regulations are inevitable part of government and running a
government must required a hierarchical working systems get shattered and damaged to the
core by these social and political transformations. Prior to exploring these changes further it
is at most necessary to understand meaning of social and economic organizations and
bureaucratic principles.
Renowned German Social Scientist Max Weber Who has been also known as father
of modern bureaucracy wrote about structure, functions and importance of bureaucracy from
historical perspective. (Giddens, 2009). He studied and identified key features of large social
institutes like government, hospitals, universities etc. His ideas related to bureaucracy and
social and economical structure of organizations widely appreciated by thinkers and
sociologists worldwide. According to Weber Bureaucracy is a large machine operated by set
of rules and regulations. It is one of the most rational kinds of authority which alone have all
the qualities to serve the needs of changing social realities of the world. In our society the
term bureaucracy used as a synonym for inefficiency and unnecessary formalities. In the field
of politics, it means the administrative arrogant machinery that is, the set of civil and public
servants who are responsible for execution of government business. Others follow Max

Weber while defining bureaucracy as an exclusive form of organization observed not just in
government but in large hospitals, Multi National Companies, Institutes in fact more or less
in all spheres of contemporary society. Government has grown and the scale of its
responsibilities has expanded, bureaucracy has come to play a crucial and important role in
political life. Bureaucracy actually means the rule of the bureaucrats. Bureaucracy has certain
advantages of being predictable, fair, administrative control and consolidated power in a few
hands which ensures that the system is able to respond with a lot of speed and dexterity
(Giddens, 2009). No longer can civil servants be suspended or dismissed as per rulers or
administrators wish, They are not treated as puppet in the hands of ruling class; instead, they
are key figures in the policy making processes, and most of the times run their countries. A
reality of rule by the officials may lie behind the DNA of this democratic and
representative accountability. The planning, monitoring

and control of bureaucracy is

nowadays considered as one of the most challenging problems in modern politics, and one
that no political establishment has found easy to solve.
According to Max Weber, Bureaucracy is literally social machinery designed to attain
maximum efficiency, engineered so that the each and every parts, the people, the products,
with any bureaucracy can work together efficiently and smoothly with a minimum
unnecessary play, random movement and wasted effort. (Giddens, 2009) Bureaucracy is
literally a structure to eliminate the free structure of human beings in the same way that
machines are engineered to eliminate the free play of their component parts. Max Weber
specified seven characteristics of Bureaucracy. First is the organization of bureaucracy
resulting in the hierarchy. Second is specialization, a function, division of labour in which an
individual becomes expert technical specialist instead of a broad generalist. Third is the
Technical Competence which is the criteria for intake into the bureaucracy and processing
within it. Fourth is the proliferation of rules and regulations that tightly contain and hold the
individuals within the organization creating the artificial mechanisms. Fifth is the
predominance of written mode of communication everywhere within the organization. Sixth
is the impersonality which is treating the individual as a file or a record rather than a person.
Last and most important is reliability and sustainability of the system. These key features
give an advanced edge to bureaucracy over charismatic and traditional techniques of
governing.
The Bureaucracy has many drawbacks also. Its dehumanization of people who work
within it as it ruins the ability to control self and give it over to the organization, its constrains

while dealing with out of routine things .As rightly said by Bonjean, Bureaucracy has been
characterized by their presence, while that type of organization best described by the relative
absence of some of them has been termed human relations (Bonjean & Grimes, 2012).We
can say it is an anti-democratic system as it consolidates the power in the pockets of few, who
most of the times selected or appointed executives working for Government of concerned
country, who does not care for any mandate either for appointment or dismissal through
people of the concerned country. Social scientist designed characterization of heartless
bureaucratic rational modernity. The images of government bureaucracy show the distressful
process of people in Bureaucratic situations. Humanity stripped down to a kind of cold
instrumentation. They often paints images of people separated by partitions long before
cubicles in offices, lonely, seeking contact, unable to find it because modernity sets up
straight, Simple, rational lines separating them from each other. In the social world, no
bureaucracy proves exactly to the ideal type of administration, and there is often bending of
rules, favouritism or incompetence. (Bonjean & Grimes, 2012). But number of large
organizations has a large number of characteristics of this ideal type. The manner in which
almost every bureaucracy functions can be compared to the ideal type. Often the complaints
of individuals or group of individuals in bureaucratic organisations relate to ways in which
some part of most of the ideal type is not met. For example, rulers or politicians may not be
clear or aware of a particular bureaucratic office may misuse their position. While
bureaucracies seem to restrict freedom, and provide structures of domination, they are also
very important to carry out the administration of modern, complex, organic society. If these
bureaucratic ways did not exist, society would be suffer a lot, in that actions would be carried
out in a wasteful and inefficient manner (Handel, 2002). Webers analysis of bureaucracy has
made it prove as if bureaucratic systems are fundamentally limiting to freedom of human
beings. While he praises bureaucracies for their predictability and efficiency, he feared that
people would become too dependent and controlled by them. He does not appear to focus on
the forces of equality and freedom that can come from bureaucratic organisations.
Standardized rules make it hardly possible for personal favours to be provided and any
arbitrary directive to be ensured. Members of an organisation may benefit from bureaucratic
rules and regulations, and these make it possible for promotion and hiring to occur on the
meritocratic basis. (Handel, 2002). Rewards and recognitions can be given for performance,
rather than through arbitrariness and favouritism.

Hence before condemning or applauding bureaucracies in their totality, the overall

impacts and effects of these organisations, both positive and negative, need to be considered.
Almost each and every area of life tends to develop a bureaucratic or semi-bureaucratic
administration associated with it. These bureaucracies become permanent structures of
domination. They govern and regulate social action on a frequent basis, Access to economic
power directly through market conditions or property ownership may be important. But
access to the means and ways of administration is also a vital source of power, and a
important means of control. The development of the modern corporate organizations and
firms, with a bureaucratic management, is a perfect example of this type of development.
Thus Bureaucracy has number of positive and negative characteristics; it has number
of followers as well as critics also. But most importantly it is just a tool and like every other
tool its utilization and importance is all depends on how one actually use it. Hence upcoming
government must understand all these rational realities about bureaucracy, which is none the
less a very much contentious necessity.

References
Bonjean, C. M., & Grimes, M. D. (2012). Bureaucracy and Alienation: A Dimensional
Approach. Oxford University Press and Social Forces, University of North Carolina Press.
Giddens, A. (2009). Sociology (Sixth Edition). Cambridge: Polity.
Handel, M. J. (2002). The Sociology of Organizations: Classic, Contemporary, and Critical
Readings. Sage Publications. Thousand Oaks, CA.