Change incentives not the exhortation

Change incentives not the exhortation

Addressing civil servants, home minister Rajnath Singh cautioned them against acting as yes-men to their political masters. Show them the rule book; he urged the upper crust of the nation’s administrators, in case they ask you to do something illegal. Be firm, and refuse to sign off on files if you think the contents are not proper, he said. These are fine words and noble sentiments. But for them to have operative effect, the rules and regulations that guide the work life of our civil servants must be modified. That is something that the political leadership has to bring about, even if through the civil service.
Today, civil servants have a skewed incentive structure. Make the least mistake and you could end up paying a steep price. If you take no risks and accomplish little other than warming your comfortable seat in some centre or the other of state power, you are assured of steady progress in your career. This must change. There must be positive incentives for doing good work and penalties for being little more than a living demonstration of Newton’s law of inertia. This calls for changing service rules, removing assured, seniority-based promotions and introduction of retirement from service on failing to get promoted beyond a point, as it happens in the armed forces. Good work must be recognised and rewarded with promotions, and bad work, with exit from the service on not being promoted.
The Fifth Pay Commission had recommended measures to ensure that civil servants had fixed tenures and could be transferred only on the basis of a decision by a high-powered committee for recorded reasons. That recommendation was not accepted then. It deserves to be implemented, in letter and spirit, even now. Words might inspire but policy will bring about change.