Reforms of civil services ought to be a priority
Thursday, 13 September 2007
Enayet Rasul
THERE was a time in the British colonial period of the Indian subcontinent or in the later part of the British rule of India when the mention of the Indian Civil Services (ICS) evoked respect and admiration. The colonialists at that time had started putting some brakes on their sheer exploitative activities and had started laying the foundation for reasonable good governance. They created a civil service -- drawing civil servants from among Indians-- who included some of the most talented or educated persons of the land.
What sort of individuals chose to become ICS members ? They were the offsprings of the local wealthy gentry or the zamindar class. They could live a luxurious life from hereditary wealth but considered it more manly to earn their bread and to exercise power as administrators through the civil services. They had received the best Western style education in nearly all cases, were liberal in their outlook and shared a disdain for corruption and greed, as they had already tasted a life of luxury on family wealth and, therefore, had not the temptation to wallow in corruption in their service life to satisfy their material cravings. The British took pride in such blue-blood natives who would not succumb to temptations and ensure incorruptibility and justice in the administration. Thus, the ICS came to be known as the 'steel frame' that provided a semblance of fair governance under the imperial rule.
The tradition of the ICS officers being drawn from upper classes and being well educated continued for some years after the establishment of India and Pakistan. The CSP officers became the standard bearers of the ICS in erstwhile Pakistan. In that sense, the members of the Bangladesh Civil Services (BCS) can say that they are the successors of the CSP cadres or the ICS and stake out a claim to similar esteem in the public conception. But can they really claim such respect in most cases ? The answer, if a proper poll is undertaken, is certain to yield a resounding or overwhelming ' no' from the respondents. For the civil services of the country have progressively degraded since the birth of Bangladesh. One only has to look at newspaper reports in recent years about leaks in civil service examination papers to realise the deep rot that pervades the country's civil services with the rot starting from its initial recruitment processes.
How many persons of weak background -- taking advantage of such unfair means -- could enter the ranks of the country's civil services? None has a correct figure of such undeserving persons. But their number is thought to be considerable. Anyone of proper background, having interactions with BCS cadre officers these days, cannot fail to detect the incompetence or poor educational background of the latter in many cases. Such persons have been swelling in the ranks of the civil services in the post-independence period of Bangladesh.
No one expects that BCS officers should come from aristocratic classes like in the British period. But everyone expects from them a certain amount of devotion to their jobs. But how this devotion can be there when, in the first place, many of them have got into the services through crockery ? It is the unpleasant plain truth that many of the ones aspiring to join the civil services these days are singularly guided by the motive of self-seeking and little else. They want to get into what they consider as lucrative services where an officer can turn into a very wealthy man with in a short period by taking bribes.
Thus, it is high time to take up the tasks of carrying out deep and driving reforms in the country's civil services. The reforms should start with making the present system of recruitment completely free from corruption that was reflected until recently in the leakage of question papers and other ills. The next task is proper training of the new civil servants. The Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPTAC) in the main trains new members of the civil services. But allegedly, the standard of this body has seriously deteriorated over the years. The trainers themselves are not considered sufficiently resourceful in every sense to train well. Therefore, BPTAC itself needs restructuring and at the centre of such restructuring should be appointment of persons of proper background and competence as the trainers. Besides, teaching of morality and service to people should be important parts of the training programmes so that the new members in the civil services can go to their first posts with a sharpened conscience.
In many cases, government offices are found overstaffed particularly at the lower and mid-levels. Such overstaffing should be dealt with to conserve resources and reduce bureaucracy. A dearth of specialist manpower is seen in some departments, particularly at the higher levels, that hampers the efficient functioning of these departments. The cases of such understaffing should be addressed by recruiting such specialist manpower on contract and other basis with special incentive salary and other facilities, if necessary. They may be inducted into the civil services by amending the present uniform rules of the services as special cases. Such recruitment will end the unwanted domination of the services by generalists who cannot give specialist decisions on complex or technical issues and, thus, lend dynamism to the functioning of the services.
The present system of promotion in the civil services is based mainly on seniority. The annual confidential report (ACR) on a civil servant produced by a superior officer is also taken into account while promoting a person. But such ACRs often do not represent an officer's true worth, efficiency, integrity and attainments. In most cases, the officers are blindly promoted to the next higher posts on completion of a certain number of years in their services. Therefore, in order to truly reward the efficient and the capable, promotion should be mainly based not on seniority but on the basis of the actual efficiency, dedication to jobs and achievements of the person to be promoted. For this purpose, more than the ACR, a system should be devised in which the civil servants will be given targets to fulfill at the start of a year. The targets may range, say, from meeting tax collection targets to the number of sterilisation operations carried out in the family planning programme.
Target attainment and meeting of other standards should become the basis of promotion and not just seniority, as is the case now. Besides, failure to attain targets and noted lapses in other areas should lead to unfailing suffering of penalties, from withholding of increments to even dismissal from services. In other words, civil servants must be made to perform with the awareness that they are accountable for their jobs and that their offices are not sinecures. They could expect rewards for the right things they do and penalty for what they do not do or do wrongly. Only an accountable structure of this sort, enforced rigorously, has any chance of improving the standard of the civil services.
THERE was a time in the British colonial period of the Indian subcontinent or in the later part of the British rule of India when the mention of the Indian Civil Services (ICS) evoked respect and admiration. The colonialists at that time had started putting some brakes on their sheer exploitative activities and had started laying the foundation for reasonable good governance. They created a civil service -- drawing civil servants from among Indians-- who included some of the most talented or educated persons of the land.
What sort of individuals chose to become ICS members ? They were the offsprings of the local wealthy gentry or the zamindar class. They could live a luxurious life from hereditary wealth but considered it more manly to earn their bread and to exercise power as administrators through the civil services. They had received the best Western style education in nearly all cases, were liberal in their outlook and shared a disdain for corruption and greed, as they had already tasted a life of luxury on family wealth and, therefore, had not the temptation to wallow in corruption in their service life to satisfy their material cravings. The British took pride in such blue-blood natives who would not succumb to temptations and ensure incorruptibility and justice in the administration. Thus, the ICS came to be known as the 'steel frame' that provided a semblance of fair governance under the imperial rule.
The tradition of the ICS officers being drawn from upper classes and being well educated continued for some years after the establishment of India and Pakistan. The CSP officers became the standard bearers of the ICS in erstwhile Pakistan. In that sense, the members of the Bangladesh Civil Services (BCS) can say that they are the successors of the CSP cadres or the ICS and stake out a claim to similar esteem in the public conception. But can they really claim such respect in most cases ? The answer, if a proper poll is undertaken, is certain to yield a resounding or overwhelming ' no' from the respondents. For the civil services of the country have progressively degraded since the birth of Bangladesh. One only has to look at newspaper reports in recent years about leaks in civil service examination papers to realise the deep rot that pervades the country's civil services with the rot starting from its initial recruitment processes.
How many persons of weak background -- taking advantage of such unfair means -- could enter the ranks of the country's civil services? None has a correct figure of such undeserving persons. But their number is thought to be considerable. Anyone of proper background, having interactions with BCS cadre officers these days, cannot fail to detect the incompetence or poor educational background of the latter in many cases. Such persons have been swelling in the ranks of the civil services in the post-independence period of Bangladesh.
No one expects that BCS officers should come from aristocratic classes like in the British period. But everyone expects from them a certain amount of devotion to their jobs. But how this devotion can be there when, in the first place, many of them have got into the services through crockery ? It is the unpleasant plain truth that many of the ones aspiring to join the civil services these days are singularly guided by the motive of self-seeking and little else. They want to get into what they consider as lucrative services where an officer can turn into a very wealthy man with in a short period by taking bribes.
Thus, it is high time to take up the tasks of carrying out deep and driving reforms in the country's civil services. The reforms should start with making the present system of recruitment completely free from corruption that was reflected until recently in the leakage of question papers and other ills. The next task is proper training of the new civil servants. The Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPTAC) in the main trains new members of the civil services. But allegedly, the standard of this body has seriously deteriorated over the years. The trainers themselves are not considered sufficiently resourceful in every sense to train well. Therefore, BPTAC itself needs restructuring and at the centre of such restructuring should be appointment of persons of proper background and competence as the trainers. Besides, teaching of morality and service to people should be important parts of the training programmes so that the new members in the civil services can go to their first posts with a sharpened conscience.
In many cases, government offices are found overstaffed particularly at the lower and mid-levels. Such overstaffing should be dealt with to conserve resources and reduce bureaucracy. A dearth of specialist manpower is seen in some departments, particularly at the higher levels, that hampers the efficient functioning of these departments. The cases of such understaffing should be addressed by recruiting such specialist manpower on contract and other basis with special incentive salary and other facilities, if necessary. They may be inducted into the civil services by amending the present uniform rules of the services as special cases. Such recruitment will end the unwanted domination of the services by generalists who cannot give specialist decisions on complex or technical issues and, thus, lend dynamism to the functioning of the services.
The present system of promotion in the civil services is based mainly on seniority. The annual confidential report (ACR) on a civil servant produced by a superior officer is also taken into account while promoting a person. But such ACRs often do not represent an officer's true worth, efficiency, integrity and attainments. In most cases, the officers are blindly promoted to the next higher posts on completion of a certain number of years in their services. Therefore, in order to truly reward the efficient and the capable, promotion should be mainly based not on seniority but on the basis of the actual efficiency, dedication to jobs and achievements of the person to be promoted. For this purpose, more than the ACR, a system should be devised in which the civil servants will be given targets to fulfill at the start of a year. The targets may range, say, from meeting tax collection targets to the number of sterilisation operations carried out in the family planning programme.
Target attainment and meeting of other standards should become the basis of promotion and not just seniority, as is the case now. Besides, failure to attain targets and noted lapses in other areas should lead to unfailing suffering of penalties, from withholding of increments to even dismissal from services. In other words, civil servants must be made to perform with the awareness that they are accountable for their jobs and that their offices are not sinecures. They could expect rewards for the right things they do and penalty for what they do not do or do wrongly. Only an accountable structure of this sort, enforced rigorously, has any chance of improving the standard of the civil services.