The signs are ominous. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, fair to a fault, sought out the cabinet secretary, Kamal Pande, within a week of assuming charge. Pande is known to be a bright, low-profile, fair and eminently competent civil servant. His sin is that by accident of birth, he is related to a former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) minister, Murli Manohar Joshi. So, Pande was shown the door when he had only a few months to retire. So were the home secretary Anil Baijal and the defence secretary Ajay Prasad. The team in the finance ministry might have gone too had the budget not intervened.

This bureaucratic attrition, motivated by political vengefulness, has plenty of precedence. In 1977, when the Congress government was replaced by the Janata Party government, there were some changes in the bureaucracy, and some gratuitous witch-hunting. When the Congress returned to power in 1980, some bureaucrats were, naturally, shown the door. But the saving grace was ministers such as R Venkataraman, who put their foot down about changes in the finance ministry.

When Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister, there was a flurry of bureaucratic transfers. But they weren't out of malice — he just lacked experience of handling the bureaucracy. Later, P V Narasimha Rao became known as a no-changer, unwilling to overrule the cabinet secretary.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition that came after willfully changed the relative stability and predictability in bureaucratic assignments. The BJP chose officers who, by themselves or through their relatives and friends, showed an ideological affinity to the party.

In the past eight years, for instance, the government has had several revenue, commerce and finance secretaries, posts which require in-depth knowledge of economic theory, trade theory, international trade issues, public finance issues, a close familiarity with all tax laws, and an ability to reasonably prognosticate the economic consequences of changes in tax policies. These are considered plum postings, because of which integrity, merit and past achievements as civil servants have become the least important of criteria in the selection for these posts.

With the Congress coming back to power — even though as a leader of a quarrelsome coalition — it was hoped that in the civil services, merit more than affiliation to political leaders or a political group would become the dominant criteria in the selection of officers to sensitive assignments.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's acts to the contrary might have been justified had the government found the officers it transferred overtly political. Sadly, they were not given a chance to prove their neutrality. The UPA government has established unequivocally that it will post only those officers to sensitive assignments who are close to the Congress or to its luminaries. Officers who retired as ambassadors have been given sensitive diplomatic assignments. There is little doubt that if and when the government changes at the Centre, these worthies will have to exeunt rather rapidly.

The spoils system has come to stay.While the prime minister's instruction to the chief ministers to ensure stability when posting officers — in order to ensure efficiency and integrity in the public delivery system — seems unexceptionable, it is ironical. After all, the top echelons of the bureaucracy at the Centre have been flattened by the transfer storm.

Today, transfers in most states, particularly in major spending departments such as public works, irrigation, and the police, are done on various considerations, including monetary. This wasn't always the case: in states such as Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, Indian Administrative Officers (IAS) officers were trained and groomed in, and for, departments like finance, education, agriculture and public works for many years at different levels. Many of them carried their superlative training and rich experience to the Centre, holding some of the most sensitive assignments with great distinction.

Today, matters have come to such a pass that if the government wishes to locate someone with a decade or so of experience to hold charge of finance, agriculture or revenue at the Centre, it would most likely not be able to find one. One or two who might fit the bill may be unacceptable, for political reasons.

Contrary to notions, civil servants and police officers are not opposed to specialisation in domain areas of administration, as the prime minister so desires. But there must be a well-laid-out procedure for selection. When Indira Gandhi was prime minister, a culture did exist of the ideas of bureaucrats being considered; but since they were never passed, either the bureaucrats themselves killed the proposal or the politicians did. Earlier, a proposal was floated to give options to young district magistrates to opt for the judiciary, as it had been during the long-defunct Indian Civil Service (ICS). There was even a proposal to end cadre allotment and to transfer officers above a particular level to other states in order to undermine the vested interests that some of them developed through extended tenure in a particular state.

These aborted efforts to reform the civil service just serve to highlight the fact that there is no political will or bureaucratic interest in reforming the civil and police services — the continuance of the present system is convenient to both. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who had evolved the system of cadre allocation to IAS and Indian Police Service (IPS) officers, with at least 50 per cent of them from outside a given state, had thought that his system would create a formidable force of neutral civil servants who would take the nation forward.

But coalition politics at the Centre and the states has been eroding neutrality in the ranks of civil servants. Furthermore, affirmative action in the posting of officers to sensitive assignments satisfies particular castes and communities. The consequence: democracy as farce.

Earlier, with the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet in place, individual ministers had no say in the appointment of officers to the various ministries, except in the rarest of the rare cases. Today, officers have to wait sitting on their hands to be accepted even though they may be eminently qualified. It's a situation that could drive even the best of officers to seek political support.

A spoils system in India at the highest bureaucratic level is hazardous to the preservation of democracy and unity of the country. India makes a point of boasting that while governments may change, the governmental system will continue uninterrupted. In a complex country such as this one, where casteist, religious and linguistic chauvinism are endemic, only a strong, proudly neutral civil service (which includes the police) can preserve the sociopolitical fabric.

The IAS rules will have to be drastically amended to enable the performance evaluation of officers after their field postings — say, on the completion of 12 years of service. Assessment should include knowledge and the inclination to specialise in the areas of :

1. Finance

2. Commerce and industry

3. Irrigation, public works, water supply and sanitation

4. Food, agriculture and cooperation

5. Social service

6. Law and order administration

Evaluation should be done by an autonomous committee consisting of :

1. A competent technical expert in the area

2. A senior bureaucrat

3. A psychologist

4. An ex-High Court judge

5. An ex-chief minister of sound academic background

Evaluation should be both on the basis of record and through interviews. The officers assigned to different domain areas should be required to take an additional degree (one-year course) before they are inducted. The next evaluation should take place on the completion of 25 years of service. This should be on the record of performance and interviews open to the public before the officers are given senior assignments.

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