C M Sharma
All over the world, people in respective departments are recruited at the bottom of the ladder. From there they earn their promotions up to the top in the hierarchy. N.C. Asthana, a retired IPS officer, who had been the Director General of Police (DGP) Kerala and a long-time ADG CRPF and BSF, has mentioned in an article published by The Wire in February 2020, that “The present New York Police Department Commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, had joined the police as a patrolman (that is, at the bottom of the ladder) in 1991. He became a sergeant in 1995, a lieutenant in 1999, a captain in 2003, a deputy inspector in 2008, an inspector in 2010, a deputy chief in 2013, the deputy commissioner of operations in 2014, the designated chief of crime control strategies in 2017, the chief of detectives in 2018 and the New York City police commissioner in December 2019.”
We may compare the system with the one prevailing in various technical departments of our own Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir where, quite often, the officers from the ‘elite’ civil services possessing entirely unrelated qualification with lesser years of service experience are appointed as HoDs over the heads of well qualified and highly experienced technocrats in respective fields/cadres.
Rakesh Mohan, one of the lateral entrants into Government in the 1980s, while giving ace to technocracy, credits the then technocrats in the bureaucracy like L.K. Jha for being the catalysts within the government for economic reforms. He cites long serving economic advisors in the Government of India like I.G. Patel, Bimal Jalan, Dr. Man Mohan Singh, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Kaushik Basu, Raghuram Rajan, Arvind Panagariya and Arvind Subramanian who were lateral hires and brought in new ideas into the system.
Sushma Ramachandran, a senior journalist, advocates for reforms in human resource management by greater induction of domain experts into specialised areas of governance including the public sector. She says, “It would make sense to have technocrats heading ministries like power, telecom, coal and petroleum. Rather than generalist IAS officers who take time to learn the subject and then move on after a few years to another sector in fact, such ministries should be declared off-limits to the generalist officers.” She asserts, “…. domain experts in agriculture and rural development need to be placed in positions of authority so that work in these sectors can be carried out efficiently.” Sushma Ramachandran is emphatic that the recruitment for the government needs to focus on those who have the required skills to facilitate development and enable a faster pace of growth, not just for the elite but for the common man.”
The e-paper mint commented on the induction of former Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar into the Union Cabinet in 2019 as the Minister for External Affairs as, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has overturned perceptions of being anti-technocracy. For a Government that has been trying to get various domain experts into the ranks of the bureaucracy, this signals an emphasis on expertise as a criterion over the usual considerations.”
The Corporate Finance Institute (CFI) in a comprehensive note on technocracy has revealed that in most Governments worldwide, technocrats are selected to head key departments that require specialized skills and experts.
It is a matter of satisfaction that in both the divisions of Jammu and Kashmir, the UT Government of J&K has recently appointed technocrats only to head the Directorates of Agriculture. The move has been whole heartedly hailed by a cross section of the UT population, particularly the farmers and the employees. It is unpropitious to note however that there are still the departments of Animal Husbandry, Horticulture, Floriculture, and many others which have non-technical Directors as HoDs.
The governments in the erstwhile J&K State generally demonstrated little seriousness in Agriculture and Allied sectors by allowing the human resources issues of the gazetted cadre to multiply and let the seniority issues to linger on over the years. Appointments and promotions to the vacant posts in Agriculture were made on ad-hoc and purely temporary basis. The mandatory annual finalization of seniority lists and granting of regular promotions to over a thousand of eligible gazetted officers at different levels, in accordance with the recommendations of the Departmental Promotion Committees/Public Service Commission, has remained hanging in balance for the last more than three decades; for one reason or the other. The Government has been appointing Heads of Departments in Agriculture, sometimes from amongst the bureaucrats and at other times from amongst the technocrats as per convenience, with no concrete HRD policy. Is there anything which can’t be resolved if the government resolves?
Good times however seem to have arrived for Agriculture Production & Farmer’s Welfare Department now. During the past few months, the current dispensation headed by the Lt. Governor, Shri Manoj Sinha, his Advisor (Agriculture Production & Farmer’s Welfare, Horticulture, etc.), Shri Farooq Khan and the incumbent Principal Secretary (Agriculture Production & Farmer’s Welfare, Horticulture, etc.), Shri Navin Choudhary appears to have finally embarked on the path of empowering technocrats. The post of Agriculture Director has been assigned to agriculture technocrats in both the divisions. The Principal Secretary on several occasions has expressed his intent to settle the HRD issues of Agriculture Production and Farmers Welfare Department at the earliest. Hopes have naturally grown that henceforth only the technocrats will head their technical domains.
Bureaucracy, undoubtedly at the higher echelons of power, has a clear mandate to ensure that rule of law is fully adhered to by executing departments. It must therefore see that genuine grievances of technocrats as well as the target population are mitigated expeditiously; development schemes and programmes are effectively supervised and monitored; requisite follow up action is taken in time and placement of human resource; and assignment of tasks at different levels is appropriate. An adherence to discipline will galvanize the entire administrative set up and lead to effective and enthusiastic discharge of responsibilities by the respective technocrats and bureaucrats for welfare of all the stakeholders.
(The author is former Dy. Director of Agriculture, Jammu)
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