The conviction of a former Coal Secretary, the present Chief Secretary of a state, and a Director (hereafter referred to as ‘Coal Trio’ ) by a CBI court in the allocation of coal mines raises several disturbing issues.

For one, the government is a collective endeavour, not an individual enterprise, neither a latter-day East India Company nor for that matter a limited liability partnership. The logical corollary is that officers owe their allegiance to 1.30 billion Indians, not to a Board of Directors. The colonial government laid out extensive rules and regulations that have, by and large, stood the test of time, with minor modifications. Procedures of conduct of business and discipline are well-established and lines of control and coordination clearly delineated. With steady expansion of governmental activity, it was but inevitable that this structure would expand. As it expanded so did the levels of accountability such as RTIs, anonymous / pseudonymous complaints, Parliamentary Questions and Committees, Standing Committees, Expenditure Finance Committee, public suggestions, an often an aggressive media, public interest litigation and many more. Individual arbitrariness can now be openly and easily challenged.

Second, the doctrine of separation of powers found extensive application in government rules of business. For instance, a fresh proposal that originates in a Section Officer of a functional wing of a Ministry is routed through an Under Secretary, Deputy Secretary/Director, Joint/Additional Secretary or both, and thence to the Integrated Financial Adviser, finally to the Secretary/ Minister in accordance with the prescribed delegation of financial powers. In case inter-state and inter-ministerial consultation/concurrence is involved, then a similar network takes over before an opinion is given to the originating m. A similar procedure is followed regarding payments.

A sanctioning authority cannot sign a pay order for even a rupee. The officer who prepares a payment bill is different from the on who scrutinizes it, and the final cheque signing authority is different from the one into whose cash-book that payment goes. There is no way a senior officer can act in splendid solitude.

The third issue is the rapidly dwindling financial fortune of the states and the Centre. The recent NK Singh committee report on Government debt pegged the Government of India’s debt to GDP ratio at 68 per cent… with this figure rising alarmingly every year. In 2016-17, recent media reports said that the Government had paid about Rs 12 lakh crore, of a Rs 22 lakh crore expenditure budget, towards debt servicing in the last fiscal alone. In addition, the central government is divesting small percentages of its shares in public sector undertakings and allowing their listing on the country’s bourses.

Further, government shares in large private sector companies are also reported to be up for sale, though to state-owned entities like LIC, mainly. Revenue expenditure too is rapidly rising with expenses on defence and home, bank recapitalisation and currency demonetisation and implementation of the 7th Central Pay Commission award and many more, leaving most capital expenditure to be funded by borrowings. The ongoing economic downturn has not helped governments either; it has instead adversely affected collection of revenues in real terms. It is, therefore, obvious that governments no longer have the solo wherewithal to bankroll mega projects. Hence the rising stress on public-private partnerships, outright and strategic sales of public sector units, monetisation of physical assets owned by the government and their entities, often unrealistic dividend payouts by public sector units, and many more measures.

Inevitability of best-conditions/price for state assets thus became the source of sustenance for a cash-strapped government even as its civil servants were hardly trained for it.

Fourth, these adversities coupled with popular expectations have had their invariable fallout on the civil service. Neither were the old rules revised nor were the new rules unambiguous. A classical Weberian bureaucracy that relied on state resources for its absolute power, gradually found itself in the mould of negotiators seeking official and remunerative deals for their employers, from the non-government sector that also was a major source of election financing. The end result was the bureaucracy’s hasty cobbling of one-sided and unilaterally-imposed guidelines that hobbled the negotiator rather than than enabled him/her. Neither were the covenanted bureaucracy’s antediluvian recruitment methods via the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) re-written, nor was their training and, least of all the protection that they merited for their lack of training and business sense.

What use was a botanist IAS officer if he/she could not negotiate because he/she was not trained to do so? What was infinitely worse was the fact of popular perception, fanned moslyt by the media, demanding that a civil servant be a public servant while being a businessman, an evident contradiction in terms. In fact, with rising private participation in the economy, particularly in infrastructure and defence, many more senior civil servants may face the jail at a time when they ought to be enjoying playing golf and camping in their post-superannuation years.

Fifth, successive governments vacillated from allocation to auction of natural and public resources, both equally opaque. Auction of telecom airwaves stymied India’s telecom sector and maimed it with amongst the highest non-performing assets of public sector banks and little resources to expand and improve connectivity. It also wrecked the financial position of BSNL and MTNL. Scandalising the award of licences to new competitors played into the hands of the existing domestic operators’ cartel in the absence of MTNL and BSNL. A compliant TRAI only compounded the mess. Likewise, in coal auctions, an unstated ‘windfall’ gain on a Coal Ministry file virtually ended up making a case for import cartels. Abnormally high rates of spectrum and FM airwaves subsequently caused the Government of India to realise barely a tenth of their target. The shortfall of about Rs. 65000 crore would have been made good by borrowing at interest rates of 7-11 per cent per annum.

Constitutional functionaries and investigation force heads, all serving or former civil servants themselves, to play into this vacuum between policy and implementation, for entirely selfingratiating reasons. This wreaked havoc upon the exchequer and the nation by propounding revenue generation as the be-all and end-all of government policy. In the process, they also severely dented the credibility of institutions they headed. The end result was also abnormally high minimum reserve prices for all natural and public resources that were plainly commercially unviable.

The writer is a senior public policy analyst and commentator