The education secretary’s comment assumes significance at a time when the govt is pushing for lateral entry into civil services.
New Delhi: Outgoing education secretary Anil Swarup, who has juggled many roles in his 37-year-long career, has said a bureaucrat does not need any specialisation to handle a particular ministry or a department.
His comment assumes significance at a time when the Modi government is pushing for lateral entry into civil services to bring in “fresh ideas and new approaches”.
“After a particular level of seniority, it is more about managing men and women rather than having detailed knowledge of a particular domain,” Swarup told ThePrint Edior-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV’s Walk the Talk show.
“Because you may have domain knowledge but ultimately what gets delivered is delivered through the people around you and the manner in which you handle them — that’s the most important. We learn that over a period of time,” he said.
To drive home his point, Swarup gave the example of Parameswaran Iyer who worked in defence and textile ministries, served as the district collector of Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh before taking charge of the Modi government’s flagship scheme, Swachh Bharat Mission.
The BJP-led central government’s decision to recruit professionals from outside the bureaucracy into Indian Administrative Service has already drawn criticism from various quarters.
Swarup, a 1981 batch UP cadre IAS officer, has suggested that UPSC can change the way in which candidates are selected for entry into civil services.
“UPSC should go a step further. Things like group discussions will enable them to understand the skills of a person,” he said.
“Similarly, they could put them in a problem situation and let them come out with a solution. So, there are ways and means and tools through which you can analyse as to whether the person is capable of becoming a good leader in future or not,” Swarup claimed.
He said India should learn from Singapore to improve the candidate selection process.
Known for handling all previous positions with the same rigour, Swarup’s tenure as education secretary was a rather interesting one during which he tackled the “education mafia”, dealt with the CBSE exam-leak issue that affected a large number of children and helped the government reach out to students of Jammu and Kashmir whose studies were affected after the unrest in the Valley in 2016.
The most significant of all these was tackling the “education mafia”, which he claims, is “bigger than the coal mafia”.
“In case of coal, the mining is underground, the mafia is overground. In education, it is the other way round,” he said.
“In coal, the world was against what was going wrong. In case of education, the world doesn’t know what’s wrong. They only see the ultimate wrong. But the underlying problems are much more complex,” Swarup said.
Stressing on the proper training of teachers, he said, “Teacher lies at the pivot of Indian education system…The way teachers are trained before they get into a profession through B.Ed and D.Ed… that is the biggest mafia.”
“Twenty five percent of B.Ed and D.Ed colleges do not exist. They can give you a degree when pay them well. And people tell me that one can get a job as well. It is as bad as that,” he added.
During his tenure, government went tried to reform the B.Ed system but the whole matter is now sub judice.
Swarup also used social media to reach out to people and answered their queries in the wake of the CBSE paper leak controversy.
Goes on to prove the point that Modi is trying to make. Anil Swaroop, is giving an example of another bureaucrat, the antecedents of whom he has no idea of.
Most Career bureaucrats just skim the surface and have a limited understanding of the system and the domain expertise. The junior team that they profess to be managing and leading are the ones that must guide and mis lead, knowing well that their officer is a generalist and having a limited understanding of the subjects.
How could one defend being a generalist, when this has ruined the creation and Implementation of public policy in India.
Just before 1.5 yrs back retired IAS and late Sh. TSR Subryanam said that credit of backwardness and failure of India only goes to IAS.Being a agricultural expert and 22 yrs experience I agree with TSR statement.
Sri.Anil Swaroop is justifying why lateral entry is not necessary. It is a status quo mindset and a misplaced belief that a bureaucrat knows everything. In fact what the so called specialists/technocrats do as they move up the hierarchy is more of managing people than the nut and bolts of technology. As some one commented above bureaucrats do more of a coordinating job.This can be done by a technocrat also. Instead of an ‘either’, ‘or’ debate, people should be laterally inducted for a fresh breath of air. Instead of tentative approach, government should seriously take the idea forward by inducting From Secretary to Director level in technology ministries like Oil & Gas, Coal, Mines, Steel, Power etc. for proper pilot of the new system.
When status quo is what you need to maintain and next promotion is your ultimate goal, yes, Anil Swarup is tight. IAS officer need not be a specialist. So, India will never reach the positions of USA and other western countries so long as people of this mindset occupy important positions. Excellence will not be even recognised and one has to cope up with mediocre people. Long live his tribe
Shri Anil Swarup deserved the honour of being the first serving mandarin to feature on Walk the Talk, something he has done all his life. 2. The generalist – specialist binary is an old one, goes to the heart of how earlier the ICS, which ruled in simpler times, and now the IAS, which serves in more complex ones, sees itself. Managing people is an art, which the CM of Uttaranchal is yet to learn, but it cannot be the major qualification for the apex of administration in a country undergoing a major development transformation. 3. At least on the economy, the team must be dominated by people with domain knowledge and expertise. It is here that lateral entry, not just at JS level, and for merely three to five years, is imperative. Think of a single mandarin in the economic ministries who sparkles.
Shri Parameswaran Iyer was a domain specialist to begin with. Though he may have served in the IAS initially, he left the service following an eight year long stint as a sanitation specialist for the World Bank which in turn was followed by an an extended period of time and experience in areas of sanitation running upto around 20 years. He is not your run of the mill bureaucrat who was handling home affairs yesterday and dropped into drinking water and sanitation today. Grassroots level work experience gained by IAS officers in the initial 10 years of their service is definitely indispensable for their roles as future decision makers. But that alone cannot be an excuse to not specialise in a particular area as you move from policy implementation to policy making roles. The fact that you won’t be needing specialisation might hold water for largely coordinating roles. But there are departments, say, economic affairs which require you to have some knowledge of advanced economic concepts. Another alternative could be to choose a path within a ministry and rise within the department through its ranks for example to starting as director or joint secretary in a particular department and rising up to level of secretary can imbue a substantial amount of domain knowledge without advanced specialisation. This kind of culture is currently absent if not rare in central government.