New Delhi: The current Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has a tendency to keep control over ministries, and everything is very centralised, retired IAS officer Anil Swarup, who has served as Union coal secretary (2014-2016) and education secretary (2016-2018), has said.
Swarup, who has served under the Manmohan Singh administration as well as under the incumbent Narendra Modi government, retired as the education secretary in 2018. The 1981-batch officer has woven his decades of experience as a civil servant, along with the insights gathered, into a trilogy of books.
The latest of these — No More A Civil Servant — was published this month. It was preceded by Ethical Dilemmas of a Civil Servant and Not Just a Civil Servant.
Calling the Modi PMO the “pivot” of power, Swarup said: “I have worked with both governments, the previous one (UPA) and the current one (NDA). Comparatively, I believe, everything is very centralised under this PMO. I don’t think it is formally mandated, but that is how it works. I used to wonder, why should we consult the PMO for everything? Probably, there is a tendency to keep control over everything.”
He claimed the space for independent decisionmaking is shrinking, adding that a “lot of space has indeed been occupied by the PMO — either the ministries have conceded their space or the PMO has occupied it”.
“I think the PMO has become prominent in occupying space that it should not have,” he said.
“Earlier, cabinet ministers did take a lot of decisions — right, wrong or whatever. I am not passing a value judgement on their decisions. Cabinet ministers were fairly free to make their own decisions. They are free even now. But there is a tendency to refer everything to the PMO,” he added.
According to Swarup, ministers often feel obligated to take approval from the PMO, even for something like holding a press conference.
“There is an instance I have mentioned in one of my books. I was then the education secretary and the CBSE paper was leaked. In order to hold a press conference, we had to go to the PMO,” he said.
“I was wondering, why should we go to the PMO to hold a press conference? But my minister said we needed to discuss it with the PMO. There are many such examples.”
The PMO plays a very important role in running the government, he said. “But why should ministers need approval from the PMO to hold a press conference?”
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360-degree evaluation ‘to dump the inconvenient’
In 2015, the Modi government introduced a controversial evaluation process for civil service officers.
A system of 360-degree appraisal — involving multi-source feedback from various stakeholders, including seniors, peers and juniors etc — was introduced in the process of empanelment of officers for holding senior-level positions in the Government of India.
The empanelment process took into account the overall service record, vigilance status and suitability of the officers concerned as well.
Swarup described the evaluation process as “opaque”. “The idea was very good. It was borrowed from the private sector, but it doesn’t work in the government the way it works in the private sector. There, it is a transparent evaluation process, but in the government it is totally opaque.”
In the private sector, he said, “an entire panel sits together, discusses the officer at length and then talks to the officer”.
“If he is considered unfit for a particular position, the panel holds another interaction with him to explain why he was not selected. But nothing of that sort happens here.”
People in the government “are suddenly removed after 360-degree evaluation”, he added.
“(They) do not know what has hit them although they have done wonderfully well throughout their career. Officers who have worked efficiently for 20 to 25 years, suddenly find themselves useless and they are not even told why. The manner in which (this evaluation process) is implemented in the Government of India, the less said the better.”
Saying that it was “very unfortunate how 360-degree works here”, he added, “You find someone inconvenient and you dump him.”
On civil servants joining politics
Among other things, Swarup also weighed in on the debate surrounding civil servants joining politics.
According to him, civil servants who have held constitutional positions or judges should refrain from joining politics immediately after retirement.
“There is nothing wrong with a civil servant joining politics, why should they not join? My reservation is only with regards to constitutional position,” he said, explaining that “in a constitutional position such as chief election commissioner or Supreme Court judge, officers are decisionmakers”.
“So, while it is not legally wrong, it is ethically incorrect for a judge or an election commissioner to take a political assignment immediately after retirement,” he said.
He further referred to the instance of former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi becoming a Rajya Sabha member post-retirement. “Gogoi was not legally wrong, but ethically incorrect. Imagine a scenario where a sitting SC judge holds a press conference against a sitting Chief Justice of India (Dipak Misra), and is not hauled for contempt. Then he becomes the CJI. Later, there is a sexual harassment case against him, and then there is a compromise. How there can be a compromise in a sexual harassment case?” Swarup asked.
“If the person made a wrong complaint, action should have been taken against her. And if what she said was right, then action should have been taken against the CJI. There cannot be a compromise.
“To crown it all, he (Gogoi) became a Member of Parliament. So, I am certainly not against an officer joining politics, but I am certainly against officers doing politics while in service. I am against people holding a constitutional position and joining politics,” he said.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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