Drinking As An ‘Ally’ Of Training
By Raj Nandy
28 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org
A story recently carried by a national English daily that the new director of the IAS Academy at Mussoorie had opened a bar in the probationer’s mess there dismayed me both as a citizen and a student of public administration. I am not per se against drinking. An alcoholic drink can mean different things to different people. For example, for some a little snort is good for health. Others associate drinking with drunkenness (proof: the row kicked up by the delirium-induced tantrums of a young, inebriated Indian diplomat in a New-York bound flight a month back). This is a sensitive issue. So, I would rather steer myself clear of any interpretation or pejorative definition of ‘drink’. Let the director’s decision be judged on its merits.
To begin with, we must recognise the fact that the Academy originated out of a rich, historical past, i.e., to train young men and women of superior intelligence (not necessarily virtue or morality), selected through an all-India competition, as a successor corps (IAS) to an earlier administrative elite of higher quality (ICS), famously known as the steel frame of the British rule in India. The first point I would like to make here is that the Academy would do well to preserve this ideal of “steel frame” for the IAS as well. Indeed, it would need to season it further (the British used it primarily for their narrow ends of maintaining “law and order”) for the following reasons: (a) there is an all-round moral degeneration in the country and an increasing number of reports on creeping corruption amongst the civil servants, higher and lower, or their nexus with private business; (b) they comprise the future administrators or second-rung “rulers” (the first being the elected representatives or politicians) responsible for implementation of public poilcy; and (c) after they finish their training, they move into positions of higher authority and leadership in the extreme heterogeneity of government agencies across the country, controlling or influencing the lives of the aam admi from cradle to grave in lot many ways. Millions of impoverished men, women and children depend upon them and the organizations they oversee, for services after long queues and waiting times – irritations and frustrations these first and second-rung rulers hardly ever experience. Hence, the issue, at bottom, is to check out the relevance and primacy of a pub in an eminent national institution which was set up to instill, inter alia, noble sentiments of dedicated public service into its trainees.
The Academy is filled with young people throughout the year. With the booze available around the corner in the evening and (presumably) on holidays, will not that make them vulnerable to temptations other than the real delights of stimulating intellectual discussions in their spare time on pressing problems facing the polity, namely, eradication of poverty, illiteracy, healthcare, or the internal deficiencies of their employing bureaucratic organizations, like archaic rules, cumbersome procedures, red-tapism, inefficiency, abused power and so on. How would drinking in the bar raise their commitment to improve their service standards and delivery systems or make them courteous and helpful to the aam admi? Isn’t the Academy nullifying the very purpose of its establishment or existence by letting these young minds wrapped up in their hedonistic side during their budding years of the ‘probation’ itself (learning or imbibing period), especially at an age when pleasure-loving emotions are said to be relatively stronger and one can easily fall for what Shakespeare rightly cautioned, “all ills that the flesh is heir to”. Pleasures of drinking may not be wicked in themselves or perhaps do no harm in their proper intake and place but they are wrong if they act as a distraction from the national purposes and plans for which the IAS probationers are recruited. Another point deserves special attention: drinking is more of a habit than necessity.
It all starts with the ‘chota peg’, to say nothing of the ‘burra (patiala) peg’ tagging along; once the desirability has set in, it is not easy to purge it. Indeed, in the case of a ‘devotee’, it can even go to the extent of abolishing sense of judgement (remember the reportedly conceited bragging by the ‘topper’ diplomat and his misbehavior with crew and co-passengers). There is another danger too—the Mussoorie decision might trigger a chain reaction from similar government academies training probationers or serving seniors in other Central services, say, the IPS at Hyderabad. While the IAS may now try to defend the fait accompli by invoking the cool climes of Garhwal hills, the police probationers, on the other hand, may ‘grumble’ about Hyderabad’s warm weather which makes them thirsty all the time and therefore need this facility to wet their parched throats. Nagpur academy where we train our income-tax sleuths may be next in line, with the threat of ‘virus’ spreading to scores of State-level academies as well. By yielding to such compulsive crazes, I am afraid, we may even eventually end up perverting the very spirit of the word ‘Academy’ and reducing training (of mind and body) to a mere sham. The young probationers and their bosses must first learn to rule ‘themselves’ before they can help their political bosses to rule the country. Inspiring writings of Swami Vivekananda and Gandhiji, two fascinating figures in the history of modern India, can be better instructors for them than flirtation with ‘the peg’ or ‘bottle as a ‘fellow philosopher’.
Perhaps decision-makers at Mussoorie got caught in cultural cross-currents of the influential winds of globalization. Liberalism in the economy to a certain extent maybe all right to fuel economic growth but it could prove to be false liberalism for public administration whose culture and philosophy are deeply rooted in “public good”. What public good can be achieved by introducing or encouraging public servants to drinking? Gandhiji’s talisman puts things in the right perspective:… when in doubt about the rightness of a decision, recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man and ask yourself if the contemplated decision shall be of use to him… The ‘poorest’ and the ‘weakest’ need genuine public servants who care about equity and justice and are above pursuit of personal gain and ugly greed.
Max Weber, a brilliant conceptualizer of the bureaucratic model, said: all revolutions must end up captive to bureaucracy. The role of public bureaucracy in India, however imperfect, is necessary and important as an active partner in good governance. (Think of bureaucrat Sonawane’s self-sacrifice - and before him Manjunath’s – serving as bulwarks against malpractices by private oil mafia).
Academies shall have to re-think their priorities in lecture-demonstration methods of study. The probationers are not supposed to be trained only for a ‘job’, to be fitted in as mere cogs in the machinery of government. They need a great deal - more to get fired up with the nobel spirit of public (aam admi) service. For example, to get closer to masses and get a taste of the agony and misery they go through all their lives, a bit of Spartan simplicity and a few austerities shall have to be thrown in at the academies. (Lives when cushioned by comforts of all kinds weaken both the body and mind). Of course, there is a minority of dedicated civil servants who have done outstanding work. They also write and talk well and their knowledge, experience and merited recognition in often taken into account by the media or rewarded by the country in various forms after retirement. But, the fact remains, that the officialdom in general, resist manual labour and see it as ‘what-for’ rather than as a step towards their own intellectual growth and a contribution to society. To bridge this gap, the probationers should be sent to live in an urban slum or a village hut where they shall eat the same food and share the grind of daily life of a factory worker or an agricultural labourer at, say, an MGNREGS worksite. These assignments should continue for some time even in between their postings later as inculcation of such values would require years of training in the ‘university of official life’. A pithy precept of learning says: “Tell me, I will forget. Show me, I may remember. Involve me. I will understand”. And, finally, a bit of inspiration from the directors of academies by way of leadership-by-example so that they can be the right role models in the ethos of public administration for those who have been baptized. If this list seems too long and too radical, it is.
The country is brimming with scams and frauds involving top bureaucrats. It needs administrators with their inner steely frames firmly in place. Those at the top echelon of academies and their trainees are all part of and funded by a poor India. Having joined public service, all of them, thus, shall have to learn to put ‘work’ first and ‘pleasures’ second, at least till growth is inclusive and corruption curbed.
The writer is an author, a management consultant and was on the Faculty of the Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi
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