Article - 97 Week 22 | MALICIOUS ADMINISTRATORS

Article - 97  Week 22 |  

MALICIOUS ADMINISTRATORS

We inherit a fat bureaucracy. This goes fatter & more despotic both overtime and on weak political leaderships. If we look at history, all powerful leaders like Chandragupt, Akbar, or even Genghis Khan had trimmed and focussed their administrative mechanisms to efficient delivery. They combatted fierce resistance to the points of almost open revolts. And they dealt with the challenges with tact and brute force. The rest is history.  Almost all of them were followed by weaker heirs. With weaker leaderships, the bureaucrats built their own empires of impenetrable power & intrigue centers. Then the empires crumbled!

We have a peculiar political system. The electorate elects their local representatives, but not their prime leader. This system gives us weak leaders with diluted powers to push changes and reforms. Our constitution allows for the executive to be autonomous in character and be guided by the legislations and policies. It is an Utopia. The bureaucracy drafts & pushes most of the legislations and policies. Political meddling is unashamedly accepted. Most politicians succumb to the crafty intrigues  by the wily bureaucrats and end up doing things, even against their own interest and the public. A perfect recipe for disaster. If you look at the government Rule Books in detail, no political leader would endorse such multi-edged and ambiguous rules. In some cases some rules are bent for private gain of some political leaders, but then they are few in numbers and a result of a decaying system.

It is a case of our bureaucracy becoming far too fat and despotic. We still can defy many such odds despite a poor judiciary, a medley of political buffoons, a wreaking infrastructure, and many more challenges. But it is clear now that, we shall succumb to this despotic bureaucracy, because it is not self correcting in nature, like our political system. It hides behind the political face and thrives. The politicians do not have the gumption to take on. It is in their short term interest to use the bureaucracy in whatever way they can and be grossly abused in the long term. The public needs a scapegoat to vent their anger. And the politicians with a life span of five years from election to election, absorb the brunt of the public ire - leaving the disease causing bureaucracy to grow fatter and more malicious.

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Brgds

Capt Rath