Towards a Better Public Management

* Mayengbam Bhavananda

The structure of government

Indian Constitution has been characterized as "quasi-federal". Even though the structure of our government is multilayered with the centre, the states and the panchayats and municipalities with elected members in each layer, in various respects, the unitary elements have clearly over-shadowed the federal characteristics with the union government assuming more dominating role than what even the constitution-makers had perceived.

All though, the powers of the Union and the states are enumerated in separate lists in a schedule of our constitution, the "ownership" of powers cannot be said to be clear-cut and very well defined. There is also a concurrent list covering fairly wide areas wherein the Union Government is vested with powers to dismiss an elected state government and impose central control, on the grounds of break-down of normal constitutional arrangement.

The adoption of planning in the country in 1951 and the subsequent establishment of the "Planning Commission" through an administrative order of the Government of India gave further powers of control over the states by the centre through its strategy of development and planning. The institution of All-India Services (Indian Administrative service, Indian Police Service etc.) provides another very strong bureaucratic mechanism for exercising control over the states.

The trend of bureaucracy in India

The structure of our system naturally shows how important are these bureaucrats in the regional development of our country and how important their commitments are to the socio-economic growth of our country as all the major administrative responsibilities lie on their sincerity and their service tenures are much longer than the politicians who are elected only for a period of five years.

It is pertinent to mention that India produces some of the best business managers in the world and this may not hold true in case of public administration. The story of Indian administrative service dates back to colonial rule by British, where Indian Civil Services were recruited to control the vast colonial empire for administrative convenience.

The all India Services were formed when India had a more unitary and centralized system of governance during the British rule. This system was most suited to the requirements of that era as these members required the experience of both the central and the provincial levels of government. These services were recruited by the Secretary of State for India, which imparted to them the prestigious nomenclature of "Secretary of State Services" .

This history contains a period of good public administration under the Indian Civil Services (ICS). These civil servants performed their chosen functions well and there was tremendous functional legitimacy and a high dose of liberal political economy. This prompted them to keep the economy free and the state minimal.

Bureaucracy in India after 1947

Unfortunately, if you see the present context, majority of these bureaucrats lacks functional legitimacy and liberal political economy and even failed to understand the role of stakeholders whose welfare they have to administer. We have also seen very strong bureaucracy in India including their lobbies to protect their interest and many often infringing the freedom of people with unnecessary rules and regulations and red tape.

With the independence of the country in 1947, the Government of India ceased to be under the control of any higher level authority and the "Secretary of State Services" naturally came into its hands.

Indeed, one of the factors behind the powerful position of the Indian constitution is its unabridged acquisition of all the powers and functions which the Secretary of State for India was performing and this inherited system of functioning made All- India Services vital and powerful. The members of All-India Services in post-Independence are under the constitutional appointment and controlled by the President of India.

The uniqueness of the All-India Services in independent India lies in their functioning in the fields directly under the jurisdiction of the states and interchangeability of its members between the centre and states and finally in the concept of joint management with day to day control being with government under which a member happens to serve with the ultimate control vesting to the centre. The members of these services are allotted to different state cadres soon after the recruitment and they serve in their state unless they come to the central government under deputation.

Considering the inherited system of unabridged powers and functions, All-India Services have very important and vital role to play in administration and make a difference in their respective states as they act as a backbone to public administration to the state they served.

Need for reforms

There is need for reform in our public administrative system as in principle the basic bureaucratic arrangements should fall in line with the multi-leveled character of the polity. The central, state and local government bureaucracies must therefore be placed squarely under the control of the elected members at each level.

At the same time, we also need liberal administrators in all the levels who believes that the utmost political value is freedom and to serve the people in the most sincere way. A liberal administrator should give more importance to

• Role of stakeholders,
• Greater discipline in public sector use of resources.
• Focus on results (efficiency, effectiveness, quality)
• Emphasis on output control rather than merely executing policies.

In order to reform, we need administrators who respect the mass and do not indulge in infringing the people with unnecessary rules and regulations and red tape. His laissez faire attitude to the people whose welfare he is to administer comes from the fact that the people do not need him; in fact they are better with out him. A liberal administrator is aware of the situation and he tries to be useful to the mass by going after the wrong people and leaving the good people to stay alone.

The liberal administrators understand roles of different stakeholders in the society and respect the civil society which makes the 'natural liberty' so harmonious to the market. He keeps his hands away from the market and refrains from competing with the business class by not setting up factories or shopping malls with government money. He spends tax money on those things people cannot build on their own, like roads, parks, hospitals, housing for poor, libraries and so on.

He ensures there is clean and accessible physical market in the towns and cities which are under his jurisdiction. Unfortunately the present administrators focused more on misused of power; he wants people to line up and queue before him. He tries to make himself important by checking documents and papers and by enforcing complex rules and regulations.

At the opposite end, the countries which had liberal administrators have prospered by many folds. Many countries in the developed world are adopting organizational model that is set up in a corporate style and administrators are working with different stakeholders in order to cope up the rapid change in society. New administrative and new public management methods are introduced for better transparency, accountability, fairness and responsibility.

Trends and Developments

1920-1970: Traditional method of public administration. More in the line of Max Weber, where bureaucracy has four characteristic features-

• Hierarchy: that is in a ladder form; command and control structure.
• Impartiality: The bureaucrats take unbiased decision based on rules.
• Career: It was life in its own.
• Expertise: Administration based on knowledge.

This model of public administration is rule based and process oriented and has the following feature-

• The higher level administrators to take decision and lower level to follow the decision.
• Government acts as direct provider of goods and services.
• Politics / administration dichotomy (administration under the formal control of political leadership, bureaucrats not contributing but merely executing policies.
• Clear cut procedures to carry out task.
• Task involved in public services are purely administrative and following instructions, no personal intervention.
• Specialized form of knowledge and expertise.
• Motivated exclusively by public interest.

The major criticism of this model of public management are-

• The organizations are too large and expensive.
• To rigid and bureaucratic.
• Focused only on process and procedure; instead of outcome and results.
• Government should not only indulge in providing goods and services; there are other ways of delivering goods and services.
• Ineffective and in efficient.
• Lack of innovation.

1980-1990: New Public Management era in which more importance is given to privatization, competition, outsourcing of services.
The main characteristic of the new public management are-

• Stress on private sector style of management practice
• Greater discipline in public sector use of resources.
• Focus on results (efficiency, effectiveness, quality)
• Emphasis on output control
• Performance measurement
• No clear-cut separation between politics and public management.
• Flexible organization (internal and external)
• Lean and flat organization
• Disaggregated unit in the public sector.
• Market mechanism and privatization.

1995- Onwards: Good governance

In the mid 90's a new trend in public management emerged and this management focused more on the following issues-

• Public interest is defined by individual and public references, resulting from public deliberation.
• The objectives are more focused on service output, outcomes, satisfaction, maintaining trust and legitimacy.
• There is a heavy dose of accountability: citizens as overseers of elected members, customer as users of public services and tax players as funders.
• The main preferred service providers are: public sector agencies, private companies and civil society organizations.
• The main key stakeholders are citizens and customers affect by the administration.

The above historical trend shows that how new public management techniques have been developed to adapt with the ever changing demand of the society and to deliver the services to public in the most efficient way. This can also indicate our relative present situation by comparing with the above trend.

Conclusion

Improvement of public administration in our country is fore most for rapid regional socio-economic development. It is of vital importance for a country like India, where there is much diversity in almost all fields. The unequal regional socio-economic growth in our country is an out come ineffective and insincere public administration in last 50 years. If we have to come out from this situation, effective public management is required where the government is not just the provider of goods and services.

The government needs to understand the role of different stake holders and their perspective in the decision making process and eventually in formation of policies; after all, the stakeholders are the people or organizations who are either affected by a project or a policy of the government. Recognition of various stakeholder groups has a role to play in ensuring the long term success of any government and it is the administrative responsibility of the bureaucrats to recognize the role of stakeholders.

A sincere effort and spirit of liberalism is much needed from these bureaucrats if we have to bring a change. One can not underestimate the important roles these officers can play in delivering good administration, implementation and evaluation of policies as they are the heads of administration to the state they served.

This paper is not an attempt to interpret public management solely as series of bureaucratic reforms and adjustments. Yet, the structure of our government and the present un-equal regional growth demands for a reform in bureaucracy. If we have to keep pace with the emerging economies of other developing counties, we need well-trained liberal administrators, who can act as the major facilitators to change in regional public administration thereby making a difference in socio-economic development of the region.

Lastly, no exercise to redesign the bureaucracy can be undertaken in isolation of the large system in which it is a part in its functioning. The structure of our government which is multilayered with elected members in each layer demands more conformity with the system. The functions and powers are now heavily centralized and there is need for devolution from centre to the states and from states to the third stratum.

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* Mayengbam Bhavananda wrote this article for Hueiyen Lanpao (English Edition)
The author is an Architect specialized in Urban Environmental & Infrastructure Management from IHS, Erasmus University, Rotterdam
This article was webcasted on April 11, 2011.

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