Fixing India's Steel Frame: The Urgent Need For Bureaucratic Reform

Despite its active democratic participation and aspirations for a high growth economy, India can't escape from one serious problem at the heart of its administrative set-up; in short, the Government of India has an administrative bureaucracy that needs radical change. The bureaucratic "steel frame" of India has been relied on for continuity and stability since independence, helping to maintain law and order, and contributing in some part to holding the country together.

Illustration by The Geostrata

However, increasingly, it is now viewed as a hindrance to progress. Many of India's bureaucratic agencies still use colonial-era processes, which are ill-equipped to operate in a modern, global, citizen-oriented economy.

Chronic inefficiency, excessive red tape, corruption, and intransigence all demonstrate the continued need for major bureaucratic reform. This report identifies the major challenges which are facing the Indian bureaucracy and outlines strategic imperatives for reform based on historical lessons and international experiences.

HISTORICAL CHANGE AND LASTING IMPACT

India's civil services derive from the British system and adapted by Warren Hastings and Lord Cornwallis, which was established with handicaps that favoured Europeans.

Lord Macaulay introduced the first competitive examinations, to be done on merit, in 1853 and this was extended to India in 1922.

Post-independence, Sardar Patel supported a single, merit based, politically neutral service in India to foster nation-building which became the IAS and IPS. Historical stability has bred inflexibility and conformism. Former capacities, which were once seen as strengths, now come at the expense of movement forward since the bureaucracy now tries to resist vital changes at the strategic level and operational level which prove to be neither fast nor adjustable.

THE COMMON DIFFICULTIES - ISSUES AND THEIR INTERRELATIONS

India's bureaucracy is faced with a set of interrelated issues that undermine its efficiency and trustworthiness, all of which tend to accumulate into large-scale ineffectiveness. 

Bureaucratic Red Tape & Procedural Delays

Rigid bureaucratic regulations and needless red tape hamper decision-making and implementation of projects. The inflexible regulations date back to the colonial era, when laws were designed that emphasised control over the delivery of services.

The inflexible regulations present real challenges for entrepreneurs, investors, and businesses in turn, adversely affecting India's global rankings on ease of doing business and hindering economic growth.

Red tape delays important projects and raises the costs of socio-economic development. It remains a significant barrier not only in India but in various forms across the globe. We estimate the annual costs of a presumably unproductive activity of this kind to be roughly 0.8% of GDP, contributing to persistent waste in the Indian economy.

Corruption & Lack of Accountability

Using the 2024 Transparency International score of 39/100 (positioned 96th globally) as a baseline and the fact that 53% of respondents indicated that they had paid a bribe recently, clearly indicates the prevalence of corruption in India. There are many highly reported corrupt sectors such as application of social welfare benefits, trucking, land use, etc., as well as an incident where a bribe of 10 lakhs was tolerated for an IAS officer. A lack of accountability leads to a prevalent culture of corruption.

Corruption entrenched itself into a bureaucratic process that nurtured a system without teeth; promotions based on tenure, a rarity of KPI reviews, and overly weak oversight processes give rise to laziness, indifference and rot.

In turn, excessively complicated procedures create a fertile place for corruption to flourish without accountability. Thus, to give a proper chance of success in combating red tape and excess bureaucracy, a holistic administrative approach to processes, accountability and corruption will help break this cycle.

Political Interference and Change Resistance

India's bureaucracy is a "power centre" steeped in a political economy that promotes the status quo and resists reform. Political interference in administration (through arbitrary "free" transfers of IAS officers for patronage) leads to instability, confusion, and a loss of institutional memory.

Thus, inducing a "musical chair" or "keep your head down" phenomenon to bureaucratic work - particularly that from the IAS, where bureaucrats focus on survival over improving practices and effectiveness.

Although all bureaucracies (like all organisations) want to bring in expertise to avoid stagnation via lateral entry, traditional bureaucrats suggest using seniority to have multipliers against innovation and reform.

Trade unions will also resist bureaucratic reform especially in changes to systemic anti-union activity or for possible privatising changes. This shows bureaucratic reform in India is a political undertaking that will demand overwhelming political will to displace existing incentives and entrench interests.

Outdated Capacity Gaps and Training

Civil service training programs incurring obsolescence generally do not reflect current governance issues such as digital transformation, climate change, and complex policy-making. Traditionally, training opportunities are afforded only to a small band of senior officials.

This leaves the vast majority of the workforce, especially those last mile implementers, under-trained, poorly trained, and siloed from participation in meaningful training. There are numerous gaps and deficits in knowledge and skills which hinder the implementation of new leadership practices.

BLUEPRINT FOR MODERNISING INDIA'S BUREAUCRACY

In order to adequately deal with these systemic challenges and allow India to maximise its potential, we need a multi-dimensional and thorough approach to bureaucratic reform:

Structure & Organizational Re-engineering

1. Rationalise and Consolidate Ministries: The current situation of having 51 Union Ministries (up from 17 in the immediate post-independence period) creates unnecessary overlaps, coordination challenges, and time wasted because some Departments take too long to respond. By focusing on core governance roles and eliminating duplicated roles, we can create efficiencies.

   
   

2. Decentralisation with Empowerment: More than just devolution of powers, provide true fiscal and decision-making autonomy to local governing institutions, such as Panchayati Raj Institutions and municipal bodies. This achieves governance of the people, by the people and for the people, while facilitating a model of policy making that is tailored to local contexts and less centralised.

   
   

3. Fixed Tenures and Independent Grievance Redressal: Implement minimum fixed tenures for civil servants, and administer them without exception, as per the Supreme Court recommendations. This will ensure stability in administration, build institutional memory, and ensure that administrative transfers cannot be used to punish or reward on a purely electoral agenda basis. This should be mimicked with independent grievance redressal for forces of officers facing transfer for no justifiable one.

Personal Management & Capacity Building

1. Merit-Based Recruitment and Promotion: To strengthen meritocracy, we must develop and implement performance-linked promotion systems based on objective Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), rather than relying entirely on tenure. The UPSC recruitment should include better verification, ethics and integrity assessments, as well as psychometric and behavioural testing to establish that candidates have the initiative, leadership skills, ethical inclinations, as well as intelligence.

   
   

2. Holistic Capacity Building (Mission Karmayogi Plus): Wider roll out of Mission Karmayogi is required so that ongoing, role-based, competency-based learning is available for all civil servant levels, particularly the last mile civil servants. While digital solutions like iGOT are essential, training must also include real work experience, field study, inter-departmental coordination, and modules on ethics, emotional intelligence, and citizen centric governance. Provide training that is not over reliant on technocratic methods.

   
   

3. Strategic Lateral Entry: Maintain and expand lateral entry to bring domain specific expertise into the civil service from the private sector and academia. In addressing concerns about the statutory framework for the civil service, reservations policies, and integration issues. Consider a dual system (mid-career lateral entry) to enable lateral entry into civil service and provide lateral entrants with their own dedicated unit called the ‘Administrative Training Institute’ to facilitate their integration into bureaucratic culture.

   
   

Ethical Governance & Accountability Mechanism

1. Build a Stronger Anti-Corruption Framework: In addition to existing legislation, look towards installing probity reforms such as including e-office, e-files, mandatory asset declarations for senior bureaucrats.  An important part of this reform will be giving strength and independence to ombudsperson institutions such as Lokpal and Lokayuktas institutions which provide a route for addressing corrupt behaviour and inefficiency.

   
   

2. Nurture Transparency and Citizen Engagement: The Right to Information (RTI) Act and e-governance is the best use to ensure trust and engage government transparency and any government decisions. This can be done by ensuring that information is made available, understandable, and accessible for all citizens.

   This can also include real time tracking of government projects, strengthening whistleblower protection laws.  Also any Citizen's Charters need to be made enforceable, include penal provisions for non-compliance, live up to their commitments, cancel it with citizen involvement, their grievance redressal systems must be meaningful.

   
   

3. Create an Ethical Culture: Promote ethical leaders to instil integrity, fairness, and public good in identity, as civil servants. This cultural transition requires a movement away from being rule-bound and status-oriented, towards encouraging result boards, innovative solutions, and ethical decisions, towards stopping the 'permission to be cruel' who some bureaucrats seek through their discretionary avenues.

   
   

Technological Integration & Smart Governance

1. Digital Transformation Beyond Efficiency: Continue the acceleration of digital transformation by leveraging artificial intelligence, big data, and blockchain technologies in policy analysis, maintaining transparent records, and delivering services efficiently. As you do this, carefully critique the social implications of these technologies in order to not exclude anyone, safeguard individual data rights, and prevent expanding coercive control.

   
   

2. Intelligent Governance for Civic-Centricity: To be successful, smart city initiatives must extend beyond technology deployment to focus on having a meaningful improvement in services, create jobs, advance economic inclusion, and enhance sustainability, utilising private resources and multiple levels of government coordination. This necessitates ongoing political will, and a change of direction in political and bureaucratic thinking that leans towards systemic change. This is essential for reimagining India's bureaucracy from a rigid "steel frame" to a dynamic, flexible, and ethical "engine" of national development and inclusive growth in the twenty-first century and overcoming the forces of entrenchment in society.

THE FINAL WORD: REFORM OR REMAIN STAGNANT

The overarching threats facing India from a failure of bureaucratic reforms are formidable, and severely hinder economic growth, service delivery for the public, and trust from the public.

There are systemic, deep-rooted, issues - a colonial past of rigidity; overlap of bureaucracy, corruption, and lack of accountability; large sources of both political and internal resistance; and so on.

There is some promise in current calls for reforms and recommendations from the past. Ultimately, it will require a refraction of the past to realize the full potential of the country.

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BY MUSKAN

TEAM GEOSTRATA

info@thegeostrata.com