Lateral-entry Lite: Indian Policy Management Service may be the answer

We need to revive Nehru's idea of the Industrial Management Pool back in 1953 to manage PSUs which the IAS sabotaged

Like him or not, Narendra Modi has to be admired for one thing: he wants to change things, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. But change is something he keenly pursues.
 
So, having realised that the Government of India has been, and is, run by amateurs – as if cabin crew are flying the plane – he has taken a baby step towards fixing the problem. He wants to introduce ‘lateral entry’ of experts into the government.
 
Critics are up in arms. Admirers are singing bhajans. As always happens with Mr Modi, the reactions are extreme or, if you will, polarised.

 

But the idea is not new. It’s been there since Independence. To give just one example, the entire lot of top economists, from Samar Sen in 1948 onwards (including his two sons Abhijit and Pranab) have been ‘lateral’ entrants.
 
Indeed, Mr Modi may not like to be reminded that it was his bête noire, Jawaharlal Nehru, who first tried to fix the expertise problem in the government 65 years ago in 1953. He set up a service called the Industrial Management Pool to man the public sector which he had in mind.
 
The service which functioned well for about two decades was eventually sabotaged by IAS officers who wanted all the key posts in the public sector reserved for themselves. The perks were simply too irresistible. Even someone as powerful as V Krishnamurthy, former chairman of BHEL and SAIL, and later industry secretary, was not able to break the IAS’s stranglehold fully.

 
It is worth noting that one reason why BHEL and SAIL have done so well is that they kept the IAS out. Conversely, if you look at the ones that are doing badly, including most notably Air India, they have been headed for a large part by IAS officers.
 
But this generalist approach is completely useless in the 21st century. The ‘learn on the job’ approach is no longer any good. There is far too much to learn.
 
Indian Policy Management Service
 
Over the past few years, I have discussed this issue with many people. The consensus is that we need a new service, for which I have a proposal: the Indian Policy Management Service, described below.

 
Its main features will be as follows:
 
1. Officers of the Policy Management Service will be recruited from the IAS. When they have completed five years in service, they will sit for an examination that indicates their aptitudes. No weights will be attached to individual preferences.
 
2. Successful officers will be posted either to state capitals in a department or the central government in a ministry. They will remain there for the next 25 years undergoing periodic re-training in that domain. After 25 years they will once again be placed in a general pool so that they can compete for higher posts like Cabinet Secretary on an equal footing.

 
3. The rest of the officers – that is, those who choose not to take the exam or those who fail – will carry on as before in executive functions. In both cases, domain knowledge will automatically develop and be put to good use.
 
4. Assuming this is eventually done, what is to be done immediately and for the next 15 years while the new service gets going properly? The answer is simple: (a) get officers from states at the deputy secretary level; (b) stop the rotation principle currently in force; and (c) enforce specialisation at the state level. The last is critical.

 
5. Once an officer joins, say, the ministry of textiles as deputy secretary in the 10th year of service, he will stay in that ministry till he turns 55. If that doesn’t make him a domain expert, nothing will. He should be retired. Ditto in states.
It is, if you like, lateral-entry lite. A longer version of this article appeared in Swarajya on December 7, 2017