The corroded frame: Bureaucrats must be more accountable

Officers belonging to the All India Services like the IAS and the IPS have always been powerful, privileged and pampered. But increasingly many among them seem to be becoming a law unto themselves. What is even more disturbing is that reports of officers grabbing prime land, getting arrested while accepting bribes or defying rules while withdrawing public money have ceased to shock the common man, who is resigned to their inevitability.

There has indeed been an alarming increase in the number of officers found misusing their authority and allowing greed to dictate their action. While the decline of the All India Services has been a matter of concern for some time, recent reports have once again drawn attention to the urgency of making the officers more accountable.

A seemingly helpless Additional Director General of Police is reported to have informed the Punjab and Haryana High Court that 42 IAS officers and 10 IPS officers have been refusing to submit details of their property. An IAS officer was arrested in Himachal Pradesh last week while accepting a bribe.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has pulled up the Director General of Police in Jharkhand for withdrawing a whopping Rs. 6 crore on a single day from the ‘secret fund’ without following financial rules. It is a paradox that some of the best and the brightest of the land, carefully chosen to serve the nation, should end up as virtual parasites. It is time the black sheep in the elite services are dealt with severely.

They have subverted the system and slowed down the government’s ability to deliver but successive governments have been far too lenient, reinstating most of them after a period of suspension. Service conditions need to be changed, if necessary, and rules made more stringent so that public money can be recovered and officers compulsorily retired or dismissed from service.
The corroded frame: Bureaucrats must be more accountable