Sunday, October 18, 2009

Power + Incompetence = Oversized Indian Bureaucracy

Nobody should object to the corporatisation of the railways, on the lines of MTNL and BSNL
A K Bhattacharya / New Delhi August 12, 2009, 0:58 IST

Now that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is getting serious about reducing the number of central ministries, it is time to take a close look at what actually contributes to the huge size of the bureaucracy that very often incurs the wrath of experts and critics for being both inefficient and ineffective.

The total number of central government employees, according to the finance ministry’s estimate, was 3.32 million last March, a little more than 3.22 million a year ago. Next year, it is set to go up to 3.36 million. Mind you, this number does not include non-civilian employees under the ministry of defence or those directly employed in the three wings of the armed forces. What this shows is that the government’s headcount continues to grow, albeit at a slower pace — by about 100,000 in the last one year and by about 43,000 this year.

There is, however, another way of looking at the size of the central government’s workforce. Three major components of the government’s total staff strength account for as much as 81-84 per cent of the total number of employees. These components are the Department of Posts (484,000), Police (839,000) and the Indian Railways (1.4 million).

If Manmohan Singh can keep these three departments out, the central government’s total workforce will come down to around 600,000-640,000. After this, the department with the largest number of employees will be the Revenue Department with about 100,000 employees used for collecting taxes. With the use of technology and outsourcing of tax collection and information dissemination moving at a steady pace, there is no reason why the government cannot keep its staff strength under check.

There is a way out of the problem of an oversized bureaucracy. The Manmohan Singh government has to look for it and take the necessary steps.
Read full article:
A K Bhattacharya: Reducing India's bureaucracy
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