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

Indian Military: Wasteful Effort

Defence Estate Department has a very large inventory of land having no use for the military. Military possesses huge land and related infrastructure unwanted or most sparingly used - that cost a great deal in terms of manpower and expenditure to maintain. Airfields uneconomical are owned and maintained by the Air Force. The military possesses large useless inventory that has been criticised by CAG. Weapon systems beyond useful life are maintained at extraordinary effort and cost since they are not replaced in time. We operate at least four different aircraft and use five different engines that had become obsolete and do not fly anywhere else in the world! Upgradation of the Air Force fleet comes at the near end of the life of a weapon system when there is no replacement in sight - to give it a fresh life. This is a bad strategy. The West talks about mid-life upgrades and never an upgrade at the end of life! Our MIG-21 upgrade, the BISON project has still not been completed. It is now a race to complete the upgrade before the technical life gets over! There is plenty of scope to improve interoperability between the three services. Many systems used by the three services have many commonalities. Currently, the logistics systems followed by the services are not linked. A spare which one service needs may be in surplus with another but there is no way to know it. Facilities are duplicated or even triplicated without being aware. Besides improving efficiency, costs and manning could be significantly reduced through integration among the Services.

Air Chief Marshal (Retd) S Krishnaswamy, PVSM, AVSM, VM & Bar,
Fellow Ae Sl is Member, National Security Advisory Board.
(Vol 22.2 September 16th, 2007.)
Extracted: IDR: Shaping of the Indian Military

Comment: Well articulated about the Defence Estate Department. This is one arm next only to MES in the scale and scope of corruption in the Armed Forces. Literally a Mafia (no guns of course) organisation dealing with politicians, local thugs, money laundering and palming off defence lands stealthily in connivance with MOD bureaucrats. Huge unwanted lands of the Military need to be assessed on ground and properly accounted for and utilised for Nation Building and not given away to real estate sharks for a song.