It must be opposed by all means
The recent DoPT advertisement inviting application for “lateral entry” in the government was described by Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant as “an opportunity to attract the best talent”.
If we pay attention to the enthusiastic reactions of the voices that were instrumental in directing public policy in favour of private business interests, we can understand the importance of having a malleable, pliable bureaucracy.
Like everything else that this government does, this “invention” too is mired in a series of falsehoods.
There is nothing in the design of the existing processes of entering the higher bureaucracy (either through direct recruitment or through promotion) that has prevented India’s bureaucrats from excelling at their jobs.
The idea that this kind of lateral entry will enable “more meritorious” people with higher degrees, better expertise and experience in the private sector to come into the bureaucracy than those that come through the UPSC’s competitive recruitment process is flawed. This discourse is not unknown to those who have heard the anti-reservation arguments in India.
The path of SC/ST and OBC officers coming in through UPSC is full of challenges that arise from caste-based social inequality in India.
The lateral entry is an “invention” of the BJP government that is clearly aimed at undermining the protective provisions of our Constitution designed to promote social justice. This must be seen together with other stratagems this government has used to undermine reservations in higher education and public sector jobs, stopping short of scrapping reservation through legislative revision and amendment in the Constitution.
Those who care for social justice for the historically oppressed in India must know that behind this BJP “invention” is its bid to reverse the progress made by the backward sections of society.
These inventions include such tricks as collusive lawsuits that undermine the protection given to SC/STs against atrocities, and constant revision of reservation regulations in higher education.
A bureaucracy “committed” to one political party’s ideology is the very antithesis of the idea of the bureaucratic governance machinery whose very nature is rational, impersonal and impartial.
The lateral entry is an invention that must be opposed by all means. What we are witnessing is an operationalisation of the janus face of the RSS’ deeply divisive ideology in governance. What cannot be legitimately admitted in a just system of governance will be given a lateral entry thought this system. We must not also lose sight of the fact that this “lateral entry” arrives in the public domain without travelling through the parliamentary corridors or any engaged discussion with civil society groups. Hence the wider feeling amongst subaltern groups is that it is merely a façade for ensuring the lateral entry of the sleeper cells of the organisations affiliated to the BJP and the RSS.