The frontline staff of the State have failed us badly
It’s not just insensitivity that led to the stamping of caste names on the chests of recruits, but also lack of training
There is no dearth of shocking stories in India. Last week, two more were added to the ever-expanding list, both from Madhya Pradesh, even though the likelihood of incidents of a similar nature happening in other states cannot be discounted. The first story was from Dhar, where newly-recruited male police constables from the reserved category had their caste affiliations stamped on their chests during a pre-service physical health check-up. Two days later in Bhind, in violation of service rules, medical tests for both female and male candidates for the post of police constables were conducted in the same room in a district hospital. There were no female doctors present for the women and their medical examination was conducted by male doctors.
Is the local bureaucracy (civil and police) — the frontline staff of the Indian State — in general, insensitive to the people they serve, and to the issues of caste and gender in particular? I would not like to generalise because I have come across many officers at the lower rung of the administration who go out of their way every day to help citizens, no matter their social or caste status. But then there are many, like those in MP, who spectacularly fail to do so.
I think the kind of behaviour we saw in MP has to do more with a lack of regular in-service training on how to stick to accepted social and administrative protocols, even when they face tremendous work pressure and infrastructure challenges, than just plain insensitivity.
Like in any job, the bureaucracy, too, attracts people from different social, economic and religious backgrounds. Their social conditioning may influence their thought processes, which can then have an impact on their behaviour while they go about doing their jobs. These rough edges can only be softened with robust training and close monitoring by superiors. None of this seems to have happened in MP.
While senior officers of the civil service get the opportunity to undergo various mid-career training, the officers at the lower end are not so lucky, say senior officers. This neglect of training for the lower bureaucracy has not only the potential to have an adverse effect on their daily interaction with citizens (as it happened in Madhya Pradesh), but it can also jeopardise development programmes in the State.
Why then is the local bureaucracy so badlytrained? Drawing on a nationwide survey of the capacity and time usage of local rural development officials in India, a 2017 paper by Devesh Kapur and Aditya Dasgupta (The Political Economy of Bureaucratic Effectiveness: Evidence from Local Rural Development Officials in India) (https://bit.ly/2fupnol) has an answer: Politicians tend to underinvest in local state capacity (staffing and training) because unlike firms, write Kapur and Dasgupta, they are not usually driven by efficiency motives.
“Politicians and ruling parties are inattentive to investing in local state capacity because the electoral returns to these investments are diffuse and uncertain. By contrast, they possess strong incentives to announce and inaugurate new and ambitious rural development programmes, as well as paperwork and monitoring requirements which facilitate the claiming of credit for service delivery,” they added.
The results of this short-sighted game plan is there for everyone to see.
WHILE SENIOR OFFICERS OF THE CIVIL SERVICE GET THE OPPORTUNITY TO UNDERGO VARIOUS FORMS OF MIDCAREER TRAINING WHILE IN SERVICE, THE OFFICERS AT THE LOWER END ARE NOT SO LUCKY