DIS-APPOINTMENT
What is it that makes the Modi government so singularly inept and insensitive in the matter of high-level appointments that it seems to stagger from one controversy to another? The reported appointment of a retired administrator with no track record in the world of scholarship and historical research as the director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library is the latest in the series of ham-handed appointments the government has bullied through, provoking one of the few leading public intellectuals who have been largely sympathetic to it— Pratap Bhanu Mehta—to tender his resignation from the executive committee of the institution.
What is shocking is not just the crass way in which such appointments have been pushed through, but the utter disregard those in power have for liberal middleclass opinion. The furious reactions to the appointments in the CBFC, FTII, ICHR, IGNCA, JNU, to list just a few, seem to have taught them no lessons in managing public opinion. What one thought was simply the immaturity of some of its ministers now appears to be part of an illconceived, yet sinister, ideological agenda.
Were it that just appointments to academic and cultural institutions are part of this agenda. But the rot seems to be deeper. The inexplicable delay in the appointment of high court judges, causing an unprecedented backlog in appointments, delays in the appointment of key army posts (GOC-in C, Western Command, and GOC, Delhi Area, were vacant for two months), making ad hoc arrangements at senior levels in several government departments, all point to an attempt across government both to screen out those who could become ‘inconvenient’ and to wait as long as necessary to identify and appoint those who show sufficient intellectual flexibility to toe the given line.
While cronyism in appointments is nothing new, there are two disturbing features in the approach of this government. One, the brute manner in which predetermined choices are foisted even if it involves changing laws and rules, established procedures and conventions. And two, the desperate need to find those with an ideological affinity to the ruling party, irrespective of whether they have the requisite qualifications or expertise.
This sinister dimension to senior government appointments is, of course, built on a huge body of bad practice perfected by previous governments. Beginning with Mrs Indira Gandhi (to whom almost every institutional corruption can be traced), who started the tradition of making senior appointments on the basis of personal loyalty, each government and every prime minister since has perfected their own unique version of the US presidential system of ‘spoils’.
This has been done in several ways. To the UPA government goes the credit of having created a vast network of patronage in government outside the civil services framework and outside the purview of the Union Public Service Commission in the form of commissions, independent regulators, ombudsmen, statutory authorities etc. This patronage network serves three purposes—keeping civil servants on the verge of retirement pliant and malleable while still serving, ensuring the person remains obliged through his/her tenure once re-employed (an occasional turncoat like Vinod Rai notwithstanding), and sending the bureaucracy a signal that loyalty and subservience are virtues to be cherished. Mediocrity in senior-level appointments has become universalised.
While the UPA created this unprecedented opportunity for extended patronage, the NDA government has not only readily and willingly embraced this tradition, they have improved on it both by adding to the number of posts and by raising the bar for allegiance and ‘bhakti’.
The second way our version of a ‘spoils’ system has been institutionalised is by making selection for key appointments a completely opaque process, tightly controlled and managed by the PMO. This ensures all key appointees maintain their allegiance to the PM personally, and will do his bidding even if it means compromising on the principles of a Cabinet system of government.
To the UPA legacy of ensuring that key appointments were limited to those loyal to the ruling family and willing to bend and crawl at the bidding of their masters, the NDA has added the dimension of demonstrable affinity to the Sangh Parivar ideology. This augurs ill.
Is there a silver lining? It seems that at least as far as the economy is concerned, the PM is more sensitive to the need for having economic managers at the top on the basis of proven credentials and a track record rather than affinity with the Sangh Parivar. The appointments of Arvind Subramanian as the Chief Economic Advisor, of Arvind Panagariya and Bibek Debroy in the Niti Aayog and now of Dr Urjit Patel in the RBI are all meritbased. There is hope yet.
It was the UPA that created unprecedented opportunity for extended patronage, but the NDA government has embraced the tradition willingly