-Ramachandra Guha
I come from a family of public servants. Although i chose not to work for the government myself, in my professional life i have often had to deal with civil servants. These, like India itself, are a mixture of the bad, the horrible, and — lest we forget — the good.
In fact, given how steady has been the contamination of the bureaucracy by political interference, it is surprising how many competent IAS officers still remain. One of them is Keshav Desiraju, recently in the news for being unexpectedly transferred from the health ministry despite having done — by all accounts — an excellent job during his tenure there.
Desiraju is an old-fashioned civil servant, which means he never talks to the press. Yet his transfer occasioned a widespread public outcry. Hundreds of doctors and community health workers wrote to the health minister and the prime minister expressing their dismay that a person who had given new life to the health sector had been removed.
The anguish at Desiraju's transfer was expressed by many young doctors who are not household names. However, it was shared — and in public — by some admired senior members of the medical community, such as the heart surgeon Devi Shetty and the orthopaedic surgeon Rajase-karan Shanmughanathan. A res-pected former health secretary, Sujatha Rao, and a former cabinet secretary, T S R Subramanian, also spoke out strongly against the treatment of Desiraju.
Among those who wrote to the prime minister protesting against the transfer were N R Narayana Murthy and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw. Leading industrialists are normally wary of taking public stances, but here both Murthy and Shaw knew from their professio-nal dealings with Desiraju how altogether exceptional he was.
Why was Desiraju transferred? His own sense of rectitude and dignity means that he will not speak or speculate. But it was clear it had nothing to do with his professional competence. He had been widely praised for his role in helping eliminate polio from India, his attempts to clean up the extremely corrupt Medical Council of India (MCI), his extensive travels to adivasi regions where public health is most urgently required yet so rarely available.
My own acquaintance with Desiraju goes back nearly 30 years. I first knew him as a district officer in Uttarakhand, my home state. I later followed his career in the environmental ministry where he dealt with subjects on which i have done extensive research. Still later, i learnt from disability rights activists about how he was ins-trumental in drafting progressive legislation for those with special needs. Most recently, i have followed his stewardship of the crucial health ministry.
Anyone who has professionally worked with Desiraju knows that in terms of both intelligence and integrity he is among the very best of our civil servants. The speculation thus arose that his transfer may have had behind it malevolent motives: For some years now, the discredited former president of MCI had been trying to make a comeback. It was known that some leading politi-cians wished to smoothen his path. In an election year, there were also other deals to be made in the health sector, to clinch which a more pliant (and less knowledgeable) secretary would certainly come in handy.
Faced with sustained criticism by health professionals, the minister responded by leaking a letter maligning the reputation of his former secretary. A typographic error was highlighted to suggest malfeasance. Claims were made about his alleged lack of attentiveness during meetings. The method was familiar — it had previously been used against other officials whose honesty provided an embarrassment to the ruling regime — such as Ashok Khemka and Vinod Rai. Rather than reform or cleanse the system, the UPA prefers to throw fresh dirt without.
Ten years ago, when Manmohan Singh became prime minister, there were great hopes that he would focus attention on the urgent task of renewing our public institutions. He had spent much of his career in public service. His many years as a bureaucrat in the finance ministry, his time at the Planning Commission and the Reserve Bank, his previous ministerial experience — all equipped him to appreciate the need to reward professionalism and expertise and to disengage civil service appointments from political interference.
Sadly, and perhaps even tragically, Singh has silently watched as the institutions of state further deteriorate and atrophy. There are many patrio-tic Indians who would, in mid career, exchange a lucrative job in the private sector for public service. The prime minister could have done more to make possible the lateral entry of such professionals. And he should have worked to restore the autonomy of the cabinet secretariat and of the civil services as a whole by basing promotions and transfers on ability rather than proximity to particular politicians.
The treatment of Keshav Desi-raju is unfortunate. What is more depressing still is that it is not exceptional. A government headed by a former public servant has, in an overwhelming majority of cases, systematically disregarded honesty and competence while favouring pliability and personal connections. The price of this systematic and wilful corrosion of public institutions has and will be paid not merely by upright individuals but by the people of India as a whole.
The writer is a historian, author and essayist.
-TOI
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