Friday, July 17, 2015

Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

I am a senior journalist and have worked in several states besides covering assignments for my  media  in many states and at the Center. I am constrained to say that I say with my own eyes how the bureaucrats are treated shabbily by their political masters and I will not advise any one remotely related to me to aspire to become an IAS or IPS officer.
Bureaucrats in some states are forced to touch the feet of their political bosses to keep them happy since they write their annual CRs  I am told that IAS and IPS officers have their forums at state and national levels.I like many of you  wonder why they keep mum when some officers of their cadre are inhumanly treated .
You may be more knowledgeable about me .And hence, I  ask you if you will advise your academically brilliant daughters and sons to become bureaucrats to be treated like slaves ? Please do not accuse me of creating rift between political class and bureaucrats. They do have an important role to play in serving the people.What I EMPHASIZE IS THAT THERE SHOULD BE A CODE OF CONDUCT ON THE DAY TO DAY FUNCTIONING AND RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO IMPORTANT STAKEHOLDERS FOR THE TRANSPARENT AND SMOOTH FUNCTIONING OF OUR DEMOCRATIC WAY OF LIFE.

On 17 July 2015 at 11:24, Vidyut <wide.aware@gmail.com> wrote:
There are problems with the IAS, there are problems with politicians. Alas, controlling each other is rarely about public interest. Perhaps I am cynical, but I don't think there are any magic fixes. Boring as it seems without a quick pill, I think it is going to take alert citizens relentlessly demanding accountability, scrutinizing and curbing every wrong that comes to light.

I think people consider the government or bureaucracy more like a service that ought to be perfect or you will call up customer service. Alas, in a democracy, the final boss is the citizen and it may be like herding cats, but in the end of the day, they will have to keep an eye on their employees and reward, punish or remove as necessary.

The most important thing is to mobilize people. Not go one morcha or andolan or against one bad guy, but in the spirit of vigilant and involved management of their own country.

Perfection is a convenient mirage that allows people to shruf off their own role on the stage. The only hope is continuous improvement.

Vidyut

Vidyut

Social Media: Twitter Facebook Google+ Diaspora


On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 10:19 AM, Jagjit Ahuja <jagjit.ahuja@gmail.com> wrote:
You may like to go through the appended write up written by an IAS officer  . Though it is long but worth reading  . 
I have read every word  but found that he has not analyzed  as to who has been responsible for  bringing such a state of affair of our country. 

It is my feeling that the so called Steel Frame of the country, the bureaucratic set up is responsible . This gets confirmed when  we analyze  working of our governing system after independence. It has  been the bureaucrats who kept on grabbing all the powers by be-fooling both the politicians and the public by twisting the rules to meet the requirements of the people whom they wanted to help.

Such a situation would have never creeped in our governing system had  they  been fair to all with  the authority and the powers they were enjoying .All these years the Joint Secretary of a Ministry  is considered as the Government. 


Please advise if I am wrong in my analyses.

Brig J S Ahuja

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 11:17 AM, Harbhajan Singh <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net> wrote:
My Dear Gaur,

How are you?

I wonder if this topic is discussed in the NDC!!!!!*:) happy

We require Administrative and political reforms. But dear Gaur all the Governments are being managed by the IAS!!! Does any one think IAS would let any such reforms take place and above all be implemented!! Just look at OROP case!!!

We need a military/Presidential take over for two years in which the agenda should be administrative and political reforms and then hand over the reigns back to the new dispensation. I agree it is an Utopian idea but if we need to achieve some thing such ideas have to come up.

My considered view is that India is going to go down the drain and China-Pak combine will subjugate us in a decade or two may be. Things on the ground for common people including our types are very bad indeed and deteriorating fast.

Harbhajan Singh
Lt Gen


From: Gaur J K <gaurjk@hotmail.com>
To: "indiaresists@lists.riseup.net" <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 July 2015 3:26 PM
Subject: RE: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

13/7/15

Yes, but will it not be a piece-meal change?
Our whole system of governance is based on the colonial british model.
Our judicial system is based on the same.
Our laws are based on the same. Some laws are as old as 1860 just after it was taken over by the Imperial power.
Our Constitution is primarily drawing upon the British Model. 
Yet the realisation that changes are needed in the institutions of Governance should lead to the desired changes sooner or later.
Hiring of experts/advisors outside the IAS system could be one way to dilute their dominance. Mr. Modi seems to have realised and doing so in some areas.
JKGaur

From: dhiranil@hotmail.com
To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.net
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 23:15:59 +0530
Subject: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

Forwarding as received, for it makes a lot of sense, sharing this article specially with those among us, who love welfare of our Society, our Armed Forces, and above all, our country as a whole.  It is an open fact that they are also the creator of the problem that is existing and around the widely known subject matter as OROP issue !
Anil Dhir


Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 19:34:09 +0530
Subject: Fwd: It's time to shut the IAS down
From: 
To:


It's time to shut the IAS down

                    ( A forward as received)

 
Last updated on: June 08, 2015 13:17 IST
The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern. Mihir S Sharma explains.
If Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will not be entirely his fault.
After all, he has moderated his promises.
The shining vision of India's future he outlined in early 2014 has been replaced by the -- still inspiring -- set of aspirations listed in the 2015 Budget.
A house for everyone by 2022, with 24-hour power, clean drinking water, a road and modern sanitation; one job per family, medical and skilling facilities close by, and much else of that nature.
You cannot fault his targets, and you cannot fault his energy.
If he seems to have little idea of how to get there, well, he was never asked for such details about implementation on the campaign trail, so it's a little late to complain now.
The problem is that he is trying to drive the country to these oh-so-distant targets by 2022, but he still has the same old car with which to do it.
Today, in the middle of 2015, it is doubly, triply, quadruply clear that changing the driver was not enough -- the driver was never the biggest, the realest problem. The real problem is the car.
Modi might have the will, the energy, the sincerity and the ambition. But unless he fundamentally changes the system that implements his will, that realises his ambition, he is doomed to fail.
And that system is the Indian government and its bureaucracy. I want you to pause for a moment to think, as objectively as you can, about how farcical it is.
We, the world's fastest-growing economy and its largest democracy, have a state structure basically unchanged from the extractive system set up to rule a vast, pastoral country on behalf of a distant island nation.
We have a twice-born bureaucracy that holds so much power.
Why? Because they are the happy inheritors of a system in which civil servants would have been loyal to Queen and Whitehall, but ministers may have been dangerously nationalist -- and thus needed to be easily vetoed or blocked.
We still have a tenured, generalist civil service, organised on Victorian public-school principles, even as our economy and governance become fiendishly more complex.
Every single foreign investor, foreign do-gooder, foreign diplomat, is astounded by both the intelligence of their Indian bureaucratic interlocutor and their -- much of the time -- complete and utter ignorance of the issues at hand.
What else can you expect?
The person having to deal with FIIs today may have been dealing with water harvesting yesterday.
No matter how high your rank in a deadly dull competitive examination in the early 1980s, you will not handle that transition seamlessly.
It is natural, therefore, that you take no risks and show no imagination; you are, after all, always a step behind those you are regulating or governing.
It is less natural that you are incredibly arrogant even while being that step behind. (Or to suppose that anyone else in government being paid more than you would be a colossal, extraordinary insult to the Indian Republic, equivalent to Bangladesh annexing most of Eastern India. Imagine if a tax expert or a lawyer was hired from the private sector and paid more than the Cabinet Secretary! The whole edifice of government would collapse! Anarchy would rule! Four southern states would sink into the sea! Etc, etc)
We have an un-fire-able, unaccountable civil service, which can screw up as much as it likes -- consider, for example, the monumental error that was the FII-MAT (minimum alternate tax) imbroglio -- and still will face no consequences.
This is the largest cause of the institutionalised mediocrity that holds this country back. Even promotions are largely dependent on seniority and not record; nobody would run any other organisation thus, but it's OK to run a complicated, under-governed country like this?
Ah, we are told, but insulating administrators is necessary to ensure they are not subject to politicisation -- to ensure they are "independent".
This laughable claim can only be the product of wilfully refusing to actually read even one newspaper headline over the past 20 years.
Who can claim that bureaucrats are not politicised, given contemporary history? How many have simply refused to sign what they are supposed to? There are some such glorious names, but vanishingly few.
Combine these three factors, and you have a government machinery that is unaccountable, under-informed, and all-powerful. It lacks creativity. It automatically stifles innovation (witness the colossal idiocy underlying its shutdown of Uber in the capital).
There is no alternative but to shut these people down. Root-and-branch reform, beginning with an end to the imperial-era privileges of the Indian Administrative Service.
The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern.
The prime minister, sadly, agrees with that.
He, too, seems to imagine that his transformative promises can be operationalised and implemented by the same people who have failed us for 70 years.
His first action on entering 7, Race Course Road, was to tell the secretaries to the Union that they could speak to him directly, cutting out their ministers.
Subsequently he took over all appointments. This is in a way natural; when Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he had no experience of -- or history of interest in -- policy.
Guess who he turned to? Perhaps that's why the bureaucrats other Indians see as obstructive, backward-looking monuments to institutional arrogance are seen by our prime minister as gentle tutors in the art of governance.
This is a pity, since the only way he will actually transform India is by first transforming its hopelessly out-of-date government.
Actually, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will be entirely his fault. He should have started by ending the IAS.









__._,_.___




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[IAC#RG] It is Time to shut the IAS Down

While the article gives valid arguments for reform of the 'great' IAS, the real problem are the politicians. These are not enlightened people but only the riff-raff 'dadas' who have climbed up to their respective positions over the shoulders of our naive, gullible, ignorant and indolent compatriots. Many of them are coerced by these 'dadas' through the neo-feudal and neo-vassal system that is yet rife in our unfortunate land.
These politicians are not knowledgeable about anything. Their mental capabilities are very limited. If they had any capability then they would not have chosen politics as a career; they might have joined the IAS or the Services or other such competitive avenues. They, therefore, have no clues about the ministries allocated to them. Hence, they are completely dependent on the Babu who is very intelligent and cunning and plays tricks on them in such a way that they literally 'eat out of his hands'. They are thus very happy with the arrangement and support the Babu to run his writ as he pleases. They have not joined politics to serve the people but to serve themselves and just to fill the gap in the vacancies left by the intelligentsia who do not wish to 'dirty their hands', so to say! Hence, the idea of reforming the IAS would never ever enter their head.
Modi is a different politician in that he wishes to serve the Nation and he is sincere about it. He is exerting himself to the hilt. But results are not matching his efforts. Reason again is limited capability. Now consider the capabilities of say Obama, Putin or even XI with those of Narinder Modi. He too, therefore, was not very clear as to 'HOW' he has to proceed in order to get to the very laudable objectives that he had spelled in the beginning.
But capability is not the only handicap. The other impediment is opposition to him within the party. His position is anything but strong in the BJP. Recall that the same people who are today occupying prominent positions in his cabinet were, at one stage, opposed to him till he got the thumping majority for them. They are still watchful for any slip by him. That might be the reason that he could not take any action against the 'fraudulent ladies'. Hence, he cannot take any strong decision such as were taken by Indira Gandhi, as PM. The question of reforming the IAS, then, may not have entered his thoughts, as yet. In due course as and when he is on a firmer ground, politically, he may venture upon it.
Meanwhile, one important aspect of the IAS reforms was to confine them to particular branches of administration such as 'Finance' 'Home', 'Defence' and so on; just as the services are confined to their respective arms and services. The IFS are already specialists in the External Affairs and hence, better informed about their subject. The same could be done for other branches of administration. Taking the totals for the States as well, there would be sufficient vacancies in each branch.
The intelligentsia, on its part, must bring out the subject topic in the open and let it be discussed in the TV and print media.Confining to the internet is a limitation.

Regards,

Randhir Phagura

Maj Gen (Retd.)

Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

It will sound very simple. but needs a very broad understanding to be able to assimilate!
a)India needs a specific kind of an educational reform to undo the conditioning that has crept deep into the minds
b) moral standards need to be reinvoked
c) spirituality is the key to bring high moral ground among the people and only it can take the country on the path of being a super power in the coming future
No institutional/ machinery overhauling is required! It is the societal overhauling that is needed.

Regards
Dipanshi
(A Civil Service Aspirant)

On 18-Jul-2015 12:25 am, "Vidyut" <wide.aware@gmail.com> wrote:
There are problems with the IAS, there are problems with politicians. Alas, controlling each other is rarely about public interest. Perhaps I am cynical, but I don't think there are any magic fixes. Boring as it seems without a quick pill, I think it is going to take alert citizens relentlessly demanding accountability, scrutinizing and curbing every wrong that comes to light.

I think people consider the government or bureaucracy more like a service that ought to be perfect or you will call up customer service. Alas, in a democracy, the final boss is the citizen and it may be like herding cats, but in the end of the day, they will have to keep an eye on their employees and reward, punish or remove as necessary.

The most important thing is to mobilize people. Not go one morcha or andolan or against one bad guy, but in the spirit of vigilant and involved management of their own country.

Perfection is a convenient mirage that allows people to shruf off their own role on the stage. The only hope is continuous improvement.

Vidyut

Vidyut

Social Media: Twitter Facebook Google+ Diaspora


On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 10:19 AM, Jagjit Ahuja <jagjit.ahuja@gmail.com> wrote:
You may like to go through the appended write up written by an IAS officer  . Though it is long but worth reading  . 
I have read every word  but found that he has not analyzed  as to who has been responsible for  bringing such a state of affair of our country. 

It is my feeling that the so called Steel Frame of the country, the bureaucratic set up is responsible . This gets confirmed when  we analyze  working of our governing system after independence. It has  been the bureaucrats who kept on grabbing all the powers by be-fooling both the politicians and the public by twisting the rules to meet the requirements of the people whom they wanted to help.

Such a situation would have never creeped in our governing system had  they  been fair to all with  the authority and the powers they were enjoying .All these years the Joint Secretary of a Ministry  is considered as the Government. 


Please advise if I am wrong in my analyses.

Brig J S Ahuja

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 11:17 AM, Harbhajan Singh <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net> wrote:
My Dear Gaur,

How are you?

I wonder if this topic is discussed in the NDC!!!!!*:) happy

We require Administrative and political reforms. But dear Gaur all the Governments are being managed by the IAS!!! Does any one think IAS would let any such reforms take place and above all be implemented!! Just look at OROP case!!!

We need a military/Presidential take over for two years in which the agenda should be administrative and political reforms and then hand over the reigns back to the new dispensation. I agree it is an Utopian idea but if we need to achieve some thing such ideas have to come up.

My considered view is that India is going to go down the drain and China-Pak combine will subjugate us in a decade or two may be. Things on the ground for common people including our types are very bad indeed and deteriorating fast.

Harbhajan Singh
Lt Gen


From: Gaur J K <gaurjk@hotmail.com>
To: "indiaresists@lists.riseup.net" <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 July 2015 3:26 PM
Subject: RE: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

13/7/15

Yes, but will it not be a piece-meal change?
Our whole system of governance is based on the colonial british model.
Our judicial system is based on the same.
Our laws are based on the same. Some laws are as old as 1860 just after it was taken over by the Imperial power.
Our Constitution is primarily drawing upon the British Model. 
Yet the realisation that changes are needed in the institutions of Governance should lead to the desired changes sooner or later.
Hiring of experts/advisors outside the IAS system could be one way to dilute their dominance. Mr. Modi seems to have realised and doing so in some areas.
JKGaur

From: dhiranil@hotmail.com
To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.net
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 23:15:59 +0530
Subject: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

Forwarding as received, for it makes a lot of sense, sharing this article specially with those among us, who love welfare of our Society, our Armed Forces, and above all, our country as a whole.  It is an open fact that they are also the creator of the problem that is existing and around the widely known subject matter as OROP issue !
Anil Dhir


Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 19:34:09 +0530
Subject: Fwd: It's time to shut the IAS down
From: 
To:


It's time to shut the IAS down

                    ( A forward as received)

 
Last updated on: June 08, 2015 13:17 IST
The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern. Mihir S Sharma explains.
If Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will not be entirely his fault.
After all, he has moderated his promises.
The shining vision of India's future he outlined in early 2014 has been replaced by the -- still inspiring -- set of aspirations listed in the 2015 Budget.
A house for everyone by 2022, with 24-hour power, clean drinking water, a road and modern sanitation; one job per family, medical and skilling facilities close by, and much else of that nature.
You cannot fault his targets, and you cannot fault his energy.
If he seems to have little idea of how to get there, well, he was never asked for such details about implementation on the campaign trail, so it's a little late to complain now.
The problem is that he is trying to drive the country to these oh-so-distant targets by 2022, but he still has the same old car with which to do it.
Today, in the middle of 2015, it is doubly, triply, quadruply clear that changing the driver was not enough -- the driver was never the biggest, the realest problem. The real problem is the car.
Modi might have the will, the energy, the sincerity and the ambition. But unless he fundamentally changes the system that implements his will, that realises his ambition, he is doomed to fail.
And that system is the Indian government and its bureaucracy. I want you to pause for a moment to think, as objectively as you can, about how farcical it is.
We, the world's fastest-growing economy and its largest democracy, have a state structure basically unchanged from the extractive system set up to rule a vast, pastoral country on behalf of a distant island nation.
We have a twice-born bureaucracy that holds so much power.
Why? Because they are the happy inheritors of a system in which civil servants would have been loyal to Queen and Whitehall, but ministers may have been dangerously nationalist -- and thus needed to be easily vetoed or blocked.
We still have a tenured, generalist civil service, organised on Victorian public-school principles, even as our economy and governance become fiendishly more complex.
Every single foreign investor, foreign do-gooder, foreign diplomat, is astounded by both the intelligence of their Indian bureaucratic interlocutor and their -- much of the time -- complete and utter ignorance of the issues at hand.
What else can you expect?
The person having to deal with FIIs today may have been dealing with water harvesting yesterday.
No matter how high your rank in a deadly dull competitive examination in the early 1980s, you will not handle that transition seamlessly.
It is natural, therefore, that you take no risks and show no imagination; you are, after all, always a step behind those you are regulating or governing.
It is less natural that you are incredibly arrogant even while being that step behind. (Or to suppose that anyone else in government being paid more than you would be a colossal, extraordinary insult to the Indian Republic, equivalent to Bangladesh annexing most of Eastern India. Imagine if a tax expert or a lawyer was hired from the private sector and paid more than the Cabinet Secretary! The whole edifice of government would collapse! Anarchy would rule! Four southern states would sink into the sea! Etc, etc)
We have an un-fire-able, unaccountable civil service, which can screw up as much as it likes -- consider, for example, the monumental error that was the FII-MAT (minimum alternate tax) imbroglio -- and still will face no consequences.
This is the largest cause of the institutionalised mediocrity that holds this country back. Even promotions are largely dependent on seniority and not record; nobody would run any other organisation thus, but it's OK to run a complicated, under-governed country like this?
Ah, we are told, but insulating administrators is necessary to ensure they are not subject to politicisation -- to ensure they are "independent".
This laughable claim can only be the product of wilfully refusing to actually read even one newspaper headline over the past 20 years.
Who can claim that bureaucrats are not politicised, given contemporary history? How many have simply refused to sign what they are supposed to? There are some such glorious names, but vanishingly few.
Combine these three factors, and you have a government machinery that is unaccountable, under-informed, and all-powerful. It lacks creativity. It automatically stifles innovation (witness the colossal idiocy underlying its shutdown of Uber in the capital).
There is no alternative but to shut these people down. Root-and-branch reform, beginning with an end to the imperial-era privileges of the Indian Administrative Service.
The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern.
The prime minister, sadly, agrees with that.
He, too, seems to imagine that his transformative promises can be operationalised and implemented by the same people who have failed us for 70 years.
His first action on entering 7, Race Course Road, was to tell the secretaries to the Union that they could speak to him directly, cutting out their ministers.
Subsequently he took over all appointments. This is in a way natural; when Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he had no experience of -- or history of interest in -- policy.
Guess who he turned to? Perhaps that's why the bureaucrats other Indians see as obstructive, backward-looking monuments to institutional arrogance are seen by our prime minister as gentle tutors in the art of governance.
This is a pity, since the only way he will actually transform India is by first transforming its hopelessly out-of-date government.
Actually, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will be entirely his fault. He should have started by ending the IAS.









__._,_.___




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Thursday, July 16, 2015

Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

There are problems with the IAS, there are problems with politicians. Alas, controlling each other is rarely about public interest. Perhaps I am cynical, but I don't think there are any magic fixes. Boring as it seems without a quick pill, I think it is going to take alert citizens relentlessly demanding accountability, scrutinizing and curbing every wrong that comes to light.

I think people consider the government or bureaucracy more like a service that ought to be perfect or you will call up customer service. Alas, in a democracy, the final boss is the citizen and it may be like herding cats, but in the end of the day, they will have to keep an eye on their employees and reward, punish or remove as necessary.

The most important thing is to mobilize people. Not go one morcha or andolan or against one bad guy, but in the spirit of vigilant and involved management of their own country.

Perfection is a convenient mirage that allows people to shruf off their own role on the stage. The only hope is continuous improvement.

Vidyut

Vidyut

Social Media: Twitter Facebook Google+ Diaspora


On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 10:19 AM, Jagjit Ahuja <jagjit.ahuja@gmail.com> wrote:
You may like to go through the appended write up written by an IAS officer  . Though it is long but worth reading  . 
I have read every word  but found that he has not analyzed  as to who has been responsible for  bringing such a state of affair of our country. 

It is my feeling that the so called Steel Frame of the country, the bureaucratic set up is responsible . This gets confirmed when  we analyze  working of our governing system after independence. It has  been the bureaucrats who kept on grabbing all the powers by be-fooling both the politicians and the public by twisting the rules to meet the requirements of the people whom they wanted to help.

Such a situation would have never creeped in our governing system had  they  been fair to all with  the authority and the powers they were enjoying .All these years the Joint Secretary of a Ministry  is considered as the Government. 


Please advise if I am wrong in my analyses.

Brig J S Ahuja

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 11:17 AM, Harbhajan Singh <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net> wrote:
My Dear Gaur,

How are you?

I wonder if this topic is discussed in the NDC!!!!!*:) happy

We require Administrative and political reforms. But dear Gaur all the Governments are being managed by the IAS!!! Does any one think IAS would let any such reforms take place and above all be implemented!! Just look at OROP case!!!

We need a military/Presidential take over for two years in which the agenda should be administrative and political reforms and then hand over the reigns back to the new dispensation. I agree it is an Utopian idea but if we need to achieve some thing such ideas have to come up.

My considered view is that India is going to go down the drain and China-Pak combine will subjugate us in a decade or two may be. Things on the ground for common people including our types are very bad indeed and deteriorating fast.

Harbhajan Singh
Lt Gen


From: Gaur J K <gaurjk@hotmail.com>
To: "indiaresists@lists.riseup.net" <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 July 2015 3:26 PM
Subject: RE: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

13/7/15

Yes, but will it not be a piece-meal change?
Our whole system of governance is based on the colonial british model.
Our judicial system is based on the same.
Our laws are based on the same. Some laws are as old as 1860 just after it was taken over by the Imperial power.
Our Constitution is primarily drawing upon the British Model. 
Yet the realisation that changes are needed in the institutions of Governance should lead to the desired changes sooner or later.
Hiring of experts/advisors outside the IAS system could be one way to dilute their dominance. Mr. Modi seems to have realised and doing so in some areas.
JKGaur

From: dhiranil@hotmail.com
To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.net
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 23:15:59 +0530
Subject: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

Forwarding as received, for it makes a lot of sense, sharing this article specially with those among us, who love welfare of our Society, our Armed Forces, and above all, our country as a whole.  It is an open fact that they are also the creator of the problem that is existing and around the widely known subject matter as OROP issue !
Anil Dhir


Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 19:34:09 +0530
Subject: Fwd: It's time to shut the IAS down
From: 
To:


It's time to shut the IAS down

                    ( A forward as received)

 
Last updated on: June 08, 2015 13:17 IST
The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern. Mihir S Sharma explains.
If Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will not be entirely his fault.
After all, he has moderated his promises.
The shining vision of India's future he outlined in early 2014 has been replaced by the -- still inspiring -- set of aspirations listed in the 2015 Budget.
A house for everyone by 2022, with 24-hour power, clean drinking water, a road and modern sanitation; one job per family, medical and skilling facilities close by, and much else of that nature.
You cannot fault his targets, and you cannot fault his energy.
If he seems to have little idea of how to get there, well, he was never asked for such details about implementation on the campaign trail, so it's a little late to complain now.
The problem is that he is trying to drive the country to these oh-so-distant targets by 2022, but he still has the same old car with which to do it.
Today, in the middle of 2015, it is doubly, triply, quadruply clear that changing the driver was not enough -- the driver was never the biggest, the realest problem. The real problem is the car.
Modi might have the will, the energy, the sincerity and the ambition. But unless he fundamentally changes the system that implements his will, that realises his ambition, he is doomed to fail.
And that system is the Indian government and its bureaucracy. I want you to pause for a moment to think, as objectively as you can, about how farcical it is.
We, the world's fastest-growing economy and its largest democracy, have a state structure basically unchanged from the extractive system set up to rule a vast, pastoral country on behalf of a distant island nation.
We have a twice-born bureaucracy that holds so much power.
Why? Because they are the happy inheritors of a system in which civil servants would have been loyal to Queen and Whitehall, but ministers may have been dangerously nationalist -- and thus needed to be easily vetoed or blocked.
We still have a tenured, generalist civil service, organised on Victorian public-school principles, even as our economy and governance become fiendishly more complex.
Every single foreign investor, foreign do-gooder, foreign diplomat, is astounded by both the intelligence of their Indian bureaucratic interlocutor and their -- much of the time -- complete and utter ignorance of the issues at hand.
What else can you expect?
The person having to deal with FIIs today may have been dealing with water harvesting yesterday.
No matter how high your rank in a deadly dull competitive examination in the early 1980s, you will not handle that transition seamlessly.
It is natural, therefore, that you take no risks and show no imagination; you are, after all, always a step behind those you are regulating or governing.
It is less natural that you are incredibly arrogant even while being that step behind. (Or to suppose that anyone else in government being paid more than you would be a colossal, extraordinary insult to the Indian Republic, equivalent to Bangladesh annexing most of Eastern India. Imagine if a tax expert or a lawyer was hired from the private sector and paid more than the Cabinet Secretary! The whole edifice of government would collapse! Anarchy would rule! Four southern states would sink into the sea! Etc, etc)
We have an un-fire-able, unaccountable civil service, which can screw up as much as it likes -- consider, for example, the monumental error that was the FII-MAT (minimum alternate tax) imbroglio -- and still will face no consequences.
This is the largest cause of the institutionalised mediocrity that holds this country back. Even promotions are largely dependent on seniority and not record; nobody would run any other organisation thus, but it's OK to run a complicated, under-governed country like this?
Ah, we are told, but insulating administrators is necessary to ensure they are not subject to politicisation -- to ensure they are "independent".
This laughable claim can only be the product of wilfully refusing to actually read even one newspaper headline over the past 20 years.
Who can claim that bureaucrats are not politicised, given contemporary history? How many have simply refused to sign what they are supposed to? There are some such glorious names, but vanishingly few.
Combine these three factors, and you have a government machinery that is unaccountable, under-informed, and all-powerful. It lacks creativity. It automatically stifles innovation (witness the colossal idiocy underlying its shutdown of Uber in the capital).
There is no alternative but to shut these people down. Root-and-branch reform, beginning with an end to the imperial-era privileges of the Indian Administrative Service.
The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern.
The prime minister, sadly, agrees with that.
He, too, seems to imagine that his transformative promises can be operationalised and implemented by the same people who have failed us for 70 years.
His first action on entering 7, Race Course Road, was to tell the secretaries to the Union that they could speak to him directly, cutting out their ministers.
Subsequently he took over all appointments. This is in a way natural; when Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he had no experience of -- or history of interest in -- policy.
Guess who he turned to? Perhaps that's why the bureaucrats other Indians see as obstructive, backward-looking monuments to institutional arrogance are seen by our prime minister as gentle tutors in the art of governance.
This is a pity, since the only way he will actually transform India is by first transforming its hopelessly out-of-date government.
Actually, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will be entirely his fault. He should have started by ending the IAS.









__._,_.___




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Re: [IAC#RG] IPL SCAM - ARE COSMETIC PUNISHMENTS ENOUGH ?

It gives an impression, in the absence of hefty fine and rigorous imprisonment, that the judgement too is prefixed! It is the public money that is spent over the period of a few years under the guise of investigation! The accused can always carry on their business of making illegal income with more innovations to steal/siphon money ! After all for people who have turned out to be "professional thieves, betters, swindlers and so on they cannot learn another profession for their livelyhood other than doing innovations in the means of wrong doing.

Another implication is that even known honest investigators could be swayed after retirement as their honesty did not ensure good living during their tenure in service!

In any case the verdict do not even have any corrective effect on the wrong doers    



On Thursday, 16 July 2015 10:52 PM, Venkatraman Ns <nsvenkatchennai@gmail.com> wrote:


To
India Against Corruption 

                                                                                                                      IPL SCAM – ARE COSMETIC  PUNISHMENTS  ENOUGH ?
It has been proved beyond doubt that match fixing has taken place in IPL tournament and millions of cricket fans have been cheated and taken for a ride. After much public outcry and intervention of the judiciary, investigation  has been completed and judgement pronounced. However, those who care for probity in public life and transparency in sports matters and who think that the guilty should not be spared, are now disappointed.
Many people think that considering the level of scam and the damage that the image of cricket as sports has suffered, punishments imposed are marginal and cosmetic. Such lenient  award of punishment make the guilty people having the last laugh and perhaps, the scamsters will continue to play their tricks and mischief in  future,feeling confident that they can get away.
Two teams  in IPL have been banned but one can be sure that the owners of the team will launch another team in some other name. What is to be noted is that the verdict has banned the teams and not the owners of the teams.  As a matter of fact,. N.Srinivasan, who was owner of the Chennai Super Kings team till recently ,has now said that he has nothing to do with the team.
Investigation has clearly established that Srinivasan's son in law is guilty .He was involved in affairs of Chennai Super Kings along with his father in law N.Srinivasan, who is also the Chief of Board of Control for Cricket in India. Obviously, the son in law could not have indulged in the mischief without the knowledge  of the father in law and the father in law has been controlling Chennai Super Kings as well as Board of Control for Cricket in India. The question upper most in the mind of cricket fans is that while the son in law has been punished, why  the father in law has been left scot free . Are the Indian fans so naïve to think that son in law is guilty but father in law is not guilty.
Now, what will the two match fixers who have been banned by the verdict do now.  They have suffered loss of reputation but they may not think that this is a loss at all, as these are the people who have indulged in match fixing with least consideration for ethics and fair play. One can be sure that they will be active in cricket under some other binami name,  sooner or later and perhaps, sooner than  later.
It is an established practice that the punishments imposed by judiciary should be in tune with the seriousness of the crime and the punishment  must act as deterrent for other mischief makers and match fixers in   future.
Cricket is known as the gentleman's game. Unfortunately today ,cricket is no more the sports that we know of . It has become a place for politicians, dishonest people and corrupt elements who control the game.
It is unfortunate that an opportunity to reform cricket and restore it's glory have been lost by the judiciary verdict, that appears to be cosmetic and certainly is disappointing.

N.S.Venkataraman
Nandini Voice For The Deprived
 

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Re: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

You may like to go through the appended write up written by an IAS officer  . Though it is long but worth reading  . 
I have read every word  but found that he has not analyzed  as to who has been responsible for  bringing such a state of affair of our country. 

It is my feeling that the so called Steel Frame of the country, the bureaucratic set up is responsible . This gets confirmed when  we analyze  working of our governing system after independence. It has  been the bureaucrats who kept on grabbing all the powers by be-fooling both the politicians and the public by twisting the rules to meet the requirements of the people whom they wanted to help.

Such a situation would have never creeped in our governing system had  they  been fair to all with  the authority and the powers they were enjoying .All these years the Joint Secretary of a Ministry  is considered as the Government. 


Please advise if I am wrong in my analyses.

Brig J S Ahuja

On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 11:17 AM, Harbhajan Singh <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net> wrote:
My Dear Gaur,

How are you?

I wonder if this topic is discussed in the NDC!!!!!*:) happy

We require Administrative and political reforms. But dear Gaur all the Governments are being managed by the IAS!!! Does any one think IAS would let any such reforms take place and above all be implemented!! Just look at OROP case!!!

We need a military/Presidential take over for two years in which the agenda should be administrative and political reforms and then hand over the reigns back to the new dispensation. I agree it is an Utopian idea but if we need to achieve some thing such ideas have to come up.

My considered view is that India is going to go down the drain and China-Pak combine will subjugate us in a decade or two may be. Things on the ground for common people including our types are very bad indeed and deteriorating fast.

Harbhajan Singh
Lt Gen


From: Gaur J K <gaurjk@hotmail.com>
To: "indiaresists@lists.riseup.net" <indiaresists@lists.riseup.net>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 July 2015 3:26 PM
Subject: RE: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

13/7/15

Yes, but will it not be a piece-meal change?
Our whole system of governance is based on the colonial british model.
Our judicial system is based on the same.
Our laws are based on the same. Some laws are as old as 1860 just after it was taken over by the Imperial power.
Our Constitution is primarily drawing upon the British Model. 
Yet the realisation that changes are needed in the institutions of Governance should lead to the desired changes sooner or later.
Hiring of experts/advisors outside the IAS system could be one way to dilute their dominance. Mr. Modi seems to have realised and doing so in some areas.
JKGaur

From: dhiranil@hotmail.com
To: indiaresists@lists.riseup.net
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 23:15:59 +0530
Subject: [IAC#RG] It's time to shut the IAS down

Forwarding as received, for it makes a lot of sense, sharing this article specially with those among us, who love welfare of our Society, our Armed Forces, and above all, our country as a whole.  It is an open fact that they are also the creator of the problem that is existing and around the widely known subject matter as OROP issue !
Anil Dhir


Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2015 19:34:09 +0530
Subject: Fwd: It's time to shut the IAS down
From: 
To:


It's time to shut the IAS down

                    ( A forward as received)

 
Last updated on: June 08, 2015 13:17 IST
The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern. Mihir S Sharma explains.
If Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will not be entirely his fault.
After all, he has moderated his promises.
The shining vision of India's future he outlined in early 2014 has been replaced by the -- still inspiring -- set of aspirations listed in the 2015 Budget.
A house for everyone by 2022, with 24-hour power, clean drinking water, a road and modern sanitation; one job per family, medical and skilling facilities close by, and much else of that nature.
You cannot fault his targets, and you cannot fault his energy.
If he seems to have little idea of how to get there, well, he was never asked for such details about implementation on the campaign trail, so it's a little late to complain now.
The problem is that he is trying to drive the country to these oh-so-distant targets by 2022, but he still has the same old car with which to do it.
Today, in the middle of 2015, it is doubly, triply, quadruply clear that changing the driver was not enough -- the driver was never the biggest, the realest problem. The real problem is the car.
Modi might have the will, the energy, the sincerity and the ambition. But unless he fundamentally changes the system that implements his will, that realises his ambition, he is doomed to fail.
And that system is the Indian government and its bureaucracy. I want you to pause for a moment to think, as objectively as you can, about how farcical it is.
We, the world's fastest-growing economy and its largest democracy, have a state structure basically unchanged from the extractive system set up to rule a vast, pastoral country on behalf of a distant island nation.
We have a twice-born bureaucracy that holds so much power.
Why? Because they are the happy inheritors of a system in which civil servants would have been loyal to Queen and Whitehall, but ministers may have been dangerously nationalist -- and thus needed to be easily vetoed or blocked.
We still have a tenured, generalist civil service, organised on Victorian public-school principles, even as our economy and governance become fiendishly more complex.
Every single foreign investor, foreign do-gooder, foreign diplomat, is astounded by both the intelligence of their Indian bureaucratic interlocutor and their -- much of the time -- complete and utter ignorance of the issues at hand.
What else can you expect?
The person having to deal with FIIs today may have been dealing with water harvesting yesterday.
No matter how high your rank in a deadly dull competitive examination in the early 1980s, you will not handle that transition seamlessly.
It is natural, therefore, that you take no risks and show no imagination; you are, after all, always a step behind those you are regulating or governing.
It is less natural that you are incredibly arrogant even while being that step behind. (Or to suppose that anyone else in government being paid more than you would be a colossal, extraordinary insult to the Indian Republic, equivalent to Bangladesh annexing most of Eastern India. Imagine if a tax expert or a lawyer was hired from the private sector and paid more than the Cabinet Secretary! The whole edifice of government would collapse! Anarchy would rule! Four southern states would sink into the sea! Etc, etc)
We have an un-fire-able, unaccountable civil service, which can screw up as much as it likes -- consider, for example, the monumental error that was the FII-MAT (minimum alternate tax) imbroglio -- and still will face no consequences.
This is the largest cause of the institutionalised mediocrity that holds this country back. Even promotions are largely dependent on seniority and not record; nobody would run any other organisation thus, but it's OK to run a complicated, under-governed country like this?
Ah, we are told, but insulating administrators is necessary to ensure they are not subject to politicisation -- to ensure they are "independent".
This laughable claim can only be the product of wilfully refusing to actually read even one newspaper headline over the past 20 years.
Who can claim that bureaucrats are not politicised, given contemporary history? How many have simply refused to sign what they are supposed to? There are some such glorious names, but vanishingly few.
Combine these three factors, and you have a government machinery that is unaccountable, under-informed, and all-powerful. It lacks creativity. It automatically stifles innovation (witness the colossal idiocy underlying its shutdown of Uber in the capital).
There is no alternative but to shut these people down. Root-and-branch reform, beginning with an end to the imperial-era privileges of the Indian Administrative Service.
The IAS distrusts outsiders bringing change, the product of being a tenured cadre; it worships authority rather than citizenship, the legacy of being lackeys of the Queen-Emperor -- and it admires itself above all, for no reason that the rest of us can discern.
The prime minister, sadly, agrees with that.
He, too, seems to imagine that his transformative promises can be operationalised and implemented by the same people who have failed us for 70 years.
His first action on entering 7, Race Course Road, was to tell the secretaries to the Union that they could speak to him directly, cutting out their ministers.
Subsequently he took over all appointments. This is in a way natural; when Modi was appointed chief minister of Gujarat, he had no experience of -- or history of interest in -- policy.
Guess who he turned to? Perhaps that's why the bureaucrats other Indians see as obstructive, backward-looking monuments to institutional arrogance are seen by our prime minister as gentle tutors in the art of governance.
This is a pity, since the only way he will actually transform India is by first transforming its hopelessly out-of-date government.
Actually, if Prime Minister Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will be entirely his fault. He should have started by ending the IAS.









__._,_.___




--
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