While all the media houses in the country were having their mental orgasm while Mr. Prime Minister was up for shuffling its cabinet ministers, since the govt has a long history of trusting the bureaucratic machinery more than any other system, it seems that this trust has been reflected in the cabinet ministers also. While the new ministers include doctors, engineers, MBA graduates, and the most awaited bureaucrats, we as individuals are forced to see the Charms and Challenges of this decision to include them in the ministry or say politics as a whole.
Tough many people have a stellar resume and a much more glorious career in the past and ahead, but it seems like politics still is the best dessert which everyone wants to get hold on to, nonetheless, the inclusion of all the well-read and educated people are welcome in the cabinet, it has spurred a short debate among the commoners or the “AAM’ janta, about the charms and challenges,
The Challenges
The most common fear, or say the most common allegations on the politicians, is that of being morally corrupt, so what makes us believe that the people who have served in the government and in high positions will not bear the mindset of a corrupt politician? Well, there is no such guarantee that these highly decorated officers will work most efficiently, but then there is something that we all are forced to think of, which is “positive thinking”. The positive thinking rules say that no matter what, we need to be positive, and hence we need to have faith that these officers and highly educated individuals will perform their best to run the ministries most efficiently.
Policy paralysis, the word has haunted Indians and her residents for years now, and why not, after the independence this disease has taken her aback and delayed her the healthy community and functioning that it deserved, the English system based on which the building blocks of India are build, still have some remnants of the English system on it which were amplified by some morally corrupt people, and they exploited and made these remnants more and more rusting, so much so that the Indian system has rotten from the inside out and bottom to top. One can estimate the seriousness of the matter by looking at the timeline of how the schemes were implemented in this nation.
The right to education was amended in the constitution through its 86th amendment which was made in the year 2002, and it took the govt more 7 years to draft a bill, and thus it got implemented in 2010, and we very well know how efficient our education system is and how marvelously it was implemented, apparently the Right to Education was not implemented by the government then in power, but it was implemented through the hallways of Court.
The 86th amendment had a provision of RTE under DPSP (Directive principle of state polity) and had 10 years to implement it, but it seems like the Government in power did show no efforts to make proper arrangements to implement it and hence there was a case filed in the hallways of supreme court of India and the Court affirmed the fundamental right to education in two landmark cases, Mohini Jain v State of Karnataka and Unni Krishnan J.P. v State of Andhra Pradesh.
This case arose out of a fire that started in a middle school in Madras. The school, a single thatched-roof building with no windows and one entrance and exit, was a private school that was said to have ‘sprung up in response to drastic cuts in government spending on education’. The fire started in a nearby makeshift kitchen where cooks were preparing a midday meal, and killed 93 children and injured many others. An instant writ petition was filed under Public Interest Litigation in order to protect school children against similar future tragedies and to improve the conditions of the schools in the country. The Supreme Court issued notices to the Union of India, State Governments, and the Union Territories. Twenty-seven States and Union Territories filed affidavits admitting that many schools did not meet their self-determined safety standards (which were, in any event, below the standards of the National Building Code of India, 2005). (right-to-education.org, 2009)
While India and the middle class suffered due to bad education and the government didn’t make any efforts to implement the policy, which was already due and was supposed to be on the agenda.
Another simple example of policy paralysis is the implementation of reservations in India, which is often seen as anti-meritocracy and is often demonized by a huge chunk of Indian society. The recommendation was given bythe Mandal Commission in 1991, and it was fully implemented in modern India until late 2006, fully by the union government,t which again,ledg by example, took a case to implement through the hallways of the Apex court, the famous case of IndiraSahanii Vs Union of India is not forgotten after all. The point here is that tough the drafting committee made provisions of reservations in the year 1950, but they were not talked about it until in 1981 and finally in 1991 when finally a commission filed its reports, and even after a long wait for justice the people of India had to wait and fight for its implementation.
Well, having discussed at length about the policy paralysis, we now know what is a major challenge. It is innumerably said and quoted by many senior IAS, retired IAS and many politicians that the bureaucratic machinery of India has rusted, and they not only resist change in the system but also promote rudimentary ideas of not working, “90 per cent of IAS officers do not work, so development stuck: Delhi CM (Arvind Kejriwal, red IRS officer)” (India, 2017)
Charms
While there is always a fear of these corrupt bureaucrats entering politics and milking the system to their benefit and making it worse but the chances that the exact reverse might happen cannot be negated and hence the step has to be welcoming, there are numerous examples of how IAS and other services candidates have changed the face of the place they have been. Hence, outrightly rejecting their services is very unfair.
Many IAS and IPS have changed the face of Indian education, the election commission, many have served as NSA and international security advisors, many even after their retirement have made efforts to make changes in society through social work and philanthropy.
While India has had her bad and good experiences, but she is more hurt and damaged and still getting damaged with the scars of the old bad experiences and hence she wants to but fears to believe the further developments, as individuals we can only wait for good things as it is said by Paulina Simon (Russian-born American writer and the international best-selling author) “good things come to those who wait”. While India is waiting for good things to happen to her, the politicians and all her residents need to work for it.
Keep reading, and thanks for reading this far….
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