Fish for the Best Compliments (Source:- Economic Times)

V Ranganathan, (The writer is former professor, IIM-Bangalore)

Recently, the Department of Personnel and Training advertised for 10 joint secretary-level positions in different departments of GoI on a lateral entry basis. Opening up the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and other class one services to competition from experts from the market is, indeed, welcome. GoI is also mulling the idea of ranking and determining inter-se seniority and cadre allotment based not just on the written Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination, but also on the performance in the common three-month training at Mussoorie and the subsequent longer training at the academies.

This has stirred up a hornets’ nest due to a perceived anomaly of superior students being evaluated by inferior teachers, and a fear that this is the first step towards making a ‘committed bureaucracy’. The opposite argument would be that it is not enough to be very good in the subject of your choice, but you also need to be good in subjects relating to management in government. Today, there are many people in the Indian Audit and Accounts Service (IA&AS) without basic knowledge in accounting, but who have been selected only on the criterion that they performed worse than those selected for IAS and better than those selected for, say, the Indian Postal Service. The first objection can be taken care of by hiring competent teachers at market-based salaries. Or, better still, sending all the civil service probationers to the three older Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), which have the bandwidth to train them.

There is a popular misconception that management in government, or public policy management, is very different (dealing mostly with development economics) from business management, which operates for profit. But many management tools are ‘end objective-neutral’ and can be applied to business as well as government situations. There is a view among senior bureaucrats that they should deal only at the policy level, and that operational details should be left to the minions. This, unfortunately, stems from the lack of knowledge about the tools themselves and runs the risk of wrong policies being shaped by juniors, who have inadequate appreciation of the broader objectives and trade-offs.

IIM-Bangalore realised the importance of management for GoI, and started with an emphasis on government and the public sector. Alas, there was no demand. So, lofty ideals of bringing management to needed areas will not work, unless there is incentive compatibility. There is also a supply-side problem. While there is good capacity from the consultants’ side, there is inadequate interest and demonstrated capabilities from the academic side, giving rise to a healthy contempt for the academics. Academic institutions must address this problem. In their current pursuit of rewarding research, it should also focus on addressing societal problems. Designing a tamper-proof voting machine must be rewarded, just as much as a publication in a top journal.

There is another view that public policy management is the B team of business management. In Harvard, for instance, the Harvard Business School is the one running the flagship MBA programme, while the Kennedy School of Government attracts less competitive students from the US — but brilliant bureaucrats from developing countries. Since these countries, often, are reluctant to pay, these programmes get funding from agencies like the Ford Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

For Indian bureaucrats, a Masters in public policy from even a second-tier US university is more attractive than studying at IIMs, simply because of the potential savings from their per diem. GoI can give a fixed sum of, say, .`25 lakh, and leave it for the officer to choose the institution from where she will receive the education. Then she can make the right trade-off between the quality of the programme and cost to herself, and, hopefully, go for the IIMs, which maximise value for money.  Civil services no longer attract the best talent. How can GoI correct this? In Singapore, bureaucrats and politicians are paid attractive salaries to lure the best talent. In Pakistan, the best talent chooses the army, where the benefits are maximum. Can we create a cadre above Class 1— Class 0? —who will be given global salaries? This is what Reliance does for its key functionaries: they pay them worldclass salaries, and get the best talent.

So, choose the best from the older IIMs and IITs for lateral recruitment into GoI. If we can get Raghuram Rajan, a University of Chicago, Booth School of Business professor, as RBI governor, why not get an equally talented person as finance secretary through a global selection?