Edit: Arvind Kejriwal is right, civil service needs reform

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal call for replacing bureaucrats with professionals and sector experts, as well as his threat to throw out officers who oppose him and his Cabinet cuts both ways.

Inasmuch as it indicates an unwillingness to work within institutional practice, it is regrettable.

However, it is a welcome call to reform India’s bureaucracy, which borders on the dysfunctional despite being manned by people who are some of the brightest of the land.

Successful democracies and economies enjoy the services of a strong bureaucracy that is protected from the arbitrary whims of the political class and is skilled enough to lay out the policy choices available to politicians to pursue the goals the people have entrusted them with.

Successive commissions on civil service pay have recommended instituting policies to insulate civil servants from the wrath of politicians who mistake political office for licence to behave like potentates.

Such recommendations, relating to transparent norms for transfers and for rare departures from these norms, have routinely been ignored. Such protection of the civil service has to be accompanied by accountability, incentives to perform, specialise, innovate and respond fast.

Encouraging in-service specialisations, privileging sectorspecialised training and knowledge should be the norm. Appointments above middling levels of seniority should be based on selection, not promotion, with aspirants drawn from the entire pool of civil servants as well as professionals seeking lateral entry.

Civil servants must be a mixture of generalists and specialists. Those who fail to get promoted and see their juniors get ahead must be offered exit, as in the armed forces. Kejriwal’s pique should lead on to real reform.