Cabinet secy advocates differentiating ‘bonafide risk-taking’ in bureaucracy; says Lateral Entry will be necessary for specific tasks

NEW DELHI: Cabinet secretary T V Somanathan on Monday said there is a need to create an atmosphere that distinguishes between “bona fide risk-taking” and “mala fide risk-taking” by officers in their jobs. He acknowledged the concern of bureaucrats who face consequences later, even for making bold decisions in public interest.

Somanathan also stated that, in his “personal opinion”, lateral entry will become a necessity in the future, as the same set of generalist civil servants cannot perform specific tasks at the apex level.

Interacting with civil servants from across the country during the plenary session on Civil Services Day, Somanathan said, “The era when we thought that the good generalist can do everything is no longer going to be available to us. Partly, we are addressing this weakness through our capacity building programmes... we are partly addressing it through lateral entry, which I believe will be a necessity in the future. I do not think that the same set of general list civil servants recruited at a young age can perform every task in the govt. At the apex level, there will be tasks where we need to take people on lateral entry.”

In response to queries from some officers on “risk avoidance” as a better rewarding strategy than making inadvertent mistake, which brings better results, Somanathan acknowledged the concern and said that today there is “doubt in the mind of the officers” that if they take bold decisions in public interest, but it’s unconventional or somebody at later raise question why he/she took such a decision and such audit objections, vigilance and internal complaints are raised at a later stage.

“ ...It is something that we have to work upon. We have to create an atmosphere where we are able to distinguish between bona fide risk taking and mala fide risk taking. We’re not able to do it. Today, therefore we are discouraging all risk taking because we assume that all risk taking is mala fide. So, what has happened is we have driven out all the good risk taking; bona fide risk taking is eliminated from the system. Remaining risk taking is the mala fide type... systematically it’s very difficult to take any bona fide risk,” Somanathan said.

He pointed to how the same system that emphasises on accountability of civil servants also tends to create risk aversion. The top official said that the “dilemma needs to be tackled in the Viksit Bharat journey”.

Earlier, Somanthan suggested four criteria on which civil servants should judge the effectiveness of the service — protecting the constitutional order, impartial administration, translating the will of the elected govt into policy and promoting economic and social development. He said that bureaucracy has performed well in protecting the constitutional order by being politically neutral while mentioning that unlike the neighbouring countries India has seen no no coup or problems in transition of powers.

However, he pointed out that a politically neutral but inflexible and incapable civil service is capable of protecting constitutional order but may do a lot of damage to economic development. “And in fact, there are some who hold that the Indian civil service is a little bit guilty of this, that we may be politically very neutral and all that, but we are not actually very flexible or capable when it comes to actually promoting development,” he said.

Somanthan, in his “personal opinion”, said that the poor and the weak are often treated shabbily in govt office while adding that political interference in beneficiary selection or appointments is not unknown.