Performance review: Babus cannot take job security for granted anymore

The government is wielding the stick against top babus, finally. According to new rules cleared by the Centre, officials of the all-India services will be subjected to two performance reviews -- once, after they finish 15 years in service and again, after they complete 50 years of age. If they are found inefficient they will be retired from service. The government can also review the service record of any officer at any point and decide to show him the door.Good move but long delayed. It is likely to make senior officials insecure, which is certainly not as bad as it sounds. It will make them more serious about their work. If they don’t perform, taking the security offered by the government job for granted, they know the sword of Democles is hanging over their heads. Actually, instead of 15 years, the Centre should have fixed the first review at 10 years. Earlier, the performance of officials were appraised after they completed 30 years in service.[caption id="attachment_207726" align="alignleft" width="380" caption="Vice President, Mohd. Hamid Ansari interacting with the IAS Probationers Batch -2010, in New Delhi on 11 February 2011. Image courtesy PIB"][/caption]The move would have help weed out officers disinterested in their jobs.As one article here had argued earlier, all evils in the bureaucracy boils down to one crucial issue: security. A government job is secure. Once one is in, there is hardly a chance of one getting thrown out. Performance is hardly demanded, efficiency is rarely encouraged and the person concerned knows these don’t matter. It is not easy to throw out a government official on grounds of incompetence. That is where all the problems begin.The blanket of security makes the bureaucrats irresponsible and apathetic to the jobs they handle. It also breeds corruption. Performance reviews and the fear of dismissal from service would change that to some extent. There’s a flip side to it too -- it might make officials jittery and thus encourage attrition. But it is worth taking the risk. The competent lot will never be nervous about matters of job security.However, it is a small step towards making the bureaucracy more efficient. The process should start much earlier. For example, the entry tests should be more purposeful, not like regular high school examinations. It should test the intelligence of the candidate rather than his profoundness in any particular subject or subjects. Secondly, the training process should be orientated towards inculcating administrative and management skills in the officials.Better still, create an institution imparting full-time courses for future officials. This will ensure that people who are really passionate about the civil service get into it. Most of the inefficiency is the result of lack of true liking for the job. A time-bound course would help identify and eliminate people who are in it out of compulsion. Moreover, it would create good, trained officers who would not take long to catch the nuances of their jobs.What the country needs now is smart and effective people acting as the bridge between the government and the masses, not people lording over files. They should be successful service delivery agents instead of perennial black holes where everything disappears. Any experiment in this direction is welcome. The steel frame of governance has rotted and corroded deep within. It needs to be revived.The review system is good but it needs to be full-proof, with enough safeguards for the competent officials. It is possible that a combination of the minister and the immediate boss of such officials could play havoc with their careers. But this problem could be sorted out in due course. Let's take the first step first.