If you were running any organisation the first question you would ask is about the quality of human resources. This question is seldom asked in government. For instance, district-level officials end up administering a hundred schemes. While all schemes have a statement of financial liability, few carry a human resource analysis. Recruitment has become a matter of mechanics, not of matching personnel to objectives. For instance, there is a proposal floating around to double the size of the foreign service; the demands placed on India certainly require this. But the IFS, like most areas of government, is terrible at mobilising the kind of talent it needs in the right places. Instead of more generalists, it probably needs more lawyers and domain experts. No government as immune to lateral and temporary entry into its ranks as ours is can mobilise the expertise it needs. And this will also require far more flexible payment structures.

There is no realistic assessment of where government actually needs more personnel. It is vastly deficient in some areas and over-staffed in others. Raag Darbari had a psychologically astute portrait of the two sources of government inefficiency. There is the conventional non-performance of employees. But in more cases the reason was subtler. The magnitude of the task was so overwhelming that most employees felt they would not be able to accomplish anything anyway. The evocative line, “itna kaam hai ki sab kaam thap pada hai”, was a wonderful reminder that if resources are not matched to objectives, it has a corrosive effect on motivation.

... contd.