For many in the opposition and the chattering classes, any decision to depart from the status quo is tantamount to the skies falling down.  

The recent decision of the central government to put out an advertisement inviting applications from experienced professionals for joint secretary positions (JS) in various ministries has created a furore. In considerable part, this is simply due to a lack of trust in the government.

For many in the opposition and the chattering classes, any decision to depart from the status quo is tantamount to the skies falling down. While it is certainly the case that the government has taken actions that have invited this distrust, one needs to step back and ask some basic questions about the premises underlying this course of action.

To begin with the most basic question: are India’s administrative structures and personnel adequate to address the challenges facing the country? The answer would surely be, no.

If that’s the case, what should be done? The multiple reports of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission gathering dust are a stark testimony that we have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done, but have even greater confidence that it will not happen. There is no appetite in the political class and the civil service (for the most part) for serious reforms. There are too many entrenched interests who have much to lose if the system is both competent and honest. No rentier voluntarily lets go of his rents; no monopolist wants competition.

Nonetheless, there are many people in power who would like some improvement at least, which means that administrative reforms will occur occasionally, but only at the margins and very gradually. The case of lateral entry to bolster expertise in the government is a case in point.

The sheer complexity of issues in specific domains means that generalists with broad administrative experience need to be complemented with people with expertise – defined broadly as a set of specific competencies and domain knowledge – to provide policy makers with an authoritative basis for decision making.

But the question of “expertise” raises, in turn, a whole new set of questions and challenges.

First, who wants expertise? Where is the demand coming from? Is it from the secretary that he/she have a JS who is a specialist in the area that the particular ministry covers? The minister? Or the PM and the PMO? If, as one suspects, it’s the last then both the minister and the secretary can – and will – find countless ways to undermine the JS who can only rely on supportive bosses to make headway. A direct line to the PMO is helpful but is not a substitute.

Second, are the level and conditions of service appropriate? Lateral entrants to the GoI have succeeded under two conditions. Either they come at the top (at secretary level or minister of state rank), or they come as advisers and over time win the trust of the system and get appointed as secretaries subsequently. In the former case, one has an executive role but is at the top of the hierarchy; in the latter case, the person is not at the top but does not have an executive role. But the lateral hires will neither be at the top, nor stay long enough to become a part of the system.

The civil service is extremely clubbish and tends to treat lateral entrants much the same way it would if infected with a virus – a desperate fightback with antibodies to neutralise the invading species. In a system where hierarchy invariably trumps expertise, and where the waiting game does not favour outsiders, this matters.

Third, where is this expertise most needed? The government has advertised for positions largely in the economic and infrastructure sectors. These sectors could certainly do with more expertise and arguably there is less room for subjective evaluation of candidates’ expertise.

But it’s not clear why the government would want IAS officers to continue to run Air India while advertising for an external candidate for joint secretary in the ministry of civil aviation. One might have thought that one needs a specific expertise to run an airline compared to policy making within the ministry, which at least is a little more in tune with what the civil service is trained in.

Indeed, given the paucity of talent across different branches of government, one might think that as a practical matter it might be easier to strengthen the legislative branch by allowing parliamentary committees, which have no staff members, to have lateral staff hires who serve at the discretion of the committee chairs. The incentive here is admittedly low since the executive branch would not want to have too much competence in parliamentary committees that are supposed to hold them to account.

However, another part of the government that desperately needs expertise via lateral entry is the composition of the dozens of regulatory commissions that have been set up in recent years. These have been essentially captured as post-retirement jobs for the civil service and judiciary. A simple rule that at least half the members of all regulatory commissions be lateral hires under the age of 50 (or 55) would bring desperately needed expertise into these bodies. But again, who has the incentive to do so since post-retirement jobs are prized blandishments?

Fourth, a serious lateral entry programme can only be institutionalised if there is a commensurate exit programme. A human being can survive much longer without food than without expelling body waste. It is imperative that the civil service rule mandates that after two decades of service – or whenever a cohort reaches the JS level – 10 per cent of the batch be mandatorily retired. One exam – no matter how good its design is – cannot be the sole criteria for lifetime employment where rising to the top is seen as inevitable.

Fifth, if the government needs greater expertise – and there is no doubt that it does – surely there is considerable room in nurturing that within the civil service itself. There have been numerous suggestions to create incentives to acquire expertise within six broad domains: economic ministries, infrastructure-related ministries, social sectors and human capital, security, natural resource-related sectors, and urban management. There is a crying need to rapidly develop expertise in the last (urban management), given the dismal state of urbanisation and future urban growth. Training programmes, study leave, transfers and postings, and career pathways should all have an internal logic directed towards developing expertise in one of these domains.

But the reality is that no government wants to reduce its discretionary power even slightly with regard to transfers and appointments. Expertise is neither a sibling of loyalty nor a friend of a specific social identity and as long as these attributes are more important, expertise will remain an orphan child.

Devesh Kapur is the Starr Foundation South Asia Studies Professor and Asia Programs Director at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University