Government’s retreat on lateral entry welcome

The move should be thought through, and made more objective.

The government’s backtracking on its move to enable lateral entry into the bureaucracy and cancellation of an advertisement for recruitment of 45 mid-level specialists in service was forced on it by circumstances and not, as Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh said, because it wanted to uphold the “constitutional mandate towards social justice.”

The minister said the Prime Minister wanted “the process of lateral entry to be aligned with the principles of equity” and so, three days after the advertisement was issued, the notification was scrapped. While the Congress and other opposition parties slammed it as another bid to undermine reservations, NDA allies also expressed concern over the move. The government had stoutly defended the ad, but took the U-turn when it realised that the criticism could hurt it.

It did not want to take a risk because some of the losses the BJP suffered in the Lok Sabha elections are thought to have been the result of an Opposition claim that it wanted to dilute the reservation policy. 

Violation of reservation norms was a genuine concern about the  government’s action. The government was not making stray or occasional appointments like those of Manmohan Singh or Nandan Nilekani in the past. A bunch of appointments were being made and they should only have been done in accordance with the State policy on reservations.

The declared aim of the move was to recruit people with domain expertise or proven leadership and managerial skills for specific roles for specific periods. Though it was claimed that this would infuse fresh ideas and dynamism into the bureaucracy, there was a real danger of cronyism and lack of transparency influencing and distorting the decisions. This should have been an equally valid reason for cancelling the proposal. 

Any policy, however conceived and presented, can be implemented only within the context of its circumstances. The persons brought in from the private sector would have their baggage, and would have functioned in policy formulation positions at the Joint Secretary level. There was also the danger of politics guiding the appointments, especially when it is seen as influencing decisions in other areas of governance.

It was not lost on anyone that the lateral entry advertisement came close on the heels of the government lifting the longstanding ban on the entry of members of the RSS, the BJP’s ideological parent, into the bureaucracy. Lateral entry also cannot be seen as a remedy to cure systemic maladies in governance, and it is wrong to consider merit and social justice as mutually exclusive categories.

The UPSC has in the past made appointments of experts within the framework of its established recruitment policy. The government’s retreat is also a sign of its vulnerability. It now has to listen to other voices within its camp and in the Opposition. And that’s a good thing for democratic decision-making.