Indian bureaucracy worst in Asia, says survey

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Indian bureaucracy - ranked the worst in Asia comes as no surprise !

Even China has been dealing with corruption with an iron hand - death penalties are being issued to some of the more corrupt, while our ministers have been ignoring findings of the Lok Ayukta & protect corrupt bureaucrats.

How do we change this ?  The only hope is through activities from prajas. Unless citizens fight collectively, nothing will change.

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Problem is we try to rate people, and go by opinions.

Rate "quailty of services" provided by organizations run by IAS officers.

ACRs have opinions. Why do I care about opinions of individuals about other individuals?

I want performance benchmarks and complaince index to the benchmarks for organizations run by the babus, period.

Examples to make the point clear?

Whats the point in ranking say Mr Praveen Sood. I would rahter want to know if Bangalore traffic is better managed to day than it was 2 years ago. Can I?

I want to know if Traffic Police has measured ROI on the money spent on traffic improvement projects. Can I?

We focus on people way too much. Time is better spent on assessing or building institutions. Time spent in assessing or building people and personalities is, well, simple waste.

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ACRs are not meant for public consumption - they are classified documents and assessment tools for evaluating the performance of all government servants

- ACRs contain 3 parts

A - Self assessment - the officer concerned is supplied with a blank format of ACR to record his own assessments of targets and achievements during a particular period of his service.  They should be corroborated with facts and figures

B - Reporting Officer - The next higher officer - He is responsible for keeping a close watch on the performance aspects of the targets and achievements set for his subordinate and makes his own assessment either by agreeing or disagreeing with the self assessment.  If the Reporting officer wants to disagree with the self assessment, he has to corroborate with documentary evidence that the officer has not recorded his own assessment correctly.   He has to grade the officer with his own observations - columns include average/good/verygood/outstanding. 

C - Reviewing/Countersigning Officers - based on the above  recorded reporting aspects the Reviewing officer needs to agree with or disagree with either of the two and record his own decision to agree with the grading either by elevating the grading or downgrading the grade given.

In certain cases, there will be countersigning authorities if there are more higher officers who are directly watching the performance of his subordinates or for those who are on deputations/foreign service.  

I would not like to go into other aspects of how the adverse remarks are treated in the system, the processes of giving a chance to explain against the adverse remarks etc.

Suffice it to say that behind all these, there lurks an element of favoritism, nepotism, need for elevation of grades due to expediency of promotions, fear of facing revolt, animosity etc.  - all these are beyond the scope of transparency and accountability for public consumption.

Since they are 'classified documents' and all government servants are governed by service conditions/rules they cannot be made public, notwithstanding Prajas' or demands from any quarter except in the case of inquiries.

Another aspect that has to be kept in mind while passing uncharitable remarks against these finely tuned crem la de creme is - most of the IAS officers would not like to have political masters as their controlling officers. Their training encompasses every gamut of public service and their faculties are fine tuned to respond to the sacred service of public interest and not a few public figures who treat them with disgusting behavior in public even though they know their 'temporary powers' and the same political figure will have to wait at the door step of the IAS officer when he looses power.  

But... law provides that they salute such worthy/unworthy masters and have to bend like Beckhams, some times for survival.

- Vasanth Mysoremath

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Thanks VKM for telling us more about the ACRs. I bet many members were not aware ACR in this much detail.

Would you know if there are other performance apraisal systems besides ACRs? Do sarkaari bodies set goals for themselves and them spend time at year end trying to measure themselves against the goals? Forget whether such system works or not. But is a process or system like this present in the first place? In any GoK bodies? Any ministers or babus who follow such system/process for their departments?

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 I didnt know about these too. Looks like they are performance appraisals which are usually private. No reason to make them public unless there is a management drive to retain openness and even then it should be within the administrative setup.

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