TEACHING POLITICS

i

TEACHING POLITICS

In this Issue ARTICLES

G. Haragopal and V. Sivalinga Prasad

Administrative Concepts: The Question of Values

B. Venkateswarlu

Theories of Organisation and Development

John Forester

A Critical Empirical Framework for the Analysis of Public Policy

Satya Deva

Administration in Developing Societies

G. Ram Reddy and G. Haragopal

Bureaucracy and Development: Case Study of Rural India

A.S. Narang

Administration, Politics and Society: Indian Case Study

O.P. Sharma

Public Accountability and Administration: Anti-Corruption Strategies in India

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Prof. G. Ram Reddy, Vice-Chancellor, A.P. Open University Hyderabad.

Prof. G. Haragopal, Centre for Economic and Social Studies Hyderabad.

Dr. B. Venkateswarlu, Dept. of Political Science, University Evening College, Warangal.

Dr. Satya Deva, Department of Public Administration, Punjab University, Chandigarh.

Dr. V. Sivalinga Prasad. A.P. Open University, Hyderabad.

Prof. John Forester teaches Political Science at Rutgers Uni., Newark, New Jersey (U.S.A.)

Dr. Amarjit S. Narang, teaches politics at Shyam Lal College, Delhi University, Delhi.

Dr. OP. Sharma, Vice-Principal, Bhagat Singh (Evening) College, Delhi University, Delhi.

1

1ADMINISTRATIVE CONCEPTS: THE QUESTION OF VALUES

G. Haragopal and V. Sivalinga Prasad

Values, which form the basis for human behaviour, constitute an important dimension of social phenomenon. The study of values of individuals, groups, cultures

and societies can provide a clue to the understanding of the socio, political and economic transformation. How values are shaped and altered is a cardinal

aspect of any discussion on development or change in any society. While the values of the individual are largely shaped by the general socio-economic set-up,

the values of the socio-economic set-up are determined by the level and type of productive processes. The striking variation in the value framework of

different groups in the society is primarily due to the differences in the economic interests of these groups. The variations in the value set-up of individuals

within the group is on account of socialisation process which includes exposure, schooling, association with others and contemporary social events etc.

The heterogeneous character of value framework indicates the wide ranging conflict of interests in the society. It is such factors that account for the

complexity in behaviour which poses problems, if not challenges, to the correct understanding and analysis of the social behaviour and its value premises.

2

As values get crystallised in a society, they transform themselves into structured institutions through which they get articulated. In the social pyramid

these institutions range from the family at the base to the state at the top. The grip of the values can be perceived from the relative stability of these

institutions. Therefore, the study of institutions and their value framework is one important method to understand the larger social phenomenon. In this

context study of political and administrative institutions assume considerable importance to a serious student of developmental process. In most of the

developing countries, where the political institutions are not well developed, the administrative structures have come to play a dominating role. Hence

the study of administration is of critical importance in these countries.

A study of administrative institutions in the past has been undertaken particularly from the point of their configuration, internal processes and other

managerial aspects. The studies which throw light on the value framework of the institution are scanty. This may be partly due to the influence of thinkers

like Max Weber who assumed that these instruments can be value-neutral. This raises a fundamental question whether any institution or an instrument can

be value-neutral at all. The notions of value-bound, value-neutral and value-free institutions exist due to seeming (apparent) variations in the social,

economic and cultural set-up. While the value-boundedness is sharply reflected in a heterogeneous society, they get concealed in societies whose value

premises are deep and well entrenched. In Riggsian parlance it is in prismatic societies where value-complexity tends to be high. Transformation of a 'prismatic

society' into a 'refracted society' gradually gives rise to a socio-economic framework where the value premises of the society tend to acquire relative

stability. The process of transition calls for change in the concepts and practices which can be noticed in the evolution of administrative theory. The

classical concepts of organisation laid emphasis on structured human relations for the purposes of economy and efficiency, which in turn would step up

the quality and quantity in the productive processes. In the decision-making concept, attainment of the goals has

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come to occupy utmost importance. Simon separated values from ethics. For, his theory of rationality emphasises on selecting appropriate means to achieve

the ends rather than the broader ethical questions involved both in the choice of the ends and in selection of the means to achieve those ends. Most of

the administrative concepts like Scientific Management (Taylor), Theory of Authority (Chester Barnard), Human Relations Movement (Elton Mayo), originated

in response to the qualitative changes that were taking place in the larger system. This is significant in the context of transformation of feudal structures

into capitalist organisations in the West and particularly in the United States.

The concept of scientific management seeks to economise human energy for its efficient and effective utilisation. Dissipation of human energy was a part

of the feudal structures which were opposed to the release of the productive forces. The release of productive forces compel the removal of constraints.

It is this attempt that gave rise to the concept of scientific management. On the human relations front, the worker needed to be better managed for greater

productivity. As a result, the feudal authoritarian structures had to give way to engineering of human relations. Barnard cautioned the managers that authority

lies in the person who is accepting it than in the person who is exercising it. It is this logic that led to the reorientation of human relations. The

Hawthorne experiments were mainly intended to understand the human psychology so that the knowledge it produced could be geared for greater productivity.

Thus human engineering to step up productivity was the main premise of the new experiments and the concepts.

This only indicates that the debate on the question of values is closely related to the phase of social transformation and level of economic development.

It is this historical process that raises two basic questions; one, are the countries where these concepts are being taught passing through the same type

of transition and two, can the present level of development in the third world countries be compared to the level and type of development obtained in the

western countries when these concepts were evolved. It is these

4

pertinent questions that are discussed in this section.

II

An examination of the syllabi of different universities particularly the papers on administrative theory, development and comparative public administration

and management science, reveals that there is a common pattern. The paper on administrative theory in the Indian universities includes the concepts of

Woodrow Wilson, Luther Gullic, Urwick, Mary Follet, Henri Fayol, F.W. Taylor, Max Weber, Elton Mayo, Chester Barnard, Herbert Simon, F.W. Riggs, Douglas

McGreger, Herzberg, George Homans, Rensis Likert Warren Bennis, Abraham Maslow, Chris Argyris, Yezhkhel Dror, Mosca, Michels, Colebiwski, Robert Dahl,

Raven, Etzioni, Kingsley, Kelshell, Van Riper, Subramanyam etc. In a couple of universities Marx also figures in.

The paper on management science includes scientific management, administrative planning, division of work, coordination, management by objectives, management

by exception, work study, work measurement, work simplification, net-work analysis, systems analysis, management information systems, inventory control,

O&M, C P M and PERT, PPBS, operations research, cost-benefit analysis etc. These techniques and concepts are the continuation of the classical approach

which emphasised efficiency, economy and rationality as basic premises of the organisation phenomenon.

The list of thinkers and concepts indicates the over-riding bomination of the thinkers from West and more so of the U.S.A. The concepts they developed have

had their origins in the western experience and their needs and demands. The United States of America, where the productive forces have been triggered

through capitalist mode of development, witnessed major technological break-throughs in the area of production and experienced major changes in the area

of human relations in organisations. The 'administrative theory' is the response or the result of developments and changes in organised human relations.

It is these concepts that were imported, if not transplanted, into most of the third world countries. But to the dismay of many of the western thinkers,

5

the concepts and the practices stemming from these concepts made no impact on the administrative process. It is this experience that called for a different

conceptual framework to explain the organisation phenomenon.

The rise of Afro-Asian nations in the forties and fifties gave rise to new trends of thinking in the field of organisational theory. It was found that the

experience gained by the U.S.A. and the west was not relevant to most of the third world countries. For their economies have been backward in content and

feudal in structure. The transition of a feudal society into a capitalist culture may render the organisational theory to some extent relevant, but most

of the third world countries are stuck up in crisis of change. The constraints for capitalist development tend to be both internal and international. Therefore,

the scope for the rise of capitalism in most of the third world countries is quite restricted. Added to it, most of the governments of these countries

explicitly stated in their policies and programmes that they are 'committed' to 'socialistic pattern of society'. It is these conditions and postures that

limit the usefulness of the concepts developed in the west. The western thinkers themselves conceded this point and pleaded for new theoretical paradigms

to explain the organisational phenomenon in the third world countries. It is this recognition that led to the genesis of comparative public administrative

and development administration approaches. These two trends do find a place in the teaching of administrative theories in India.

An examination of the syllabi of comparative public administration of different universities indicates that the countries which are recommended for the

purpose of comparative analysis are; U.S.A., U.K., France and U.S.S.R. The concepts generally discussed in this paper are; the Weberian ideal type, the

general systems approach, efficiency and rationality model, Riggsian concepts of agraria and industria, characteristics of colonial administration, administrative

modernisation etc. These concepts compare the developing countries with that of the western models. The common theme in these papers is to explain the

variations in different administrative patterns. They also attempt to explain the

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variation and point out that variation as the cause for the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the organisations in the third world countries; they indirectly

suggest that western models would help in overcoming the growth crisis. Thus the comparative public administration approach reinforced the western values

and premises as a frame of reference for our understanding the administrative phenomenon.

The paper on development administration which is an offshoot of comparative approach focuses its attention on the transition or change in the third world

countries. Under this paper the ideas of Hahn Been Lee, Riggs, Milton Esman, Swerdlo, Pai Panandiker find a place. In addition the concepts of administrative

modernisation, innovations in developing countries, institution building, citizen participation, problems of bureaucracies etc., are included. The syllabus

of development administration in content is not quite different from comparative public administration as it also includes several concepts and paradigms

of comparative public administration. In some of the universities these two papers are clubbed into one paper.

In an attempt to explain the variations on the one hand and transition on the other, the teaching of 'administrative theory' is dominated by the western

capitalist values either as a frame of reference or as a tool to explain the variations in the organisational phenomenon. The major limitation of such

an approach lies in its failure to explain the general ambiguity and growing complexity in the value frame of the organisations in most of the third world

countries. The large scale inefficiency, rigid heirarchical structures, authoritarianism, suspicion, absence of team-work, breakdown of coordination, centralisation

of decision-making are some of the typical characteristics of the bureaucracies in the third world countries in general and in India in particular. The

concepts that are taught in the class rooms are not capable of explaining as to why the administrative system behaves the way it does. This indicates that

the value premises on which our bureaucracies operate are entirely different.

7

This debate gives rise to one basic question, viz., what are the value premises of third world bureaucracies and where

from they imbibe these values. Riggsian analysis does provide a clue to understand the relevance of social values to the larger socio-economic system. And

this leads us to a point where we have to ask another question whether the administrative concepts in their present form are capable of explaining the

causal relations that are at work in the administrative phenomenon. Even in a country like France, Michel Crozier in his analysis on bureaucratic phenomenon

found that there has been a shift in the value framework of the French society which is not adequately reflected in the French bureaucracy. Hence he finds

the bureaucracy in France not being able to cope with the needs and demands of the society. It is such factors that limit the utility of western theories

in explaining the organisational or development phenomenon in developing countries like India.

That the third world countries are passing through a rapid transition is now universally accepted. It is this transition that renders understanding of the

social phenomenon difficult. This complexity arises on account of the fact that these societies continue to be under the grip-of feudal value framework

but have adopted capitalist strategies for developmental purposes. Added to it they swear by socialist goals. It is this three dimensional phenomenon with

its inherent contradictions that cause the complexity. The attempt to reconcile these contradictory values make the task of understanding the organisational

phenomenon difficult. Therefore, the administrative concepts built on western value framework prove to be inadequate in explaining and analysing the administrative

phenomenon.

III

That the administrative systems cannot be separated from their larger socio-economic systems needs no emphasis. If this premise is accepted, then the limitations

of administrative concepts are too obvious to need any explanation. If the purpose of theory is to explain the causal relations, the existing 'administrative

theory' is stuck with superficial causes in explaining the serious efforts that are experienced in the organisations. As a result administrative theory

incorporated

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by and large in our syllabi becomes ineffective in explaining the administrative phenomenon. In order to be more effective the explanation has to go beyond

the administrative system and find the causes in the larger system.

In the study of administration, its inter-relations with the larger system assumes considerable importance. The study of administration is basically a study

of change and its impact on organisations. Therefore, the focus of administrative concepts will have to be shifted to the larger issues and broader value

framework. This focus would render the concepts and the thinkers who discussed and analysed social transformation relevant to the administrative theory.

While western concepts could explain the transition that those societies passed through, the framework must be broadened so as to include the global experience.

This would enable one to appreciate critically the organisation phenomenon—its strength and limitations.

The western theories have been emphasising increasing role to the state and its widespread instruments. They also assume that this intervention is positive.

In contrast, third world thinkers like Gandhi were suspicious of the state and pleaded for the village swarajya based on the concept of total decentralisation

of power. The scheme that Gandhi suggested included increasing control by the lower level organisations over the higher levels. In addition his concept

of people's participation through non-cooperation, civil disobedience and satyagraha added a new dimension to the process of change and the tasks that

the administrative system should face.

Development thinkers like Paulo Friere from Latin America or Frantz Fanon from America discussed in their works the basic trends in the change process.

The discussion on colonialism and its influences on the one hand and the increasing concientization or politicisation of the masses on the other does provide

an insight into the challenges and the crisis that administrative systems are facing. The works of these two thinkers explain the profound changes that

the developing societies are passing through. This comprehensive understanding would give one the capacity to relate the administrative sub-system to the

larger socio-economic

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system.

The theories of social change through resolution of contradictions as developed by Marx, Lenin and Mao should find their due place in the courses on administrative

concepts. For the class struggle, the role of the state and the consequent process of change provide a wider perspective. The role and nature of administration

cannot be entirely different from those of the state. In a class society, can the administrative system be above the class interests? Can it cast its support

in favour of the poor against the will of the privileged class? Can the state play a positive role in such a situation is a fundamental question that a

student of administration requires to appreciate. This understanding provides an alternative angle to look at the complex value system of the organisation

phenomenon.

References

1. Barnard, Chester, "The Functions of Executive, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1940.

2. Esman, Milton J., "The Politics of Development Administration", in John D. Montgomery and William J. Siffins (ed.), Approaches to Politics, Administration

and Change, McGraw Hill, New York, 1966.

3. Fanon, Frantz, Wretched of the Earth, Grove, New York, 1965.

4. Friere Paulo, Cultural Action for Freedom, Penguin, London, 1977.

5. Gandhi, "Village Swarajya", Navajeevan, Ahmedabad, 1962.

6. Gulick, Luther and Urwick, Papers on Science of Administration, Institute of Public Administration, New York, 1937.

7. Lenin, V.I., Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Collected Works, Moscow, 1972.

8. Mao Tse-tung, Collected Works, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1965.

9. Marx, Karl, Collected Works, International Publishers, New York, 1975.

10. Mooney, James D., The Principles of Organisation, Harper and Brother, New York, 1939.

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11. Nicholas, Henry, Public Administration and Public Affairs, Prentice-Hall, Inc. Engle Wood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1975.

12. Palombara, Joseph La, "An Overview of Bureaucracy and Political Development", in Joseph La Palombara (ed.). Bureaucracy and Political Development, Princeton,

1963.

13. Riggs, Fred W., "An Ecological Approach: The Sala Model", in Ferrel Heady and Sybil C. Stokes, (ed.), Papers on Comparative Public Administration, University

of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1962.

14. Simon, Herbert A., Administrative Behaviour, Macmillan Co., New York, 1945.

15. Waldo, D., "Scope of the Theory of Public Administration", in James C. Charles Worth (ed.), Theory and Practice of Public Administration, Scope, Objectives

and Methods. The American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Philadelphia, 1968.

16. Wilson, Woodrow, "The Study of Public Administration", Political Science Quarterly, 2 June, 1887.

11

2 THEORIES OF ORGANISATION AND DEVELOPMENT

B. Venkateswarlu

There has been a growing discontent among the students of administrative theory especially in the Third World countries like India about the inadequacies

of the western theory of administration as an explanation to the social reality and its criticism.1 They have begun to realise that these theories, originated

as they are in the west, may provide something of a conceptual framework for analysis of distribution of power but cannot serve as a substitute for such

analysis. Because, they came to know, of late, that these theories leave many questions pertaining to social reality unanswered. They have been even expressing

doubts whether there can be a realistic theory of administration at all.2

This being the case with the Third World intellectuals, the thinking in the west, it appears, is in no way different. The western liberal theorists have

characterised the organisation theory with such phrases as "elephantine" and "jungle".3

In the face of this persisting confusion in the countries of its origin and development, the theory had interestingly gained prominence among the administrators,

academics and the leaders of the communist parties in Soviet Union and its allies i.e., East European countries.4 These countries were accused of increasing

bureaucratisation of their societies,5 thus raising serious doubts about the credibility of the

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socialist system.

Be that as it may, Marxist intellectuals have recently shown concern about administrative theory.6 While this concern has been to analyse and understand

the structure and functioning of the capitalist state, there has been a growing tendency among them to attempt to arrive at new theories such as "Marxist

theory of administration",7 and "Leninist theory of organisation"8, which involve the risk of vitiating the use made of the concepts of Marxism.9 Instead

of clarifying the existing confusion, this has actually added to the existing one. What is more, this tendency has been treated as "yet another jungle".

With a view to understand the nature of the existing confusion in the field of administrative theory, this article makes an attempt to note the sociological

origins of the theory and its nature. This in itself might contain a clarification to the problem whether the theory of administration is a universalistic,

realistic and scientific theory that can be useful as an explanation to the social reality. It also examines briefly the Marxists' concern for the theory

and its repercussions in the pursuit of scientific knowledge about the social reality.

II

The emergence of the theory of administration as a distinct intellectual discipline in pursuing knowledge about social reality has been a recent phenomenon.

The post-war period has been marked by proliferation of a number of institutions both private and public, both in the Third World countries and the capitalist

west, for the purpose of teaching, research and consultancy in management, organisation and administration. Simultaneously the establishment of separate

departments of administrative sciences as estranged from the traditional disciplines such as Political Science and Economics in the universities was on

the increase. Though the origin of the modern management and organisational techniques can be traced back to the latter half of the 19th century i.e.,

in the initial stages of the formation of monopolies in the west, the reasons for their increased importance

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can be found in the post-second world war developments which forced the monopoly corporate business to reorganise and reorient their strategies for the

purpose of readjusting themselves to the changed situation.

The process of decolonisation had put a full-stop to the ruthless and naked exploitation of the colonial type; and the newly emerged nations had begun to

plan national reconstruction of their economies as independent nations. While the former appeared to have been a potential threat to the capitalist west

for exploiting enormous raw materials and cheap labour, the latter had threatened them of their vast markets in these countries.

Further, in the first half of this century, the emergence of Soviet Union after the October Revolution as an entirely different system of society opposed

to capitalism and imperialism, with its proclaimed ideological commitments of solidarity towards the rising working class movements and social revolutions

in various countries, had posed a major threat to western capitalism and its global interests as a whole.

The War and its aftermath had witnessed the emergence of U.S.A. and the Soviet Union as two major powers with two different ideologies, and this had resulted

in the bi-polar division of the world into Capitalist camp and Socialist camp. The war was followed by a short period of cold war between the two camps.

It was a war waged actually between two different ideologies, fought by means of vigorous ideological propaganda to attract the decolonized nations.

The unfolding reality confirmed Lenin's thesis that with capitalism reaching the highest stage of its development, viz. monopoly capitalism or imperialism,

what is exported is not capital goods but capital itself. It meant a marriage between the monopoly capital and the 'indigenous capital' of the newly emerged

nations, the purpose of which had been the pumping out of enormous profits from these nations to the developed west.

It would not ordinarily be possible for imperialism to accomplish this task. But as there was no contradiction between monopoly capital and the so-called

indigenous capital whose interests boiled down to one task viz. making huge profits, it

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became easier for imperialism to accomplish this task. And capitalism met this task by the process of reorienting the world outlook of the populations in

the newly emerged, underdeveloped nations. This mental reorientation was total in the sense that it made an all out attempt to condition the thinking of

the entire populace of a given country, socially, politically, economically, culturally, ethically, educationally and religiously. It had to mould, against

all odds, the total outlook of the population to believe in the virtues of capitalism, in the face of degradation of human life under ruthless, albeit

indirect, exploitation of the masses. Without such exploitation capitalism could not dream of its survival.

Thus, capitalism in the epoch of imperialism does not only export capital but also capitalist ideology. And the tasks of this ideology are not merely to

prepare the people to believe in the 'rational' virtues of capitalist development which acquire distinct nomenclature such as industrialisation, modernisation

etc., but to condition them both mentally and physically to serve capitalism. As part of its overall strategy, capitalism in the epoch of imperialism exports

ideas. There is a proliferation of educational institutions for the purpose of imparting skills, techniques of management, organisation and administration

of the societies in the underdeveloped countries, that serve the requirements of imperialism. The already existing institutions are injected into the system.

Various trusts and foundations like Ford and Rockefeller give scholarships to the intellectuals of these countries to go to the west to be trained both

directly in their numerous business schools and universities, and indirectly, be attracted to their life-styles. After their return, these intellectuals

occupy the key positions in the prestigious institution of management and organisation and also in the administration of these societies.

This being the reason for the origin and existence of the theory of administration or organisation in these countries which had come to serve the interests

of capitalism and the resultant capitalist class-rule, the students, atleast the conscientious ones of administrative theory feel rather naively that the

theory can really serve the purpose of the society as a whole. When it cannot do so, they are disillusioned. And

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this disillusionment has led them to search for new theories of administration. As a result has emerged "Marxist theories of administration or organization".

The aims and objectives of the theory and practice of administration, organisation or management, as it is distinctly called, are not however, intended

for the development of the society as a whole either in the countries of its origin or in the countries which imported it. Contrarily its aims are, firstly,

to keep the less developed countries persistently underdeveloped which has been the historical necessity of capitalism in the epoch of imperialism, and

secondly, to protect a small minority of capitalists of their immense wealth and their rights in the ownership of the means of production as their private

property. In other words, the theory and practice of administration is in reality nothing but the theory and practice of exploitation and oppression by

a small minority over a big majority, i.e., the capitalist class-rule.

III

Though there are a number of thinkers who have contributed to the theme, for the purpose of a brief analysis, one could choose from the writings of a few.

They are Fredrick Winslow Taylor, Max Weber, Elton Mayo, Chester Barnard, Herbert Simon and Fred W. Riggs. The ideas of the first two are considered as

"classical"; the next three were named as belonging to "human relations school". Simon and Riggs fall under "Decision-making" and "Development" Schools

respectively.

The history of capitalist development11 has been divided into three phases namely, (1) mercantile capitalism, (2) competitive capitalism, and (3) monopoly

capitalism or imperialism.18 According to Marx, mercantile capitalism was "a system of robbery . . . directly connected with plundering, piracy, kidnapping

slaves and colonial conquest".13 It was the age of merchant-adventurers who formed themselves into small joint trades. Thus they were the founders of the

modern system of joint stock companies. Accumulation of wealth through their expeditions had been an encouragement for them to become small entrepreneurs

who began to produce a limited number of commodities in

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common circulation. These commodities included the basic food stuffs in more or less unprocessed form such as grains, meat, fish and meals, dairy products,

vegetables, liquors, bread and biscuits and molasses, tobacco, coal and candles, lamp oils and soaps, tallow bees wax and paper. Actually, these and many

more other household needs were actually produced by the households in the country-side at their homes to meet their daily requirements.14 In this period,

the role of the family remained central in the production processes of the society. This process of production was simple and homogeneous. By 1850 the

capital's capture of this simple process of production of household needs in the country-side was complete. This gave rise to growth of urban centres where

all these goods were produced by the machinery under factory system, resulting in the bulk production, available at cheap prices. This hit the harmonious

life of the country-side by uprooting the agrarian population from their stead only to be absorbed as wage labourers by the factories at the fast growing

urban centres; with this, it did not take much time for the capitalist entrepreneurs to compete with each other for producing more to amass more wealth.

Production of more commodities resulted in further cheapening of goods, and thus the labour-power. Those who are familiar with rudimentary laws of capitalist

development know that this process (known as "falling rate of profit") ultimately goes against the actual producers i.e., workers. With this capitalism

enters the competitive stage.

At the risk of over-simplification Baran and Sweezy described this stage as follows: "The competitive firm was small relative to the size of the industry

of which it was a member. It brought factors of production (labour, raw material and machinery) and sold standardized product at prices over which it had

no control. In these circumstances, it could strive for maximum profits only by improving its techniques and/or organization—in other words, by actions

which were necessarily confined to its own production process. Maximum profits and optimum methods of production thus went together resulting in the more

and better products at lower cost".15

17

It is at this stage as Godelier had pointed out, that the capitalist does transform one faction of his capital into labour power and tries to get the best

results from this. This means, influencing the factors of production. Analysis of these factors is the concern of what is called "scientific labour management"

or "rational organization of labour". At the beginning of this century F.W. Taylor studied this rationalization of labour with a view to eliminating all

waste of time in the workers' movements and determining the movements and speed of motion best adapted to the machine. This meant, in short, a predominantly

psychological adaptation of human mechanism to the mechanics of industry. Taylor's axiom was that for every operation a worker has to carry out the 'one

best way'. The worker has to do his work in accordance with the 'best norms', thereby economising motion, time and the money of the enterprise. In order

to encourage him to conform to the norms and to faster emulation, the worker is offered a system of bonuses. Scientific labour management seeks to establish

the conditioned reflex, most profitable for the enterprise, to produce a human production automation physically conditioned and 'stimulated' psychological

spring of prestige and material spring of the bonus16. And this brought the enterprise huge profits not only by 'scientifically' exploiting the labourers

of their labour but also an attendant process of capitalist division of labour resulting in deskilling that conditioned the physical and mental faculties

of human beings for the sole purpose of profit-making. Taylor's "Bethlehem Steel Experiments" proved this point more than sufficiently. The table on the

next page shows his results.

Each worker who could handle 16 tons of iron ore on an average per day previously, was made to handle 59 tons, an increase of about 270%. Average cost of

handling one ton of ore was reduced substantially, of course, with a meagre rise of about 63% in the wages of the workers which is highly disproportionate

to the output. It may be noted here that "Taylorism" was widely prevelant in many industries in America in the last decades of the l9th century. The implementation

of this principle, as Braverman has pointed out,

18

table with 3 columns and 5 rows

Old Plan

New Plan Task Work

1. The No. of yard-labourers was reduced from below

400&600

140

2. Average No. of tons per man per day

16

59

3. Average earnings per man per day

$ 1.15

$ 1.88

4. Average cost of handling a ton of 2240 pounds

$ 0.072

$ 0.033

table end

Source : Taylor, F.W., Principles of Management, Harper and Brothers. New York, 1911, p. 71.

resulted in "the dissociation of the labour process from the skills of the workers". Workers were made "to depend not at all upon their abilities but entirely

upon the practices of management". Work under this system of 'scientific management' is in reality mental and physical violence on the part of the capitalist

over the mass of workers. Studs Terkel in the introduction to his recent book has aptly described the conditions of workers under such a system. To quote

him:

"This book, being about work, is by its very nature, about violence—to the spirit as well as to the body. It is about ulcers as well as accidents, about

shouting matches as well as fist fights, about nervous breakdowns as well as kicking the dog around. It is above all (or beneath all) about daily humiliations.

To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded among the great many of us. . .

It is about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for

a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. Perhaps immortality too is part of the quest. To be remembered was the wish, spoken or

19

unspoken, of the heroes of this book. . .

For the many, there is hardly concealed discontent. The blue-collar blues is no more bitterly sung than the white-collar moan. "I am a machine" says the

spot-welder. "I am caged" says the bank-teller, and echoes the hotel clerk. "I am a mule" says the steel worker. "A monkey can do what I do" says the receptionist.

''I am less than a, farm implement" says the migrant worker. "I am an object" says the high-fashioned model. Blue-collar and white call up on the identical

phrase, "I am a robot". . .

Nora Watson (an interviewee) may have said it most succinetly. 'I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly line

worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people".17

Such is the origin and nature of Taylor's scientific management of the process of production under competitive capitalism where human beings are transformed

into automations by way of deskilling them through the process of capitalist division of labour. They are reduced to be a part of 'factors of production',

'personnel' and lastly, a 'resource'. The verb to manage was derived from manus. the Latin for hand, originally meant to train a horse in his paces, to

cause him to do exercises of the manage.18 In a word, it is a process of dehumanizing the human beings. People become neurotic. The author of the 'theory'

F.W. Taylor himself was, it appears, "at the very least, a neurotic crank".19

IV

Under capitalism, men are reduced to the status of commodities. However if the commodities (lifeless products) cannot resist this reduction, David Wells

pointed out, men can and do. The impossibility of reducing workers to mere automata, together with capital's ever renewed drive to achieve this reduction,

is the fundamental contradiction underlying class-struggle in capitalism.20 In the last half of the 19th century, America had witnessed a spate of trade

union

20

movements, working class unrest, agitation for higher wages, reduction in working hours and better living conditions.21

Given the state of dehumanization of the working class and growing trade union movement the results of Taylorism— new problems of management and organisation

arose in the capitalist industry in the west especially in America, the first decade of the 20th century. The industry summoned sociologists to investigate

into the problems of industrial unrest and to suggest measures for increasing productivity and efficiency. Elton Mayo, a professor in industrial sociology

at Graduate School of Business Management, Harvard University, who carried his research with the support of Rockfeller and Carnegie Foundation Grants,

was one of the important sociologists who came to the rescue of the industry. Mayo and his colleagues, concentrating mainly on the behaviour of the workers

and their productive capacity, keeping in view physiological, psychological, physical and economic aspects, came out with the conclusion through their

'Hathorne studies' that the whole problem is one of 'human relations'. For them, the whole problem appeared as a problem of human attitudes and sentiments,

not capitalist social relations of production. To them, what matters in industrial efficiency or inefficiency, increase or decrease in productivity was

individual's psychological make-up. For this, what is required is a kind of 'psycho-therapy'. No wonder it is called 'clinical' approach.

Thus the capitalist relations of production firstly reduces the workers to be psychos, it then examines the psychology of the workers to adapt them by odious

means to industry for efficiency and productivity. So much for the theory. Any way, it is because of these efforts by the "cow sociologists" like Elton

Mayo, that industrial sociology (that tries to find humanism in already dehumanised workers), industrial psychology (that tries to find a normal being

in a worker who was already a neurotic crank) and industrial and organisational consultancy (an immoral act of sharing in capitalists' decision-making)

came to the fore as separate disciplines to rescue capitalism from outside as it was already endangered from within. And the 'human relations school'

21

had emerged within the management and organisation theory as a distinct approach. This school was severely criticised by the later writers on organisation

and management. According to McGregor, these ideas on organisation and management presume that most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened

with punishment to get them to put forth adequate efforts toward the achievement of organisational objectives.22 Argyris, another writer, had commented

that the present organisational strategies developed and used by administrators (be they industrial, educational, religious, governmental or trade union)

lead to human and organisational decay.23 However, the ideas proposed by these critics are in no way different in that they are indeed intended to help

the management against the interests of the workers albeit in a different manner.

Capitalism treats the individual as the "ultimate entity". It reduces the multifarious relations in society to just one sort; the mere interdependence of

abstract labour, expressed in the cash nexus. Here people figure not as in the feudal mode of production as tenants, vassals, burghers, freeholders and

guildmen, or indeed as friends, members of different communities, political allies or opponents etc., but first and foremost as owners of commodities of

certain value. People are treated without regard to their specific qualities but as 'men'. The process of market exchange is such that each looks only

to his own advantage, thereby treating his commodities as private property, as property which others are excluded from controlling. It is worth noting

that the term "private" comes from the Latin "privare" meaning to deprive. Every exchange of commodity accentuates the principle; mine ergo thine; thine

ergo mine. What is reciprocated is the exclusion of ownership. As owners of private property, therefore, the equal "men" of commodity exchange are also

equally "individual" men who pursue interests exclusively their own."24 All 'individuals' are supposed to 'enjoy' in the words of Marx, "freedom, equality,

property and Bentham".-5 Freedom because both buyer and seller of a commodity . . . are constrained only by their free will. They contract as free agents,

and the agreement

22

they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality because each enters into relation with the other, as with

a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property because each disposes only what is his own. And Bentham because each

looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private

interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with

pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all shrewd providence work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in

the interest of all."26

The process of commodity exchange (i.e., capitalist system), says Marx, "furnishes the Free-Trade Vulgaris' with his views and ideas and with the standard

by which he judges a society based on capital and wages . . . now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour power follows as his labourer.

The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and

has nothing to expect but—a hiding.".27 In such a system "freedom, equality, property and Bentham" means that the capitalist is "free" to buy the worker's

hide and the labourer is "free" to sell it; the capitalist and the labourer are "equal" because they exchange equivalent for equivalent i.e., the wage

and the hide. Both possess "property" of their own—the capitalist of his capital and the labourer of his flesh and blood; each of them bother about their

ownselves—the one to amass profits, the other for his physical survival. These are the individuals who are considered as the ultimate entity in capitalism.

In a word, they are alienated persons, alienated from their social connection like separating the umbilical cord and alienated ultimately from themselves.

All the writers on organisation and management from Taylor to Riggs have concentrated their attention only on this individual person, though they talk about

"group", "cooperation" "coordination" etc.

23

Thus Chester I. Barnard an American business executive thought of organisation as a "cooperative system" and what was needed accordingly was a "cooperative

social action". To him, organisation was "a system of consciously coordinated activities of two or more persons".28 "It is a system composed of the activities

of human beings, a system in which the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts and each part is related to every other part in some significant

way. As a system it is held together by some common purpose by the willingness of certain people to contribute to the operation of the organisation".89

According to Barnard each individual by contributing his services to the organisation receives, imagine what—nothing other than satisfaction. He disapproves

the 'theory of economic man' though nobody knows who proposed such a theory, even if there is such a man where social relations are reduced to money relations

and the worker into commodity. Barnard, after 'demolishing' his imaginary 'theory of economic man' proposes his own 'theory of contribution-satisfaction-equilibrium'.

Contributions which may be regarded in terms of organisation as activities, are possible only when it is advantageous to workers in terms of personal satisfaction.

Barnard says "if each man gets back only what he puts in (recall Marx's ironical statement about "exchange of equivalent for equivalent", i.e., the capitalist

his wages and the labourer his hide) there is no net satisfaction for him in cooperation. What he gets back must give him advantage in terms of satisfaction,

which almost always means return in different form from what he contributes".30 For this purpose, he proposed "incentives" such as material inducements

like money and opportunities for distinction, desirable conditions for work, ideal benefactions, pride and workmanship, patriotism, loyalty to organisation

etc.

According to Barnard, the organisational "cooperative social action" consists in "a system of consciously coordinated activities". And to achieve this goal

the organisation lures the workers by extending some "incentives"—he rightly called them "inducements"—mostly non-material. This, in itself explains that

there has been no "cooperation" or

24

"coordination" in the organisation; and that it should be achieved by certain new techniques and methods as the old techniques are no more useful.

In a society where private property determines the social relations every individual person is motivated towards his selfish interests without any concern

for others. The individual persons can go to any extent to "satisfy" their selfish interests. This means perpetual conflict, not "coordination". Those

who can get maximum "satisfaction" are those who possess more commodities viz. private property under their control. In the perpetual conflict for achieving

"satisfaction", it is only Cromwells who win, not Charleses. Because the former would be a protege of those 172 and odd most powerful trading families

who earned enormous wealth through piracy and slave trade in the 16th and 17th centuries and who were eager to expand their business empire for which the

latter became a stumbling bloc. The attempt was in no way less than "a consciously coordinated social action" but unfortunately for Barnard and also for

Charles, it was a civil war—an historically decisive civil war at which Barnards and Charleses were doomed to loose. This is not to teach history to the

so-called 'organisation thinkers' for whom business is more important, but to demonstrate that in a society divided into two warring classes "conscious

cooperative social action" is a dream. At the same time, however, this is doubtlessly possible at two places, (i) among those who want to dominate by controlling

the entire means of production and who constitute a small minority for the purpose of exploitation of a big majority since nothing less than this gives

them "satisfaction", and (ii) among the great mass of producers who always try to emancipate themselves from such an exploitation.

Thus capitalism creates the contradiction in the absence of which it has no existence; at the same time it makes attempts to pecify contradictory forces

namely, capitalists and workers without adversely affecting both the contradiction and the capitalists. The so called theory of organisation of Barnard

had its origin in the latter part of this reality.

The spirit of the technique is to preach the worker to

25

"satisfy" himself by a sophisticated way of hiding and the capitalist to "satisfy" himself with the worker's hide. Barnard advises the capitalist to teach

the worker "pride and workmanship" and also "patriotism" (whose recent Indian version is "Srma yeva Jayate") for the purpose of a little painless hiding.

Thus Barnard's so-called theory of organisation is no more than another technique intended to maintain and cement the exploitative social relations in

an organisation albeit in an apparently sophisticated guise namely, "cooperative action".

But a truely sophisticated theory of organisation can be found in a different and more acceptable disguise namely 'objective social science' in Max Weber,

a German lawyer and an academic.

Among the numerous writers on organisation theory Max Weber was considered to have occupied a unique place. His thought had combined in itself all the qualities

of science, religion, philosophy and polemic. Considered as "the St. Paul of the concept of bureaucracy and capitalist rationality" there is a "dramatic

unity among all his concepts".31 He was shrewd enough to propose "a value neutral and objective social science"38 which stands as a testimony to his class

nature,33 at the same time can declare unhesitatingly that "ideals ... are just as sacred to others as ours are to us" (emphasis added).34 The "value neutral

social scientist" in Weber had conceptualised the "social conflict" as an "eternal" phenomenon.35 The root cause for the "conflict", Weber theorised, was

"competition" for "domination".36 It consists "in physical strength, cunning, greater intellectual ability, sheer lung power, a better demogogic technique,

greater ingenuity, flattery, a talent for intrigue".3' While characterising such "concepts" (as the one mentioned above) as "mental constructs, not to

be found anywhere in reality",38 he did not hesitate to attack Rosa Luxemburg and her colleagues in the German Social Democratic Party who were fighting

against the oppressive Prussian military autocracy (that means, according to Weber, creating conflict in an

26

other-wise strong nationalist Germany) with all the derogatory phrases which he had mentioned above in same verbatim while identifying the causes for the

"conflict".39 It is needless to say to whom Weber had attributed other soft phrases. George Lukacs treated him to be "a prominent spokesman for the bourgeois

imperialism of Wilhelmine Germany", and Wolfgang Mommsen characterised him as one who was committed "to the welfare of the German military imperialism",40

in whose military bureaucracy one finds Weber's ultimate identification of his "ideal-typical form as "the highest social embodiment of rationality".41

Here one can make a brief attempt to examine the scientific validity or otherwise of Weber's theory of organisation, on the basis of his writings.'12 Weber

used the German word verband, the most obvious translation of which is "organisation", to connote different notions such as state, the political party,

the church, the sect and the firm. This word has also been translated as "corporate group". It is in this context he discussed certain basic categories

of his philosophy such as "power", "authority" or "domination" etc.

As for the origin and nature of his concept 'organization' (verband), to Weber a person could be said to have "power" (Macht) if within a social relationship

his own will could be enforced despite resistance. If this "power" is exercised for "the structuring of human groups", it becomes a "special instance of

power", namely "authority" (Herrschaft). Thus he distinguished between "power" and "authority". "Authority" or "domination", as it is distinctly known

is instrumental in the emergence of verband. The rules of an organisation Weber terms as "administration". The most important aspect of the administration

was that it determines who was to give commands to whom. Thus, "every form of authority expresses itself and functions as administration". To Weber, all

authority is "legitimate" because it is always founded on a "popular belief structure", people may believe that obedience was justified because the person

giving the order had some sacred or altogether outstanding characteristic. This authority of the person Weber calls as "charismatic authority". Secondly,

a command might be obeyed out of

27

reverence for old established patterns of order—"traditional authority". Thirdly, men might believe that a person giving an order was acting in accordance

with his duties as stipulated in a code of legal rules and regulations. This was Weber's category of "legal authority" to which he added "rational" character.

And this is his "ideal type" of "legal-rational" organisation which is the characteristic feature of modern administration.

The whole thing can be reduced to the following:

(i) All persons possess "power",

(ii) "Power" by itself is not "authority": only "special instance of "power" exercised for the purpose of "structuring human groups" can be "authority"

or "domination",

(iii) Social relationship is always one of a dominating and dominated character,

(iv) All authority is administration,

(v) All authority is "legitimate" because it is founded on certain belief structures; and lastly;

(vi) All "structured human groups" are organisations and hence 'personified authorities'.

Now let us examine the scientific validity of the theory as an explanation to social reality. We start with the last point. Since it reduces the burden

of going into the remaining points which would prove to be trivial points, by themselves. Inspite of great scientific researches going on in his lifetime

in social anthropology, Weber preferred to believe that organisation minus domination of a small, powerful minority over a big majority, is a non-existent

phenomenon. What is more, he believed in its "legitimacy". After his life-long researches, living among the American Indians, Lewis H. Morgan published

his historic findings43 when Weber was in the prime of his youth, zealously seeking knowledge about social reality.

Morgan had found in the ancient Iroquois gens an 'organised' communitarian life with nobody processing any kind of "special instance of power" i.e. authority

or domination. To quote Morgan; "All the members of an Iroquois gens were

28

personally free and they were bound to defend each other's freedom; they were equal in privileges and in personal rights, the sachem and chiefs claiming

no superiority; and they were a brotherhood bound together by the ties of kin. Liberty, equality and fraternity, though never formulated, were cardinal

principles of the gens. The gens was the unit of the social system, the foundation upon which Indian society was organised. [This] serves to explain that

sense of independence and personal dignity universally an attribute of Indian character".41 It was an organisation of society which as yet knew no special

authority, which as yet knew no state. But Weber did not bother about this which by then had already known 'organised' communitarian social structure.

Men and women "differ in no way from one another, they are still bound to the umbilical cord of the primordial community", commented Marx on the Iroquois

gens.45". . .it was broken by influences which from the outset appear to us as a degradation, a fall from the simple moral grandeur of the ancient gentile

society. The lowest interests—base greed, brutal sensuality, sordid avarice, selfish plunder of common possessions—usher in the new, civilised society,

class society; the most outrageous means—theft, rape, deceit and treachery—undermine and topple the old, classless, gentile society. And the new society

during all the 2,500 years of its existence has never been anything but the development of the small minority at the expense of the exploited and oppressed

great majority . . . ."46 What Weber simply did was attributing "legitimacy" to the selfish interests in the "new society", as against the communitarian

interests. Though specialised in conceiving "mental constructs" his intellectual imagination could go only to the extent of identifying the "conflict"

as an eternal phenomenon. At times, the social transformation had appeared to him as a "calling", which centres its attention on the religious aspects

like 'Protestant ethic'.

To accept his concept of 'belief structures' on which the "authority" is supposed to have founded is to deny the entire history of human development. In

what belief structure—tradition, charisma or law—does Cromwell fit in?

29

Even if people 'believed' in Cromwell's virtues, who were they? And even if all the people believed in the virtues of Cromwell what was the basis for such

a belief? Nearer home, what was the belief structure that served the Iron Chancellor to "dominate" imperial Germany? If people believed in either of these

belief structures, was it not tantamount to the view that people passively obliged to be dominated? If so, is there any need for a belief structure at

all? If people believed in Bismarck's authority where was the necessity for ruthless repression on people by means of iron laws? These are but a few questions

which Weberism refuses to answer. The intentions of his so-called "philosophy of history" as Weberism is often called, were to legitimise authority or

domination and thereby charactise class-struggle and civil war as mere 'power polities'. He found such politics among the German Social Democrats only

when his attempts to find a place in the party had failed him. The Prussian military bureaucracy had appeared to him as "legitimate" and "rational". But

there was a challenge to this autocratic authority from the working class under the leadership of the Social Democratic Party. It was in the politics of

Social Democrats that Weber found cunningness, demogogy, lung-power, intriguing etc., the reasons for this were obvious.

Weber's persons, possessing "power" and in special circumstances possessing "special instance of power" or "authority" are none other than the individual

persons, who 'enjoy' "freedom, equality, property and Bentham" in the society of commodity exchange. The concept of abstract individual and the study of

his actions as socially isolated things such as psychological attitudes etc. is not only central to Weberism but also to "all conventional Social Science

of "establishment"." And Weberians are conscious that without such an individual "sociology will seek in vain to affirm its validity as an autonomous science".48

This is equally true of Weber's "philosophy of history".

But such an individual can be found only in myths, not in social science. "The lasting fascination of the Robinson Crusoe myth is due to an attempt to imagine

an individual independent of society. The attempt breaks down. Robinson

30

is not an abstract individual, but an Englishman from York, he carries his Bible with him and prays to his tribal God . . . (for) a new society".49 A social

scientist is expected to probe into the 'mysteries' of social reality. This is more binding indeed on the 'value-neutral' and 'objective social scientists'

like Weber. Mystifying social reality is the vocation of prophets. It is not difficult for one to understand whether Weberism is a science or prophecy.

It is not for nothing that Weber, the "dead Saint" is resurrected in recent decades. It is the historical necessity of imperialism which preaches myth

in the name of science. In his recent work, Rationality and Irrationality in Economics, Maurice Godelier had successfully proved not only the irrationality

of Weber's 'rational' philosophy but also the irrationality of the bourgeois social theory as a whole.50

VI

With the Second World War, capitalism had entered a new crisis. In fact, the war itself was the result of a big crisis— the depression of 30s. The working

class, far from being a passive lot, had already developed into an organised force throughout the world. With this, there arose new problems requiring

new methods and techniques for the purpose of successfully running the gaint western capitalist organisations of the corporate business across the world.

The success or failure of an enterprise largely depended on thoroughly calculated, timely decisions pertaining to various aspects of the organisation.

Thus, emerged the 'decision-making theory' whose apostle was Nobel laureate Herbert Simon. The theory had its origin in the rediscovery of Comtean "positivism"

of the early 19th century. Auguste Comte, whom some hold as "god father of sociology", unlike a majority of his contemporaries who rejected the rational

humanist spirit of the French Enlightenment, rejected also the achievements of the 17th century, of the Renaissance and the Reformation. The core of his

vision of society lay in the marriage of modern capitalist industrial production forces with the kind of social and political relationships which obtained

at the peak of theocratic feudalism. To achieve this end, he proposed the establishment

31

of a caste of scientist priests whose function it would be to endow the industrial and other secular authorities with the unquestionable transcendental

sanction they intrinsically lacked. The ideological weapon to combat this, was positivism51 It was the positivism of Comte which behavioralists like Talcott

Parsons made the foundation for their 'theory'. Simon had successfully injected this into his model of 'decision-making' in organisations.

Positivism, to which Simon refers, separates factual propositions and value judgements as if they are unrelated aspects. According to him, "the former is

validated by its agreement with the facts, the latter by human fiat".52 He contends that every decision contains "an ethical as well as a factual content"

in it. "The basic value criteria that will be employed in making decisions and choices among alternatives in an organisation will be selected for the organisation

primarily by the controlling group—the group that has the power to set the terms of membership for all the participants.53 Bureaucracy provides the facts

and the managers make decisions that best fulfil the values and objectives laid down by the controlling group. Simon following Weber called this 'rationality'.

Thus bureaucracy which is expected to provide facts may put forward factual information pertaining to the production needs of cheap and nutritious food

for the impoverished masses of the people. Along with this they may also provide facts pertaining to the colour T.V. requirements of a small minority.

They may also gather facts pertaining to the purchasing capacity of both the sections and also about the profits that would accrue to the organisation

if each of these is decided to be taken up. Managers take the decisions in accordance with the "value criteria" primarily selected by the controlling group

that has the power to set the terms. Now, the 'rational value' of the decisions solely depends on the values of the controlling group".

Recall the nature of the commodity exchange society; it would not be difficult for one to understand not only the values of the "controlling group" but

the deceptively apodictic values of the facts themselves. And it is possible for one to understand then who controls what, in what manner, why

32

and for what purpose. It is not difficult to understand the value orientation of the decisions as also the intrinsic values of the facts.

Commenting on the 'rationality' of the "decision-making", Baran and Sweezy opined that "the nature and volume of out-put, the technology employed, the investment

undertaken, the raw materials used, the prices charged—none of these, no matter how rational the methods by which they were arrived at, can be thought

of as corresponding to the needs of society as a whole or even as reflecting the growth of the forces of production in one of the component parts. It is

as if a superbly skillful typist operating a perfectly faultless electric type-writer were set to work, enjoined to avoid a single typographical error

because one hundred type written pages proof read and free of mistakes have to be ready for delivery promptly at 4.00 p.m. to the janitor for removal to

the dump.54

Further, a decision can be said to be 'objectively rational' only if it is the correct behaviour for maximising given values in a given situation. For the

purpose of enhancing this 'rationality' what is required, according to Simon, "was training and indoctrination so that the organisation's criteria of decision

are injected into the very nervous system of the organisation members".

This is nothing less than training the members of the organisation to arrive at decisions which are apparently apodictic in nature. This is possible because

positivism treats facts as 'givens', as eternal which in fact they are not. The eternal nature of the "facts" proves itself to be a dubious one and an

outright deception when we come to know that poverty and affluence are not eternal but man made. The tasks of decision-making lie in the best use or rather

best manipulation of these apparently value neutral facts to fulfil the organisation's goals. The question of good or bad, morality or immorality does

not arise; what is important is the goals of the organisation, i.e., making more profits.

Outwitting Machiavelli, Simon says that "the terms good and bad when they occur in a study on administration are seldom employed in a purely ethical sense.

Procedures are termed good when they are conducive to such attainments.55

33

Simon's indifference for ethical values in decision-making can be regarded at the very least as rationalisation of immorality or at best, as intended to

absolve the decision-makers of their immoral activities—an unavoidable 'fact' in capitalism.

Thus the theory of decision-making, intended to rationalise organisational activity, had proved itself to be a theory of rationalisation of capitalist immorality.

VII

'Developmental approach' is the latest one in the development of administrative theory. The process of decolonisation following the II World War resulting

in the establishment of independent states, put a full-stop to the naked exploitation of the colonial type. The emergence of the capitalist and communist

blocs had thrown two models for the development of the newly emerged nations. The growing awareness of the people in these countries about the vagaries

of capitalism and imperialism resulting in backwardness and underdevelopment, and their growing vulnerability for mass revolutions with the help of the

communist bloc had forced the west and its administrative thinkers to come out with new theories of 'development'.

A number of western social scientists have begun to study development politics, economics, administration and so on. The Comparative Administration group

of the American Society for Public Administration consisted largely of scholars who had served on USAID missions. The theory of 'development administration'

was put forward mainly by these scholar-bureaucrats, namely, Riggs, Weidner, La Palombara, Diament and Pye.56

'Development' according to their 'theories' meant westernisation i.e. industrialisation or modernisation. The underdeveloped countries, according to this

theory, have no scope for development without undertaking massive industrialisation of their societies. Massive industrialisation is not possible if they

do not seek financial and technological aid from the developed countries of the west. 'Development' in various spheres of national life was thus linked

to external aid. This is nothing but capitalist development. In the sphere of

34

economics, it may be a transfer of 'green revolution technology' intended to transform the entire agriculture into capitalist industry the sole aim of which

is opening the doors of the underdeveloped countries for multinational corporations to 'supply' the required inputs. In the sphere of politics it may be

transfer of ideas for 'nation building' activities for which the theory suggests "greater differentiation and specialisation", "greater scope for the private

sector, more achievement orientation and recruitment increasingly on the basis of achievement criteria instead of ascriptive ones". Lastly, if these countries

wish to develop like those in the west they have to undergo and experience all those historical phases of 'development' in the west which may take a few

hundred years.

The whole thing boils down to only one thing that these erstwhile colonies should look forward to west and its capitalist development as the ideal type;

that they have to go a long way in a phased manner overcoming the transitional problems such as corruption, authoritarianism, ineffectiveness and dehumanisation

to achieve the status of a developed country. These 'developmentalists' show Britain as the model which, according to them, took six hundred years to reach

the present stage of development.

One may however ask whether these western countries had no colonies for over a period of 200 years for ruthless exploitation of wealth and cheap labour

that helped the western metropolis to develop. How do they expect the underdeveloped, erstwhile colonies to develop without such facilities atleast for

the same period of 200 years. Anyone who asks such questions would be looked upon as doubting Thomases who always talk about 'perverted' things like exploitation,

leaving out 'progressive' things like 'development'.

VIII

Thus, these theories which have emerged whenever there arose crises in the western capitalist set-up, have hardly any difference in the spirit and content

capitalist in content and exploitative in spirit. Whenever there developed a new crisis

35

in the system, the theory, in response to the crisis, had developed new skills and techniques to overcome it by means of studying the administrative structures

and their functioning. So long as there arose manageable problems, these skills and techniques could serve capitalism as palliatives. When capitalism reached

its highest stage i.e., imperialism, resulting in mass upsurges and revolutions throughout the world, these theories failed to cope with the situation

and proved to be obsolete. Thus the crisis in capitalism once again reflected in the field of administrative theories. The theory like its material base

namely imperialism had reached a state of impasse.

Thus in the epoch of imperialism the 'theory of administration' had lost its relevance as an explanation to social reality and proved its uselessness for

its criticism. This is because the theory had not contained any scientific validity to be a social theory. At best it had certain methods and techniques

for dominating the working class in capitalist Society.

It is at this stage, the students of administrative theories have begun to search for a 'realistic' theory of administration. Interestingly they found it

in Marxism and Leninism. Certain ideas of Marx on Paris Commune were taken to be his "theory of administration in socialist society"57 ignoring its serious

repercussions for the Marxist problematic. Because the 'theory' and practice of administration has its origin in its separation from political economy.

In other words, its 'strength' is in its apolitical pretence. If this is juxtaposed to Marxism the results would be that either Marxism would become an

apolitical administrative theory which it is not, or administrative theory would become political theory. The former results in distortion of Marxism and

the latter in the disappearance of the theory of administration.

The essence of the administrative theories can be said to be that there arise certain problems in 'administering' the people and that they can be solved

through certain techniques or using certain skills, no politics, no revolutions, no nonsense. Whereas the tasks of the Paris Commune, wherein the students

of administration found 'realistic theory of organisation',

36

were not administrative i.e., technical or merely organisational but political and ideological, to accomplish a classless society. The commune was a 'regime',

a social formation that was accomplished through a bloody revolution. What Marx had discovered in Paris Commune was a revolutionary social formation, not

a theory of administration, not a technical replacement of a particular bureaucratic structure but an ideologically revolutionary overthrow of an Oppressive

system as a whole, and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

True, it entails certain principles of techniques for the accomplishment of socialist society. But this accomplishment is political rather than technical—in

the sense that the principles and techniques may be changed according to the circumstances end political needs of the time. It is only in this sense that

Lenin had commended Taylorism when he said: "The Taylor system, the last word of capitalism in this respect, like all capitalist progress is a combination

of the refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation and a number of its greatest scientific achievements in the field of analysing mechanical motions during

work, the elimination of superfluous and awkward motions, the working out of correct methods of work, the introduction of the best systems of accounting

and control etc. The Soviet Republic must at all costs adopt all that is valuable in the achievements of science and technology in this field. The possibility

of building socialism will be determined precisely by our success in combining the Soviet power and the Soviet organization of administration with the

modern achievements of capitalism". Though the administration and bureaucracies in the East European countries are in many respects similar to those in

the west they are not "legal-rational type" of the capitalist west. Thus these measures have to be treated as certain techniques developed in the capitalist

society. David Wells has rightly warned that one cannot pickout apparently common elements from contrasting totalities and treat these elements as though

they were the same.58 Thus, these techniques cannot be theorised on their own without political reality as their base.

It is not difficult to understand what happens if we make an attempt to pursue knowledge about social reality from

37

Marxist point of view after conditioning our minds to think in terms of organisation, management, skills, techniques bureaucracy, hierarchy, executive functions

and input-output theories which are as some one holds, the by products of "west oriented knowledge industry".59 The philosophies of Marx and Lenin would

be reduced to alternative (no doubt 'radical') models of administration, in another context Nicos Poulantzas has warned that "every notion or concept only

has meaning within a whole theoretical problematic that founds it; extracted from this problematic and imported uncritically into Marxism, they have absolutely

uncontrollable effects. They always surface when least expected, and constantly risk clouding scientific analysis. In the extreme case one can be unconsciously

and surreptitiously contaminated by the very epistomological principles of the adversary. This is more serious, for it is no longer a question merely of

external notions imported into Marxism but of principles and risk vitiating the use made of Marxist concepts themselves."80

If the dictatorship of the Proletariat (of the Paris Commune) is conceived as 'theory of administration' with a view to salvaging administrative theory

from the present state of 'theorylessness', Marx would certainly be reduced to a mere technician or as yet another 'administrative thinker'. To avoid this,

what one has to do is not simply to question the ideological premises of the 'theory of administration', but the ideology of administration itself. And

what radical thinkers need to do is not to emancipate 'administrative theory' from its bourgeois progenitors but to emancipate themselves from 'theory

of administration'. It is a welcome sign that the students of administration and organisation have begun to question the ideological premises of the theory

which is nothing but capitalism and its exploitative class-rule.

Martin Nicolaus once said about the state of American conventional professional sociology, that it appears to be caught in the pincers of history. The market

tides are turning against the product on which its prosperity chiefly depends... trapped between the descending sky and the rising of the earth, abandoned

by angels and disciples at once.61 This is equally applicable to the 'theory of organisation'.

38

References

1. All the papers, except two, presented in a session on Administrative theory at the VIII Annual Conference of the Indian Public Administration Association

held at Jaipur, Rajasthan between 2-4 April, 1983 had expressed their discontent about the western theory of administration. They came to the conclusion

that the western theory of administration had failed to respond positively to the varied problems of the Third World countries.

2. Satya Deva, "Theory of Administration", Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XIII, No. 48, Nov. 27, 1982, p. 115, D. Ravindra Prasad, et al (ed). Administrative

Thinkers, (Light and Life Publishers, New Delhi, 1980).

3. V. Subramaniam, "Western Marxist Approaches to Management and Organization Theory", Indian Journal of Public Administration, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4, 1982,

p. 764.

4. Ibid.

5. David Wells, Marxism and the Modern State: An Analysis of Fetishism in Capitalist Society, (Select book Service Syndicate, New Delhi, 1983) p. 150; Harry

Braverman, Labour and Monopoly Capital; The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, (Social Scientist Press, Trivandrum, 1979), pp.11-13.

6. Eugene Kamenka, and Martin Krygier, (ed). Bureaucracy: The Career of a Concept, (Edward Arnold, London, 1979). Donald C. Hodges, The Bureaucratiza-tion

of Socialism, (University of Massachusetts Press, 1981); Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society, (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, (1969); Gibson

Burrell, and Gareth Morgan, Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis, (Heinmann, London, 1979); W. Hyderaband "A Marxist Critic of Organization

Theory" in W. Even (ed), Frontiers in Organization and Management, (Praeger, New York, 1980); P. Nicos Mouzelis, Organization and Bureaucracy, (Routledge

and Kegan Paul, London, 1975); Steward Clegg, and David Dunkerley, Organization, Class and Control, (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1980); Ernest Mandel,

"The Leninist Theory of Organization", in Robin Blackburn, (ed), Revolution and Class Struggle: A Reader in Marxist Politics, (Fontana/Collins, Glasgow,

1977); Satya Deva, n. 2.

39

7. Satya Deva, n. 2.

8. Mandel, n. 6.

9. Nicos Poulantzas, "The Problems of Capitalist State," in Robin Blackburn, (ed). Ideology in Social Science, (Fontana/Collins, Glasgow, 1977), p. 242.

10. Though Woodrow Wilson has been considered as 'father of Public Administration', his contribution to the theory of administration appears to have been

very marginal. His contribution lies in the separation of administration from politics albeit with vacillations. Before his seminal essay was published

in Political Science Quarterly in 1887 he prepared three drafts on the same topic. The first was entitled "Notes on Administration", then he changed it

to "The Art of Government" and finally gave it the title "The Study of Administration". See D. Ravindra Prasad, and P. Satya-narayana, "Woodrow Wilson,"

in Ravindra Prasad, n. 2, P. 2.

11. For a detailed history of development of capitalism, see: Maurice Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism, (International Publishers, New York,

1978), and Dan Nabudere, The Political Economy of Imperialism, (Tanzania Publishing House, Dar es Salam, 1977).

12. Nabudere, Ibid.

13. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971), pp. 330-1.

14. Braverman, n. 5, pp. 270-3.

15. Paul A. Baran, and Paul M. Sweezy, "Economics of Two Worlds", in David Horowitz, (ed.), Marx and Modern Economics, (Monthly Review Press, New York,

1968), p. 296.

16. Maurice Godelier, Rationality and Irrationality in Economics. (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1972), p. 36.

17. Studs Terkel, Working, (Pantheon Books, New York, 1972).

18. Braverman, n. 5, p. 66.

19. Ibid., p. 91.

20. Wells, n. 5, p. 35.

21. Richard B. Moris, (ed), Encyclopaedia of American History, (Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1965). This book gives an excellent historical account

of the

40

development of industry and commerce and trade union movements in America since the beginning of the 17th century in a chronological manner.

22. Douglas McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise, (McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1960), p. 34.

23. See D.S. Pugh, et al. fed). Writers on Organisations, (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 95.

24. Wells, n. 5, pp. 58-9.

25. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, (Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978), p. 172.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid.

28. Chester I. Barnard, Organisation and Management, (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1948), p. 72.

29. Ibid., p. 82.

30. Ibid., p. 58.

31. Martin Albrow, Bureaucracy, (Macmillan London, 1979), pp. 37-42.

32. Max Weber, The Methodology of Social Sciences, (The Free Press, New York, 1968).

33. After the failure of 1848 German revolution, neither the proletariat was strong enough to take over the political power in Germany nor the bourgeoisie.

This vacuum was filled by the strong feudal Prussian junker class as opposed to the interests of both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The German bourgeoisie

neither supported the proletariat nor could put up a strong opposition to the Prussian military dictatorship. Belonging to bourgeoisie, Weber's 'Social

Science' is neither feudal nor proletarian. And interestingly contained the qualities of the both. At the best it is zunus-like scientific theology: at

the very least, ideology of imperialism.

34. Ibid.

35. Julien Freund, The Sociology of Max Weber, (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 130.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Max Weber, n. 32, pp. 90-3.

39. Ibid.

41

40. Quoted in Anthony Giddens, Politics and Sociology in the Thought of Max Weber, (Macmillan, London, 1972), p. 7.

41. Martin Nicolaus, "The Professional Organization of Sociology; A View from Below", in Blackburn, n. 9, p. 48.

42. Freund n. 35, Albrow, n. 31. Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Trans), A.M. Henderson, and Talcott, Parsons (The Free Press, New

York, 1968); Weber, On Law in Economy and Society, (Trans), Edward Shils and Max Rheinstein, Simon and Schuster, (Rockfeller Center, New York, 1967); Weber,

n. 32.

43. Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery Through Barbarism to Civilization, (Macmillan, London.,

1877).

44. Quoted by Frederick Engels, "The Origin of Family, Private Property and the State", in Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3, (Progress Publishers,

Moscow, 1977), p. 259.

45. Ibid., p. 267.

46. Ibid,

47. Samir Amin, Unequal Development, (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1979), p. 10.

48. Freund, n. 35, p. 112-3.

49. E.H. Carr, What is History? (Penguin, 1982), pp. 31-2.

50. Godelier, n. 16, op. cit.

51. Nicolaus, "The Professional Organization of Sociology; A View from Below," in Blackburn, n. 9, pp. 47-8.

52. Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behaviour, (Free Press, New York, 1957), p. 56.

53. Ibid., p. 118, emphasis added.

54. Baran and Sweezy, n. 15, p. 298.

55. Quoted in Satya Deva, n. 5.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. Wells, n. 5.

59. Satya Deva, n. 5, p. 1336.

60. Poulantzas, n. 9, pp. 241-2.

61. Nicolaus, n. 41, p. 59.

42

3 A CRITICAL EMPIRICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC POLICY

John Forester

Introduction

This essay will argue that Habermas' critical theory suggests a powerful structural and phenomenological framework for policy research, analysis, and practical

criticism. The theory provides a basis for both the empirical and normative assessment of "policy implications," or, in another way of putting it, for

the analysis and formulation of "what is to be done" 1 The argument proceeds in five steps.

First in a highly abbreviated manner, we set out the basic conceptual framework of Habermas' recent work, focusing structurally upon his reconstruction

of historical materialism and phenomenologically upon his theory of communicative action - Second, we note the complementarity and potential practical

integration of Habermas's structural and action theories This leads us to specify in a preliminary manner the important notion of the "communicative infrastructure"

of social action and of societal reproduction (production and reproduction) more generally. Third, we consider the historical constitution, if not the

genesis, of policy "problems" as selectively established claims in the structural dimensions of social action: claims regarding facts, normative legitimacy,

actors'interests and intentions and languages of attention. Fourth we suggest that policy development and implementation

43

can be understood systematically to be a process of the modification of the communicative infrastructure of society. Thus, it is a process altering the

institutional elements that mediate between (and lead us to the analysis of) structural developments of societal learning and social interactions shaping

immediate personal experience. Here we will consider the recent cutbacks of the Environmental Protection Agency to illustrate the argument. Fifth, and

finally, the analysis of blockages and restrictions to social learning and citizens' recourse to discourses suggests those empirical and normative issues

of the assessment of legitimacy and domination so central to a critical theory of public policy.3

I. Historical-Structural and Action Theories: Habermas's Structural Phenomenology

Two of Habermas's central arguments provide the foundations for a critical theory of public policy analysis: his reconstruction of historical materialism

as an evolutionary process of social learning and his reconstruction of speech act theory and intersubjective understanding as a theory of claims-making

communicative action. Consider each briefly in turn.

Habermas argues that Marx the concrete historical analyst always distinguished more carefully than Marx the meta-theoretician between the work of production

oriented to the transformation of material reality and the social interactions of men and women oriented to the constitution and reproduction of their

social relations. Habermas attempts to clarify the distinction here between work and interaction, or as he also puts it, between instrumental or purposive-rational

action and communicative action or symbolic interaction. Albrecht Wellmer summarizes,

"Habermas's reformulation of the basic assumptions of historical materialism . . . introduces a categorical distinction into the theory of historical materialism

which Marx, in his material analysis, had always implicitly presupposed. Marx distinguishes between two different dimensions in which the self-formation

of the

44

human species takes place: that of a cumulative process of technological development (forces of production, labour-processes), and that of an emancipatory

process of critique and class struggle (relations of production). What Habermas shows is that this categorical distinction can be developed consistently

and with all its epistemological implications only if it is reformulated on a higher level of abstraction as that between "instrumental" or "purposive-rational"

action on the one hand, and "communicative" action on the other .... Only if we make this distinction, is it possible, according to Habermas, to reconstruct

the independent historical processes of technological and institutional development in a way which would not blur the differences between technical progress

and political emancipation as well as those between science and critique."4

Habermas writes,

"The categorical distinction between purposive-rational and communicative action thus permits us to separate the aspects under which action can be rationalized.

As learning processes that place not only in the dimension of objectivating thought but also in the dimension of moral-practical insight, the rationalization

of action is deposited not only in forces of production, but also — mediated through the dynamics of social movements— in forms of social integration."5

In Habermas' reconstruction of historical materialism societal development and social learning take place in two dialectically autonomous but interdependent

dimensions, then: the productive forces of society develop with the advancement of science and technology within a given form of social organization, productive

relations develop at a given level of scientific-technological capacity reflecting (if not increasing) substantive democratization. More advanced technology,

however, hardly guarantees progress toward greater political freedom. Habermas thus works to reformulate a dialectic of production and reproduction, of

forces and relations of production, by clarifying the types of action

45

characteristic of each moment of this dialectic and assessing the corresponding development or rationalization of each type of action.

The distinction between purposive-rational and communicative action can serve to clarify the relationship of social action, practice and praxis, to the

development of the forces and relations of production and their corresponding reinter-pretation in social learning processes. Habermas attempts to justify

the analysis of these two historical-structural dimensions through his analysis of the structure of communicative action itself, particularly in his essay,

"What is Universal Pragmatics."6 Making a claim with far reaching consequences, Habermas suggests that social actions generally can be understood to be

derivatives of a paradigmatic type of communicative action oriented to reaching understanding. Raising four fundamental validity claims, such communicative

action has a double structure: content is referred to, and normative social relations are established in every act of speech. More precisely,

"In action oriented to reaching understanding, validity claims are "always already" implicitly raised. These universal claims (to the comprehensibility

of . the symbolic expression, the truth of the propositional content, the truthfulness of the intentional expression, and the Tightness of the speech act

with respect to existing norms and values) are set in the general structures of possible communication."8

Habermas is arguing in effect that these reciprocal validity claims provide the basis that makes it possible for us to understand one another—or for us

to check our misunderstandings or doubts—at all in the first place.

In addition, Habermas argues that part or parcel of the claims-making character of communicative action oriented to reaching understanding is the practical

but counterfactual anticipation that our claims could in principle be established through theoretical and practical discourses—given the counterfactual

(i.e., in principle) conditions in which only the

46

force of the better argument prevailed. When for example, we claim that particular industrial chemical wastes can cause liver or neurological damage (a

truth claim) or that polluting industries should be held responsible for improperly disposed-of wastes (a legitimacy claim), we do not mean either that

we simply feel this way, nor that with sufficient coercion we could convince others to agree. Rather we mean quite the opposite: that if it were possible

for the affected public to enter theoretical and practical discourses, to gather evidence and appropriate arguments pro and con without coercion or domination,

then they would acknowledge the validity of our claims.9 That is an inherent part of what we mean, Habermas suggests, when we claim a proposition to be

true or a legitimacy claim to be right. The rational foundation of the claims made in communicative action, then, is to be found in the mutual anticipation

of possible checking, of the in-principle conditions of discourse in which claims could be redeemed or rejected.

Notice that the double structure of speech and communicative action suggested here dovetails systematically with the double structure of social evolution

and historical materialism, the dialectic of rationalization of forces and relations of production. The development of productive forces via instrumental

and strategic actions depends upon scientific and technological knowledge; this is the knowledge generated as the content claims, propositional truth claims,

are tested and established.10 The development of productive relations via symbolic interaction and communicative action depends upon the establishment

of the relationship claims, the legitimacy accorded and trust granted as Tightness and truthfulness claims are established in practice.11 Habermas argues,

then, that these very foundations of speech and sense-making, involving the anticipation of theoretical and practical discourses, make possible the basis

for actual historical learning in the dimensions of productive forces and productive relations. He writes.

"The development of the productive forces depends on the application of technically useful knowledge; and the

47

basic institutions of a society embody moral-practical knowledge. Progress in these two dimensions is measured against the two universal validity claims

we also use to measure the progress of empirical knowledge and of moral-practical insight, namely, the truth of propositions and the Tightness of norms.

I would like, therefore, to defend the thesis that the criteria of social progress singled out by historical materialism as the development of productive

forces and the maturity of forms of social intercourse can be systematically justified."12

Habermas attempts then to combine systematically a structural theory of societal development (historical materialism) with an account of communicative action

(the basis for a theory of action). The structural theory reconstructs Marx's historical materialism to identify a dialectic of social learning in two

dimensions: that of productive forces and that of productive relations. The action theory reconstructs ordinary communicative action to identify a double

structure of practical claims-making in two dimensions: that of content claims (of propositional truth and linguistic clarity) and that of relationship

claims (of normative Tightness and subjective truthfulness). In doing so, Habermas provides us with the beginning of a structural phenomenology, a preliminary

research framework that enables us to assess policy problems both structurally and phenomenologically. We attempt to explore this in the following sections.13

II. The Policy Setting: The Communicative Infrastructure of Society

A critical theory of policy analysis must locate concrete policy initiatives, policy development, and implementation in the framework of social learning

and social action that we have sketched above. We might expect each policy to alter in its own way the structural processes of social learning on the one

hand and the character of social action and interaction on the other. Yet where in Habermas's account of structure and action are we to locate and assess

the organizational and institutional forms of policies manifest as

48

reductions in federal spending, alterations in social policy entitlements, subsidies for housing, price supports, and so on?

Conspicuously lacking in Habermas's work has been an account of those institutional and organizational forms which mediate between the analytic levels of

social system and social action: e.g., factories, hospitals, schools, unions, churches, firms and companies, cultural and ethnic associations, and the

like. Yet as I have argued elsewhere, such an account of intermediate social organization might be developed straightforwardly from Habermas's structural

and action theories.14 Methodologically' as suggested above, this account becomes a structural phenomenology. It is structural insofar as it attends to

the political-economic, systematic staging and framing of social action; it is a phenomenology insofar as it attends to the concrete social interactions

(promises, threats, agreements, deals, conflicts) that are so staged.

For the analysis of concrete policies, then, we need an account of what we may call the "mediating institutions", the elements of the institutional, communicative

or social infrastructure, that connect actions to structures and vice versa, and that a given policy may alter, thus altering both (macro) systemic relations

and (micro) social interactions. Working between Habermas's account of historical materialism (societal production and reproduction, learning in two dimensions),

on one hand, and social action as a derivative of claims-making communicative action on the other hand, then, we must work to fill in the centre of Figure

I.15

If we ask, now, what sorts of mediating organizations support, frame, or generate each type of action and serve to rationalize those actions for systemic

ends and the functions of production and reproduction, we can suggest several rough and tentative answers as sketched in Figure II. Consider briefly each

"action type" in turn.

In the activity of work itself, the knowledge and control of means-ends strategies is distinctive (but of course not sufficient), whether in a chemical

manufacturing process or on an integrated assembly line. Organizational forms such as laboratories, research firms, engineering departments strategic

49

FIGURE I

table with 3 columns and 7 rows

Developing Structural Relations

Mediating Institutions

Social Action Types (Claim Stressed)

(A) Habermas's "System" or Marx's Forces of Production: Instrumental Rationalization and Technological-Scientific Learning.

(A) Work: Purposive Rational Action

(i) Development of Technical - Strategic and Administrative knowledge

?

(i) Means-ends and Strategic truth claims (reproducing knowledge and belief

(ii) Capacity to attend to nature and material reality

?

(ii) Attention-focusing comprehensibility claims (reproducing attention and investment

(B) Habermas's "Lifeworld" or Marx's Relations of Production Practical-Communicative Rationalization and Legal-Moral Institutional Learning

(B) Interaction: Communicative Action

(iii) Establishment of institutional normative relations free from domination

?

(iii) Rightness of Legitimacy claims: (reproducing consent and deference)

(iv) Capacity for social cooperation, respect, and solidarity

?

(iv) Truthfulness or Expressive claims (reproducing trust and reliability)

table end

50

administrative and management units, and certain information based services provide the setting for individuals' actions that generate factual knowledge

or formulate means-ends strategies and thus contribute to advances in the general forces of production. Consider here, for example, recent corporate-university

joint research ventures through which various corporations have acted to firm up the infrastructure for their own efforts to advance productive know-how

and technologies of production.17

In parallel fashion, the social capacity to pay attention to needs finds organizational form largely in the political-economy.18 Financial and economic

institutions—banks and Wall Street brokerages, the Office of Management and Budget and the Federal Reserve Bank, corporations, firms, factories, and workplaces,

provide the organizational settings in which decisions about the direction and formulation of particular investments are made and selective needs are consequently

addressed. Thus capital flight (from Northeast to Southwest or abroad), or concessions made to forestall such flight, mediates between and immediately

threatens both regional and personal budgets, the basic abilities of regions and individuals to attend to their needs.

The organization of social relations depends upon both the institutionalization of norms and the social capacity for mutual recognition and cooperation.

The formal institutionalization of norms occurs typically through mediating organizational forms such as courts, legislatures, "boards of supervisors"

and councils (at town, city, county, state, and national levels), and agencies of the state (from federal agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service

and the Food and Drug Administration to local welfare and unemployment offices, and the police). Here are the organizational settings in which rules and

norms, standards and obligations, rights and entitlements may be proposed, at times contested, established, enforced, and later reformulated. Thus, the

Reagan Administration's social policy legislation is attacked not only for its budgetary implications and its neglect of social needs, but also because

it subverts a normative framework of rights, entitlements and legal protections thought by many to be already too weak

51

and business-oriented, questions of bureaucratic size, efficiency and debt notwithstanding.

Finally, then, the social basis for the mutual recognition of intentions exists in the routinized patterns of social interaction and ritual performances

that we call "organizations," "programmes", and "associations". For as we are able to evaluate one anothers' participation as a responsible (or lax, or

playful, or serious, or scheming) member of a given organization (a church congregation, a rotary club, a political party, a union, a cultural association,

and so on), so are we able to judge the consistency of what the other person says and what they subsequently do. In this way, we are able— via the evaluation

of mutual participation in routinized, ritual-structured social organization—to gauge one anothers' truthful intentions and honest expressions of self.

In this way, of course, social systems reproduce their social identities: consider simply the socializing functions, for participants and for observers,

of the various cultural, ethnic and national rituals of dress, speech, cuisine, humour, music and habit, whether rooted in dance, clan or text.

Figure II then, presents four "families" of institutions and organizational forms that mediate between specific practical action claims and structural processes

of societal development and learning. The specific historical identification of more and less dominant, more and less significant, institutions will depend,

of course, upon the specific social setting to be investigated. While "social indicators" reflecting these dimensions are suggested tentatively below,

further conceptual analysis of the character of the "communicative infrastructure" mediating social action and social structure is all too obviously necessary.19

These mediating or infrastructural institutions produce conventional results, of course: (i) techniques, work strategies and propositional, factual, knowledge

(beliefs), (ii) selective attention and investment (patterns of attention); (iii) patterns of consent and deference (political allegiance); and (iv) patterns

of trust and mutual recognition, (patterns of solidarity). When truth claims are established by these institutions, factual beliefs and technical knowledge

are generated. When

52

comprehensibility or attention-focusing claims are established —through well formed verbal linguistic utterances or through conventional, non-verbal economic

tokens (value in the form of capital—then citizens' attention (and possibly labor) is selectively addressed to particular concerns and needs. When legitimacy

claims are established by various normative institutions, citizens' consent and allegiance are thus modified. And when expressive and truthfulness claims

are given pattern and established through any of the various social rituals structuring routinized organizational performances, so then are social recognition

and trust engendered.

FIGURE II

table with 2 columns and 5 rows

Institutional: Elements

Mediating

Administrative, technological and scientific organizations, training programmes, information services, technical control departments, (representing strategies,

means, and findings)

a. Production via;

(i) work techniques

Financial-economic organisations; corporations, banks, firms, factories, workplaces; (formulating capital accumulation and investment)

(i) capacity to invest attention

Legal regulatory agencies; Boards of Directors (establishing norms and regulations)

b. Reproduction via:

(i) action norms

Social-moral organizations: cultural and ethnic associations, churches, service programmes, family structures, special interest organizations, unions (identifying

intentions via organizational performances)

(ii) actor's intentions

table end

53

Yet each of these mediating institutions may develop unevenly, in a potentially contested, contingent and contradictory manner.20 Systemic pressures push

in the direction of satisfying the functional requirements of production and reproduction: so corporations buy university research and laboratories, train

their requisite labour force, and so on. Yet popular and oppositional pressures may push in other directions: populist and trade union groups organize

for their own particularistic causes: class-conscious union organisations attempt to build a powerful labour movement: cultural and ethnic groups of all

types reaffirm their identities and perhaps occasionally distract their members from the conventional rewards of the larger political-economy. Variably

"relatively autonomous" historically, these mediating institutions may be contested, challenged, or alternatively accepted as proper integrating mechanisms

for the larger society.

Policy implementation, then, may be understood not to alter these mediating or infrastructural institutions "from the outside" as it were, but rather to

alter them by taking concrete shape, form and substance, within them; creating or destroying specialized budgets (attention), jobs and programmes (organization),

ragulations and enforcement agencies (legal-regulatory presence), and information and innovation sources (scientific results, technological capacity, and

administrative strategies).1 Any particular policy proposal, then may promise to influence these institutions so that they may either enable or disable,

empower or dis-empower, specific possibilities of popular political debate and mobilization, of popular challenge or traditional class struggle. Labour

policies may influence unions to raise or to suppress claims upon corporate power (suppressing them through the current Workers Compensation System, for

example22). Court decisions or legislation may influence state agencies to grant or restrict entitlements, services, and information (for example to implement

or subvert occupational health and safety "right to know" legislation). Policy changes may directly affect research, field inspections and documentation

that may promote public awareness and

54

access to information (the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, for example) or, alternatively, work as an impediment to public learning.

As these mediating institutions enable or stymie public political discourse, politicization, and processes of learning, so then is legitimate public authority

itself deprived of its true possible mandates. As specific mediating institutions block citizens' recourse to discourse, so do they reproduce relations

of power but not authority. And so do they then reproduce domination and only pale legitimating semblance of democratic political institutions and democratic

political life. By examining specifically the policy-influenced institutional-infra-structural reproduction of social relations of belief, consent, trust,

and attention, and by then assessing the precarious existence of the legitimating conditions of political discourse, a critical theory of policy analysis

calls our attention to the concrete organizational processes of the perpetuation of-or the opposition to—illegitimate power and political domination.23

If it is plausible, given the discussion above, that the families of concrete social institutions and organizations suggested by Figure II mediate between

structural developments and social interactions, a critical theoretical account of public policy would then lead policy analysts to ask the following research

questions in detail: How does the passage and implementation of a particular policy immediately alter, reproduce, replace, or create anew elements of these

mediating institutions and organizations? How, that is, does the policy being assessed alter the "communicative infrastructure" of societal production

and reproduction, as sketched in Figure II (mediating the contents mapped in Figure I)? We turn to these questions in Section IV. Before that, however,

we turn to the problem of the context-dependency, the historical constitution, of policy "problems" themselves.

If the dialectic between the forces and relations of production may be understood as the interdependence of two historical learning processes, one technological-scientific-strategic

and one institutional-legal-moral, then any concrete policy problem might be located in that context. A policy

55

"problem" would thus reflect and be situated not only in a certain stage of technological, organizational, and industrial development, but also in a particular

stage of relations of control, authority, legitimacy, and cooperation. The "given" state of "the problem," then, might be understood through an analysis

of historical development in both of these dimensions: through industrial-organizational innovation, testing, and implementation no less than through institutional

(legal and moral) developments mediated by political and social movements. At any given time, though, the possibility of policy development is likely to

depend not only upon a given social movement, but also upon the particular "background consenses" that support or obstruct efforts to alter the status

quo in either dimension of social learning, that of "system" (productive forces) or "life-world" (productive relations), as Habermas describes these more

recently."1 We consider the importance of these practical background consenses in the next section.

III. Background Consenses: The Problem "Context" Facing Social Movements

We have suggested that public policies may be initially assessed by examining their alteration of the "communicative infrastructure" of institutions mediating

between structural processes of social learning and the practical, situated claims-making processes of social interaction. We can now consider briefly

the related issue of the constitution and social context of policy "problems" themselves. If a "policy problem" is not to be seen as a brute datum, it

might alternatively be considered as an historical product of a vast variety of claims-making activities.

A "problem" is minimally a claim that something is not right. Indeed, "policy problems" are claims about facts that matter, about "facts" and "values":

claims both about the objective historical and physical world and claims about social norms, about right and wrong, just and unjust, legitimate and illegitimate.

More precisely, if we are to understand a "policy problem" presented to us, we will need to assess the four communicative

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claims that are likely to constitute its presentation: (1) the truth claims representing objective states of affairs ("these chemicals really do contain

kepone"); (2) the rightness claims prescribing legal-moral norms appropriate to the case ("these substances should be banned from industrial use!"); 3)

the expressive claims indicating the intentions and perceived interests of affected parties ("the manufacturer assures us that the chemicals are safe,

not to 'worry' "); and (4) the comprehensibility-attention-directing claims formulating the framework in which "the problem" is to be understood in the

first place ("the issue should be seen as one of 'rights' not 'dollars' ").

Yet as we pursue such an investigation beyond the most simple preliminary problem-statement, we come to realize that problem-statements abound, and indeed,

that they conflict with one another. We soon discover that any concrete policy "problem" is in fact many problems, and "the problem" can be seen as an

historically constituted set of claims, some contradicting one another, in the four dimensions of communicative interaction which make social understanding

possible. To understand the dimensions of a particular policy "problem," then we need to assess historically the following four domains of policy-relevant

claims:

1. claims established or presented in the cognitive domain of facts through studies, reports, analyses, tests, findings, investigations, testimony, research,

historical studies, and objective (vs. arbitrary, biased, whimsical—not vs. subjective) scientific studies and inquiries;

2. claims established or presented in the interactive domain of normative, authority and power, relations through corporate policy decisions, legal decisions,

precedents, cultural and social norms, legislation, regulations, taboos, formal and informal sanctions, and other relations of perceived authority;

3. claims established or presented in the moral domain of actors' expressions of interests and intentions through expressed desires and needs, conflict

and cooperation, wishes and preferences, demands and challenges, actions of solidarity and opposition; and

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4. claims established and presented in the communicative-linguistic domain of shared meaning-systems, verbal (via words) or non-verbal (via meaningful tokens

of behaviour, e.g., gestures or money), and communicative competence, through the ability to call attention to the issues at hand through language use,

symbolic presentations (art and music), or investment of resources (economic capital as conventional, congealed attention).

As we can identify the particular claims that have actually been established (among different classes, groups, organizational members, or others) in these

dimensions, so can we identify the actual historical background consenses existing that provide the various social and ideological contexts immediately

relevant to the issue at hand. Recognizing that conflicting epidemiological studies have been publicized regarding the effects of certain workplace chemicals

for example, we might expect popular understanding of the alleged occupational health and safety "problem" to be less unified (hegemonic) than if all of

the publicized epidemiological reports were in agreement with one another. Recognizing that low income communities and neighbourhoods have long been threatened

by so-called "urban renewal" efforts identified with local planning and redevelopment agencies, we might well expect residents of those communities to

view current proposals by planners and city officials with substantial suspicion, distrust, and skepticism, if not outright hostility. Such sentiments

simply represent a significant element of the practical background consensus likely to be present in many neighbourhoods whose residents have rightly wondered

if "urban renewal" did not often mean "urban removal." Any planner, politician, or community organizer who does not anticipate the existence of such a

background consensus is hardly likely to be trusted, or seen as an ally of these neighbourhoods.

Two points seem important here. First, taken historically, particular background consenses may provide the practical social context for the on-going struggles

of diverse social

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movements pressing demands or programmes for policy changes—whether for the development of a local health-clinic or a national health service, the protection

of social security or social service benefits, reductions in defence expenditures, or the end to nuclear power plant construction. Second, and as a consequence,

the reproduction of these background consenses is likely to be essential to the maintenance of established relations of power and to the depoliticization,

the discouragement of politi al discourse, necessary for such maintenance. Consider briefly, then, each of these points in turn.

Social Movements, Background Consenses and Contra-Dictions

The practical work of maintaining, organizing, and advancing social movements-here including labour, environmental, ethnic, and feminist organizing, for

example—is fundamentally politically oriented social action. As social action, such practical work addresses others: seeking to build a membership, to

educate a base of supporters, to articulate a sense of possibility of a better life, to reveal relations of control that function systematically to repress,

exploit, or deprive vast numbers of people of what might otherwise be theirs—the fruits of their labour, a clean and healthy environment, relations of

political-economic and sexual equality, and so forth.

The daily work of social movements, then, may characteristically take the form not only of strategic and instrumental action but of communicative action

and interaction as well. Serious claims need to be made about how the world factually is and could be, about rights and injustice, fairness and exploitation,

about interests and intentions, feelings and perceptions. And finally all those claims are made in a variety of linguistic modes running from the most

informal and colloquial to the most formal legal and contract language.

Background consenses do not usually reflect conditions of equality of skill, interest, status, power, information or knowledge. At any given time, instead,

these background consenses are constituted by established political, social, and

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cultural institutions and the conflicting relations of power and influence that these institutions manifest. These established relations of power—the organization

of precedent, symbolic resources, capital, legitimacy and status—may of course be invoked in many ways, and challengers as a result can then be made to

seem to be nay-sayers, complainers, troublemakers, opportunists, heretics, traitors, agitators, crazies, "wierdos," the simply "unreasonable", and so on.

In such cases, power is reproduced not simply through "talk" and simple claims about how things are. Instead, both factual and normative claims may be established,

shaping belief and political consent, through the manipulation of the background consensus making any shared public understanding of a "problem" possible

in the first place.

Yet all of these practical claims made by members of social movements depend upon a context of already established claims, a partial "background consensus,"

"ready" for their acceptance. This is why public rhetoric and legitimating arguments are so essential to the maintenance of power: they work not only to

establish factual claims ("these chemicals are harmless!"), but also, legitimacy claims ("it's only right that each job should have some risks attached

to it; if a worker doesn't like it, he or she's "free" (sic) to go somewhere else . . ."), and claims of trustworthiness (thus corporations seek to assure

the public of their concern with safety by claiming that there are more hazards in an ordinary kitchen than in their workplaces!). The claims of social

movements exist in a context of conflict.25 And this conflict exists not only in political-economic structure and actions of challenge and opposition,

but in the very background consensus of popular beliefs, senses of legitimacy and rightness, perceived interest, and conscious needs. The contradictions

between the privatized control of production and the social needs of reproduction are reproduced, manifest, and established as conflicting practical claims:

literally contra-dictions.26

Background Consensus and the Maintenance of Power

How, though, are these contra-dictions established and "stabilized"? The reproduction of power works not only

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through practical claims having content, but through claims that establish and reproduce contexts of trust and authority. The appeal to understand a health

problem in a particular framework (whether that of cost-benefit analysis or that of a natural "right" to health) is an action attempting to invoke a legitimate

context of understanding and consideration, a background consensus in which many further corollary propositions may then be considered as well. Notice

however, that if the listener equivocates or begins to doubt (is this job safe? is this, what you, the state health official, are telling me about this

dump site, really true?), the speaker may act to reinforce the shaky background consensus by invoking previously implicit but potentially binding norms:

e.g. (1) "if you want to keep this job, don't raise a fuss"—a latent norm tacitly regulating the actions of many wage-labourers; or (2) I've got the specialized

training, and I've seen the lab results and the studies; what do you know?"—a claim to normative status differences and thus the consent accruing conventionally

to those with expert competence.47

Where conditions of democratic discourse and cooperative social organization do not exist those already in positions of power may make practical claims

and offers about factual conditions, normative Tightness, social interests, and particular needs that may be conventionally established but simultaneously

removed from criticism—by invoking precedent, incentives, sanctions, exclusion, ostracization, stigma, threat, and so forth. Under such conditions, popular

beliefs, consent, trust and attention are appropriated through conditions of social interaction—influenced by policy initiatives—that discourage critical

discourses.28 As Pynchon put it. "If you can get them asking the wrong questions, you won't have to worry about the answers . . ." The addressees of a

critical policy analysis, then, may be all those so "taken for a ride," so made the objects of political claims without recourse to collective and shared

criticism. Thus it is cognition, political allegiance, social solidarity, and attention and concern that are appropriated when a background consensus is

reproduced by policy implementation in a communicative infrastructure, blocking, thwarting, restricting,' and constraining the possibilities,

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the actual avenues, of critical scientific and political discourses.

IV. Dimensions of Critical Policy Analysis

What is the point, then? Is it just a pathetically weak claim that a public policy can be understood to alter elements of the communicative infrastructure

of the broader society into which it is introduced? Taken by itself, that claim might indeed be virtually trivial, but the consequences for the analysis

of changes in structures of social learning and patterns of social action thus made possible are potentially substantial. The point of a critical theory

of public policy is not to classify each policy proposal into one of two groups, labelled with the summary judgements/'legitimate" or "illegitimate." Rather,

a critical theory of public policy ought to deliver upon the promise of an historically concrete structural phenomenology, showing us how particular policies

promise to alter or "impact": 1) the structural conditions of social action and learning, in the dimensions of the rationalization of productive forces

and the rationalization of legal-moral and institutional relations: 2) the actual social interactions and lived experiences of affected persons, the concrete

policy-influenced management and reproduction of citizens' knowledge and beliefs, allegiance and consent, trust and solidarity, attention and concern:

and (3) then too, the conditions of citizens' recourse to theoretical and practical discourses, the public capacity to challenge, check, question, and

non-coercively reestablish claims of truth and justice.

To suggest how such a critical, structural phenomenology of public policy might proceed, we first briefly suggest broad families of the relevant social

indicators by which policy alterations of the communicative infrastructure (Figure II) may be gauged. Second, we consider as an example of a significant

policy change the recent Environmental Protection Agency budget reductions as they "impact" the communicative infrastructure of society and thus too the

processes of societal learning and social interaction. (Figure II). In the next section, then we examine the most difficult problem to which a critical

theory of public policy leads: the assessment of citizens'

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recourse to scientific and political discourses—and the conditions of power and systematic distortions that influence that effective recourse and voice.

Families of Measures and Social Indicators

If it is plausible that policy implementation alters the communicative infrastructure, we should be able to identify groups of empirically sensitive measures

and "social indicators" of changes in each of the four infrastructural dimensions of Figure II.

Changes in those institutions mediating claims of attention will be indicated by shifts in personnel and budgets, resource shifts, allocations of funds,

and capital shifts more generally, where capital is thus understood here as a capacity to devote attention. Changes in those institutions mediating claims

of intentions (subjective expressions of self, desire, will, and interest) may be indicated by shifts in organizational size, membership, structure (role

assignment, membership developments), and participation rates. Changes in those institutions mediating claims of legitimacy and rightness will be indicated

by shifts in the scope, content, and, number of regulations, rules, directives and legal mandates, informal norms, entitlements, eligibility requirements,

stipulations, contracts, contract conditions, and so forth. And changes in those institutions that mediate claims of facts and strategic means-ends effectiveness

will be indicated by shifts in the scope, content and number of research studies, experiments, technological innovations, social technologies (administrative

and management systems), market and client analyses, published reports and documents, official findings and results. Such dimensions of the mediating institutions,

then suggest families of measures and indicators that may be monitored and assessed as a policy is implemented: as health services are cutback or extended,

as environmental regulations are changed, or (to consider de facto policies not issued by the state) as industry and labour negotiate "give-backs" as Ford

and the auto workers recently have done. Significantly, a change in a budget—for community health centres or for a

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wage-benefit package—promises secondary effects in the other three infrastructural dimensions mediating between social action and social reproduction and

production.

Policy Illustration: EPA Budget Reductions

Consider briefly the Reagan Administration's cuts to the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. Proposing a budget reduced from $ 1.36 billion when

she took office to $ 961 million for the coming fiscal year, 1982-83. EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch's agenda will of course not simply mean that some

people earn less income (perhaps the narrowest economic view), but that profound changes were likely to occur in the practical social infrastructure that

the everyday work of this agency's staff reproduced, regulated, investigated and nurtured. How did the budget cuts, then, alter each of the dimensions

of that infrastructure discussed above and indicated in Figure II ?

In the arena of legal regulatory effects, of course, the budget cuts were likely to lead to rollbacks of regulations and standards, and more certainly still,

to reductions of enforcement activities. Regulations were likely to be eliminated in the name of overstringency. Enforcement judgments (fines, suits, or

permit restrictions) were likely to dwindle. As Time reported:

"Enforcement procedures have been disrupted . . . The Washington enforcement staff was dispersed into four unconnected subdivisions, Field offices have

been told to check with EPA headquarters before pursuing cases against alleged corporate violations of pollution laws. As a result, the number of violations

referred for prosecution has dropped from 230 to just 42 in nearly eight months since (EPA administrator) Gorsuch took office." {Time, 1. 18.82)

The staff of the EPA attempted to justify this weakening of regulatory effort by arguing that regulations inherited from the previous administration were

unworkable: too cumbersome, complex, ambitious, and inflexible. While massive

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evidence of past EPA effectiveness exists, such appeals nevertheless were made to legitimate present agency actions: to legitimate these cutbacks and so

obtain broad-based public consent. Whether this attempt to manage the consent of a public that may well know better succeeds remains of course to be seen.

In the arena of changes in social organization, the budget reductions will lead to literal reorganization if not sheer EPA disorganization. Central and

field office staff are being cut: organizational working relations with state agencies are more ambiguous than ever. Such reorganization has already meant

massive turnover and layoff for employees. Russell E. Train, EPA administrator under the Nixon and Ford administrations, wrote of these changes:

"If Gorsuch is allowed to carry out plans that have been circulating within the agency for some time, by this coming June—one year and five months after

the Reagan Administration took office—80 per cent of EPA's headquarters staff will have quit or been fired, demoted, or downgraded.

It is hard to imagine any business manager consciously undertaking such a personnel policy unless its purpose was to destroy the enterprise. Predictably,

the result at EPA has been and will continue to be demoralization and institutional paralysis. Attrition within the agency is running at an extraordinary

2.7 per cent per month or 32 per cent a year." (The Washington Post, February 2, 1982).

In addition, such organizational changes became public promises not only of diminished activity but of diminished regulatory concern, attitude and intent;

promises of reduced regulatory pressure by the agency. And thus the expectations of many others may be altered; state and city official worried that they

may be left with regulatory responsibilities without the funds to carry them out; politicians worried that a gutted EPA may represent a political liability

in future elections; environmentalists worried that air and water quality will suffer, that toxic waste will poison the physical and natural environment

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and human lives; even business may well be worried. Train suggests, about a possible political backlash. Policy changes alter social expectations. Consider

the somewhat ironic remark of Dennis Abrams, Deputy Attorney General of the State of West Virginia, as he commented on the EPA budget reductions,

"Any cutback in EPA as a viable organization hurts us. Threatening EPA lawsuits is how we mostly get voluntary compliance. We don't have the resources to

conduct special investigations. Our hands are totally tied." (National Journal, January 30, 1982, 185).

In these organizational changes, then, not only jobs and morale, but stable and trusted relationships as well are lost, and new ones are yet to replace

the old. Businesses no less than potentially affected residents near toxic waste dumps may find the intent of state, local, and federal regulatory organizations

unclear, shifting, and ambiguous, though businesses may well be expected to cope with these uncertainties of trusted, stable relationships far more ably

than unorganized local residents.

In the arena of scientific-technological and administrative activity, the budget reductions may lead to four initial results. First, actual field inspections,

monitoring of conditions, and problem documentation may be diminished. Second, basic research devoted to the understanding of pollution effects and abatement

technologies may be cutback. Third, the publication, issuance, and reporting of findings from field research and basic research alike may be stymied; public

information programmes at the EPA have been severely restricted. And fourth, administrative development of aggressive strategies to fulfill the agency's

mandates has been retarded rather than furthered. At stake in each of these activities is the public's potential knowledge and understanding of the character

of existing environmental problems and possible remedies. The eradication of these activities weakens the public's capacity to learn and know about the

quality of the water it drinks, the air it breathes, the waste dumps it finds nearby, the materials it uses in industry and home, and so on,

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Public and environmentalist outcry notwithstanding, such policy changes due to budget reductions serve to reproduce knowledge and belief in a very particular

way: here we see the reproduction of public ignorance as information and research which might otherwise be made available is restricted or not gathered

in the first place."9 Noting Administrator Gorsuch's suspicion of some EPA employees who might distribute information somehow inconsistent with her plans,

the Time report disclosed,

"Mistrustful of the presumed environmentalist bias of career EPA employees (Gorsuch) has centralized control. Research scientists now cannot release findings

until they have been approved as "appropriate" by four levels of the bureaucracy; public information programs, such as slide shows and computer software

dealing with science issues, require seven levels of approval." (Time, January 18, 1982).

In the arena of financial and economic impacts, the budget reductions mean massive changes in the attention paid, the resources invested, toward the solution

of public health and environmental problems. EPA budget cuts are not likely, these days, to save tax dollars; rather these resources are more likely to

be spent for weapons of war than for environmental quality and public health protection. Reduced EPA spending will not only reduce attention paid to research,

public information and education, monitoring and inspection activities, but of course attention to effective enforcement is likely to suffer as well. And

this in turn, then, may be expected to result in incentives for, and the actual realization of, reduction in the industrial resources and attention devoted

to the prevention and control of myriad air, water, and ground pollution problems.

Thus another (however weak) source of public regulation and accountability of capital will be further weakened. Private capital will then likely be redirected

toward uses far less public-protecting than pollution control, and the public at large is again likely to suffer the costs of pollution as a relatively

few reap the benefits from such "freed up" capital

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investments. The capital shifts that may be involved here are potentially substantial shifts of attention away from environmental and health protection:

"by EPA estimates, business has spent $ 70 billion or more on pollution control in the eleven years since the agency started bringing lawsuits and unwelcome

publicity." (Time. January 18, 1982).

Cutting an agency budget, then, should be understood to be far more than a narrow economic action, and while this may seem perfectly obvious to some, still

it seems equally obvious that we have few systematic ways of mapping the resulting social-political-legal impacts of budgetary changes, cuts or expansions.

The suggestion of the communicative or social infrastructure in Part II, Figure II, above provides such a preliminary systematic map, however, precisely

because that infrastructure is not a mere social prop, simply an abstract analytical construction connecting structural "learning" with social action and

interaction. Instead, that communicative infrastructure has meaning itself only insofar as it mediates between, and thus works institutionally to integrate,

the actual claims-making and claims-taking actions and interactions of workers and citizens on the one hand, with the development, or the setbacks in the

development, of the social relations and forces of production, the general dimensions of social, structural "learning", on the other hand. Seen structurally,

the EPA cutbacks, for example, were likely to advance neither productive relations nor productive forces, neither social arrangements increasingly protecting

workers, citizens, and natural environment, nor scientific-technological-administrative arrangements resulting in great productivity, control, and efficiency.

Seen phenomenologically, the EPA cutbacks managed or mismanaged information and beliefs, legitimation and consent, trust and expectations, selective attention

and neglect. Policy developments, then, can be assessed as they become manifest as changed elements of the social infrastructure; and these changes can

then be assessed in their inherently related aspects; with respect to the concrete phenomenological impacts on personal experience and interaction, and

with respect to the societal ability to develop, not only safer, more efficient, and

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powerful technologies, but also institutional relations of increasing freedom, justice and social cooperation.

Policy "Recommendations": Attention to Productive and Reproductive Dimensions—or Systematic Failure

If it is plausible that policy "problems" are historically constructed patterns of attention to claims constituting two dimensions of social learning, the

productive and the reproductive, then policy strategies (as official policy implementation efforts or as oppositional movement strategies) ought to respond

to and address both dimensions—or run the risk of policy failure. Consider the complex problem of safe disposal of toxic industrial wastes.

First, toxic wastes are immediate threats to social reproduction. Including carcinogens, mutagens, teratagens, and an array of poisons that stagger the

imagination, these wastes can kill people. Second, toxic wastes are generally products of industrial processes, whether generated by chemical factories,

hospital test procedures, or heavy industry. As elements of society's productive processes, the generation of these wastes immediately involves questions

of the organization of production: what is produced and for whom, what equivalents might be produced, whether functionally equivalent non-toxic chemicals

could instead be used, and so on.

Attention to the "toxics" problem has often focused upon issues of health effects, the threats to social reproduction. Public health officials and environmental

movement activists alike, it seems, have been predominately concerned with the issues of "proper" containment, shipping, and disposal of these waste products.

Essential as these efforts are, if, because of a scarcity of the resource of public attention to, say nothing of ideological blinders, they lead to a simultaneous

neglect of the "productive" side of the problem, then crucial issues are likely to be ignored: strategies of waste reduction at the source, i.e., production

and its control, will be neglected and effectives incentives for producers to continue to generate toxics will remain unchanged. Especially when containment

technologies remain primitive, attention

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solely to the reproductive (generally health effects) aspects of "toxics" may lead to continual policy failure: for the productive aspects of the problem

promise to overwhelm virtually any remedial or protective public health strategies designed to minimize risk while toxic waste generation proceeds unabated.

The agenda for policy-makers, public health workers, labour and environmental movement activists alike, then, must include, not only reproductive, health

protection strategies but productive, immediately political economic strategies as well.

Conversely, attention paid solely to issues of waste generation would obviously avoid the immediate concerns, fears, worries, and experiences of citizens

who now face possible dangers from exposure to such waste chemicals. Consideration only of either questions (even technical epidemiological issues) or

issues of the control of production may lead to the actual neglect of citizens' demands for timely information, for responsiveness from state health officials,

and for counsel that they can trust to be from conflicts of interest. Neglect of health and social concerns in the name of attacking the problem at its

productive source may then be another recipe for systematic, and particularly callous, policy failure.

V. Assessing recourse to discourse—and domination

As policy implementation alters the social infrastructure of action, then, citizens' bases of knowledge, norms, expectations of others, and attention may

be thus altered as a consequence. More profoundly still, however, the very abilities of citizens to check—to find out about, criticize and learn about,

test, appeal or file grievances, challenge or debate—claims in these four dimensions of communicative interaction (facts, norms, intention, attention)

may be altered as well.

Recall that ordinary communicative action involves a practical structure of four related claims—and the counter-factual possibilities of checking these

claims—offered by speakers and potentially accepted or challenged by their

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listeners.30 Whether threatening, asserting, offering challenging, or requesting, for example, ordinary communicative action: (1) establishes or recreates

a normative (claimed to be legitimate) relationship of speaker and hearer (e.g. a county health inspector questions, warns, alerts, tells, promises or

threatens a restaurant owner); (2) refers to some content that may be true or false (e.g., the strike will succeed, the chemical is an organic toxin);

(3) expresses the speaker's intentions and feelings (e.g., sincere or joking, ironic or satirical); and (4) calls attention clearly in a language or symbol

system shared by speaker and listener (e.g., plain English or technical toxicology).

Which claims are made, when they are made, and which are accepted is historically contingent, of course. For each of these claims might be challenged by

those on the receiving end as listeners, no less among friends than between politically opposed groups or classes.31 The questions then arise in fact,

though, in a given policy arena, whether false claims can be publicly distinguished from true ones? Can illegitimate and oppressive claims be publicly

recognized and rejected in favour of legitimate ones? That is, how possible would it be, under each of several policy alternatives, for both factual and

normative claims to be regularly checked by affected citizens —checked so that the claims could be established or revised in a generalizable, non-coercive,

mutually legitimated manner, rather than being imposed by virtue of the will or power of one dominant group or class?32

To what extent are citizens' and workers' attempts to learn about and make sense of the actual conditions affecting their lives blocked by systematically

distorting influences in class, power, coercion, and domination ? For example, does a newly proposed hazardous waste disposal policy help or hinder affected

citizens who wish to learn about the true effects of toxic chemicals? Must those citizens perpetually reduce the results of laboratory studies to the imputed

political-economic interests of those who funded the research? Does the proposed policy help affected citizens establish (non-coercively) generalizable

political norms (for example regulating work place exposure to toxic chemicals by making production

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decisions accountable to workers)? These questions point to the historically precarious possibilities of institutionally established theoretical-scientific

and practical-democratic discourses. And the degree to which such institutionalized discourses are systematically distorted by relations of class, power,

ideology, and policy making is a practical issue to which a critical theory of public policy inherently and immediately leads."

Only as discourses free from socially unnecessary constraints and coercion, exist can we argue that citizens' beliefs are warranted by scientific standards

of withstanding criticism, that the norms and laws regulating public behaviour are justified by democratic standards reflecting generalizable interests,

that neither are simply instances of unchecked bias, special interests, bureaucratic or class oppression. Yet the actual historical extent of domination-free

discourses can never be determined, assured, or established in a theoretical, apriori way.

Historically particular distortions of discourses—scientific and political—must be investigated concretely. Only then can and must practical judgements

be made distinguishing between the inevitable "socially necessary" and the avoidable "socially unnecessary" distortions of discourses—to forestall the

foolishness of chasing the mirage of any "perfect" and distortionless communication process. One contribution of the critical policy analysis is to clarify

the historical, scientific and political importance of domination-free, not distortion-free, discourses: often unrecognized, this difference is fundamental.

Only to the extent to which discourses free from socially unnecessary distortions are available to citizens, will it be socially and historically possible

then both scientifically to distinguish misrepresentation from factual knowledge, and democratically to distinguish misinformed consent from informed consent,

or more baldly, non-coerced political consent from outright political manipulation.

A critical theory of public policy leads, then, first to the location of policy implementation in the mediating social infrastructure of action, and second

as a consequence to the

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altered social interactions of practical claims-making (with respect to content and beliefs, norms and consent, expressions and trust and attention and

comprehension).31 Third, then the analysis leads further to the empirical and critical questions probing the degree to which these everyday practical claims

are institutionally imposed or conversely criticizable (redeemable, legitimated, non-coercively and generalizably established) through processes of democratic

and scientific criticism. Thus a critical theory of public policy analysis leads us to examine the systematic, policy institutionalized reproduction of

citizens' power and powerlessness: of citizens' knowledge or ignorance, free consent or oppression, cooperation or manipulation, attention to or distraction

from pressing social needs, and the corresponding suppression or realization of socially and politically generalizable interests.

Without institutionalized means of checking knowledge and truth claims (about chemical toxicity, administrative efficiency, technological success, energy

efficiency, work safety, housing quality, and so on), citizens will remain subject to the opportunistic stories and systematically selective respresentations

of those already in power, without being able to check the misrepresentation, false claims, exaggerations, or unsupportable ideological beliefs that they

may actually face. Without institutionalized means of freely checking and criticizing legitimacy and Tightness claims, citizens will be politically disenfranchised,

incapable of the autonomous political actions and participation that alone can truly legitimate public policy.

Without such discourses societal learning loses its systematic institutional basis. While processes of learning in the dimensions of the development of

productive forces and productive relations are not to be equated with the processes of non-coercive discourses, still to the extent that the results of

learning processes (local innovation activity, policy demonstration projects, restructuring of production and work processes, new political forms) cannot

be checked non-coercively through such discourses, to that extent is domination likely to exist.

This line of analysis points therefore both to the policy

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influenced reproduction of social interaction and to the socially necessary or unnecessary distortions of ongoing processes of scientific and political

discourses, the bases of structural and societal learning processes. There are a host of further problems that a critical account of policy analysis must

address, then. By what particular processes does the reproduction of belief, consent, trust and attention take place? How does policy implementation alter

these processes? By what means are we to examine the historical justifications for existing distortions of discourse and judge whether they suffice to

establish those distortions as "socially necessary"? Notice, of course, that the very phrase, "a socially necessary distortion" implies that generalized

social acceptance or consent, rather than justification appeal to a particularistic of private interest, ought to distinguish such a distortion from others.

How, though, is that generalized acceptance to be judged by a critical political analyst, a critical policy analyst? These questions require further research

and attention, and as they are addressed, so will a critical theory of public policy, a critical structural phenomenology of public policy, advance or

falter.

Conclusion

As an empirical account of the contingent and variable reproduction via policy development of citizens' beliefs, consent, trust, and attention, a critical

theory of public policy analysis, when addressed to those affected, may be a "practical" political theory. It can call attention to relations of power,

not simply in terms of the control of capital but in terms of the manipulation of everyday sensibility, credibility, gullibility as well. It can point

to the limits and vulnerabilities of established power by pinpointing how the exercise of that power itself depends upon background consenses of taken-for-granted

factual beliefs, normative myths of expertise, meritocracy, or authority, social trust and dependency, and selective attention and neglect. It can then

identify possible avenues of political opposition and practice: 1) exposing the conditions of dangerous work places, declining environmental quality, or

economic crisis; 2) questioning and challenging

74

illegitimate "authority" by publicizing the suppression of generalizable interests and citizens' noncoercive recourse to scientific and political discourses;

3) revealing deceit and manipulation by those heretofore trusted: and 4) focusing attention on more substantively democratic policy alternatives and concrete

programmes for social betterment.

When we suggest that critical theory can be practical, then, we can hardly mean that it unleashes or unlocks the latent forces lying in waiting of an historically

suppressed proletariat in the United States. Any such mobilization can only come from the efforts of activists in workplaces, in communities, in ethnic

and gender-based social movements whose practical efforts and strategies—if they are not to work divisively at cross purposes- must be informed by an historically-based

theoretical analysis of established power, emancipatory strategies, and future political-economic possibilities, including both dangers and opportunities.

Yet by enabling a systematic assessment of the social and political-economic contexts that current social and political movements face, a critical theory

of public policy analysis may anticipate practical obstacles (the systematic manipulation of trust and consent, the misrepresentation of history and pressing

problems, the obfuscation of pressing needs), and so it may then point to oppositional strategies of practical action in each case.

Yet any critical social theory has its own limits. It can be no panacea, no guarantee, no key or gimmick to 'social transformation," "major structural changes"

(or the euphemism you prefer). A theory can reveal, expose, reevaluate, illuminate, encourage, explain, decipher, simplify, inform, educate, challenge,

threaten, or support only as it is articulated in practice, including in situated text: article, tract, pamphlet, leaflet media report, newsletter item,

position paper, and so on. A critical theory can have little meaning indeed apart from the understanding, the application, the continued articulation as

the actual calling of others, attention, that it receives from its bearers. To paraphrase the ordinary language analysts, we might well say that it is

not properly a "theory'' that is confused, but rather theorists: and in the same vein, it is likely not to be a "theory" in the abstract that is critical

and

75

"practical" but those who articulate that theory in the course of their lives, those human beings who by virtue of interpreting their shared world anew

become able together to change it, who by virtue of being able to anticipate and respond to the exercise to domination are able to organize practically

against it, who by virtue of being able to distinguish authority from tyranny are able to articulate and move concretely toward a vision of a free and

democratic society.

References

Thanks to Kieran Donaghy, Cathy Campbell, the other members of the Spring Habermas seminar, and Renee Pink for their assistance. Thanks to Jan Rutledge

for preparing the manuscript.

1. Here I refer to the recent work of Jurgen Habermas (Boston: Beacon Press: 1970: Toward a Rational Society: 1973: Theory and Practice: 1975: Legitimation

Crisis: and 1979: Communication and the Evolution of Society). For insightful recent attempts to distinguish the differences and continuities between Habermas's

work and that of the Frankfurt School critical theorists before him, see Axel Honneth. "Communication and Reconciliation: Habermas' Critique of Adorno."

Telos. 39, Spring, 1979. Douglas Kellner and Rick Roderick, "Recent Literature on Critical Theory" New German Critique. No. 23. Spring/Summer. 1981, and

David Held, introduction to Critical Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. For secondary works on Habermas, the most comprehensive is

certainly Thomas McCarthy's The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1978).

2. An important analysis of Habermas's relationship to Marx is Albrecht Wellmer, "Communication and Emancipation: Reflections on the Linguistic Turn in

Critical Theory" in John O'Neil. ed. On Critical Theory, New York: Seabury Press, 1976. This section presents an emaciated, bare bones presentation of

the conceptual skeleton of Habermas's critical theory essential to frame a critical theory of public policy. For the necessary systematic discussions of

his analysis of power, the suppression of generalizable interests, the logic of discourses, legitimation

76

problems, and so on, see the extensive assessments in McCarthy and Held, cited above.

3. For a related argument, see John Forester, "The Critical Theory-Policy Analysis Affair: Habermas and Wildavsky as Bedfellows?," Journal of Public Policy

v 2: 2, 1982 (1982) and Working Papers in Planning#56, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. It is worth noting the preliminary nature of the present essay.

Little "middle-range" work has been done integrating the structural and action theories that Habermas has sketched out so far. The present essay leaves

many more questions unanswered than answered, and it only, roughly suggests directions for further and far more empirically, detailed critical policy studies—assessing

in fact infrastructural changes, changes in learning capacity, changes in social interactions, and changes in the institutionalization of discourses.

4. Wellmer, n. 2, pp. 245-46.

5. Habermas, 1979, n. 1, p. 120.

6. Ibid., Chapter 1.

7. See Habermas, 1979, Ibid., p. 1.

8. Habermas, 1979, Ibid., p. 97.

9. See here the excellent essay by Tony Smith, "The Scope of the Social Sciences in Weber and Habermas, ''Philosophy and Social Criticism, 8: 1, Spring,

1981.

10. On the relationship of development of the forces and relations of production to the pragmatic truth and right-ness claims made in action, see Habermas,

1975. Section 1 (e.g., p. 9-10) and Habermas, 1979, Ibid, Chapters 3-4.

11. Cf. Habermas, 1979, Ibid., p. 119. and note 10 above.

12. Habermas, 1979, Ibid., p. 142, cf. p. 177.

13. The characterization of a structural phenomenology is one way of understanding Habermas's reference to the contribution of the theory of communicative

action as providing the basis for a 'structural analysis of life-worlds." See Axel Honneth, Eberhard Knodler-Bunte, and Arno Widmann, "The Dialectics of

Rationalization: An Interview with Jurgen Habermas. "Telos, 49. Fall, 1981,Cf. here the notion of a structural phenomenology with Anthony Giddens' notion

of "structuration" in his Central Problems in Social Theory, Chapter 2, 1979, his earlier

77

hesitations about phenomenology notwithstanding (in New Rules of Sociological Method, 1976), and see note 14.

14. See for example, John Forester, "Critical Theory and Organizational Analysis," Ithaca: Program in Urban and Regional Studies, Working Paper#50 and forthcoming

in Gareth Morgan, ed. Research Strategies (in process).

15. The center of Figure 1 may be largely missing because to date Habermas has considered "organizations" to be predominately strategic, patterns of purposive-rational

action, rather than patterns of routinized social action with productive and reproductive aspects corresponding to those organizational actions stressing

content or relationship validity claims respectively, Cf. note 14.

16. Reformulating and broadening Habermas's analysis of "comprehensibility claims" here, the appeal to "attention focusing" claims makes possible the inclusion

and consideration of non-verbal as well as verbal (speech) acts. See note 18 below.

17. David Nobel, "The Selling of the University," The Nation, February 6, 1982.

18. This analysis deviates from (but perhaps extends) Habermas's analysis in his "Reconstruction of Historical Materialism and The Development of Normative

Structures" and his account of universal pragmatics. In particular, Habermas has been silent about the character of institutions that might mediate or

serve to frame, stage, or set up claims of "sincerity" and comprehensibility." Here we attempt to specify or suggest the institutional and social conditions

which facilitate the ready and routine acceptance of such claims. Just as scientific and engineering laboratories (and the knowledge producing service

sector) routinely provide the institutional infrastructure for the establishment (offering and grounding) of factual and truth claims, so may we understand

traditional and secular ritual structures—more generally routinized social organization, routinized social relations—to provide the social infrastructure

for the ready establishment of sincerity claims, claims to trustworthiness of expressed intention. As we are able to assess another's performance of conventional

social rituals, so are we able to judge the consistency between what they say and what they do in deed.

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The parallel argument for the infrastructure of the "comprehensibility claim" is more difficult, but equally significant. It is important to remember that

the "universal pragmatics" is developed explicitly for verbal speech acts, while the programmatic intention of the argument there includes (in principle)

non-verbal action, as well for which Habermas has not yet provided an analysis. First, then, we can generalize the character of the comprehensibility claim

from the narrow meaning of the claim, producing a well-formed utterance in a spoken language, to the broader meaning of producing a well-formed token in

a shared field of conventions (if not in "forms of "life"). Once we make this move, we can render as a claim to the production of meaning (intelligibility,

comprehensibility, recognition, uptake) non-verbal actions such as: paying for a commodity after asking for it, writing someone a cheque after a bribe

has been offered and agreed to, issuing a cheque as a wage in return for labour, or leaving a "tip" or gratuity in a restaurant after a meal. Each of these

resource movements and economic actions may be non-verbal, but they are actions (for which the actors may be held responsible—as customer, perpetrator

of a bribe, employer, patron or cheapskate), nevertheless, and not only because they are each rule-governed (thus counting as payment-making or tipping),

but also because each one produces (generates and here thematizes) a well-formed, conventionally defined token (not an utterance)' i.e.. the payment or

the gratuity. Such a meaningful "token" may be as ordinary as a conventional gesture (a wave of the hand to greet someone) or as richly economic as the

investment of capital (presupposing of course the framework of economic institutions in which the movement of resources, labour, wealth and machines may

be recognized as capital investment—of. here Wittgenstein's Philosophical lnvestigations#313, with "economics as the relevant grammar." If we then ask

what societal instructions provide the framework in which such non-verbal, conventional tokens may be generated, recognized as meaningful, and emphasized

in their very production, the answer appears to point toward the economic institutions and framework of society. Within those institutions, for example,

mechanisms such as budgets and accounting procedures are the special "linguistic" (if not ordinarily verbal) means by which the generation, expenditure,

and consumption of such "tokens" (resources, staff assignments, debt, credit, and

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so on) are organized and monitored. If this line of argument can be developed and clarified, we could support the proposal that the economic institutions

of a society provide the social infrastructure for the generation and establishment of actors' "comprehensibility" (or more generally then attention-directing)

claims, Figure II suggests.

19. Figure II is suggested as a preliminary analysis of the mediating instructions that may fill in the centre of Figure I-suggesting therefore the concrete

social forms through which social action and social structure reproduce one another. The identification of mediating institutions may not be very specific

for two reasons. First, each actual type of institution itself reflects patterns of action and interaction, and it will therefore (while stressing one)

involve each of the four claims constituting communicative action. A research laboratory and a church congregation will both reproduce norms and rules

that their members (ought to) follow: they will both refer to truth claims about the ways that the world is held to be: they will both depend upon the

mutually recognized sincerity claims of their members, so that cooperation rather than manipulation may be the order of the day; and of course, they will

both depend upon these comprehensibility claims ordinarily made so that their members can understand in the most minimal way what they are saying. Each

type of mediating institution, then, involves the claims that happen to be stressed, thematized, or oriented toward by the other three types of mediating

organizations. Second, however, these mediating institutions can only be presented as "families" of institutions and organizations, for their specific

forms will vary historically with regional, cultural, urban-rural, industrial-agricultural characteristics and so forth. What distinguishes these organizational

forms is only the type of action claim that they may particularly stress, support, and provide the context for: thus research laboratories are directly

oriented toward the production of factual knowledge, (for whatever subsequent systemic function), while legislatures are correspondingly oriented to the

production of norms and laws (again for various functions), but not vice versa.

20. These mediating institutions are not wholly uncoupled or disjoined, of course. Under a capitalist political economy, we might expect that the legal

institutions do not

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treat questions of the socialization vs. privatization of production equally, i.e., that regulations and incentives will be structured again and again to

reproduce capitalist market relations. Likewise, we expect social-cultural institutions to reflect individualistic traditions. Nevertheless each of these

mediating institutions might also provide enclaves for new democratic forms and counter-movements (pockets of resistance?) to the continuation of the private

appropriation of the social capacity for production.

21. We may expect different policies to alter some dimensions of this 'social infrastructure' more than others. Tax policies alter rules and regulations

of financial management primarily, then obviously resource flows, and then only secondarily do they foster new organizational forms, and alterations in

public beliefs and knowledge. Welfare policies alter rules, resources, and organizational forms immediately, and public beliefs less directly. Symbolic

policies (those which are never actually implemented despite rhetoric to the contrary: local resolutions passed without resource commitments for adequate

follow up, e.g., are effective, if at all, primarily insofar as they influence public beliefs, while organizational, legal, and economic changes may be

negligible. Correspondingly, then, we might expect to have different "politics" associated with them. Where knowledge and belief are at stake (the National

Institute for Occupational Health and Safety is threatened, or the National Center for Health Services Research is cutback), the political role of scientific

experts will be significantly more important than if social security payments are threatened. This suggests that there might be several clusters of "policy

politics" representing those special cases where a policy does not promise changes in most of the infrastructural dimensions but rather seems to emphasize

changes in just one or two of these dimensions.

22. See e.g., Daniel Berman, Death on the Job, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1978.

23. See Section V below.

24. See, e.g. Legitimation Crisis, 1975. I use "background consensus" to elaborate the sociological and political meaning of the term as Habermas uses it

in his discussion of the "universal pragmatics", the core of his communications theory. In particular, "consensus" here

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is taken to a shared position or attitude, not the end-point of an argumentative process.

25. !f social movements and policy problems alike ought to be understood in the context of the inter-play or dialectic of forces and relations of production,

of system, and life-world as Habermas reformulates them, then we must examine the ways in which policies and movements alike alter the communicative infrastructure

of society. To date, Habermas has combined and sought to integrate two complementary but different types of analysis: an analysis of social learning understood

as structural developments in the reproduction of society, and an analysis of social action and intermediate level of social organization (factories, firms,

hospitals, trade associations, unions, cultural associations, churches, and so forth), perhaps because he has tended to equate "organization" with a pattern

of purely purposive-rational, instrumental, or strategic action. Nevertheless, if we seek to integrate action theory and structural systems theory along

the lines made possible by the communications account that Habermas has provided, formulation of this intermediate level of social organization this communicative

infrastructure of society is required. Figure II tentatively suggests one formulation of this infrastructure,

26. On "Contradictions", cf. Legitimation Crisis, pp. 26-27.

27. These claims are historically contingent, and that is neither to say that they are arbitrary, random, purely ad hoc and unsystematic, nor to say that

they are simply the products of speakers (as the methodological individualists would have it). Instead, speakers and listeners find themselves always already

not only in a normative communications community (they share languages together in rule governed ways), but also in an institutional setting of relations

of production and power. See note 34.

28. See Legitimation Crisis, Part III.

29. Consider;

". . . the Federal government is not well equipped to investigate separately all of the tens of thousands of facilities involved in the generation, discharge,

transportation, and use of hazardous substances. Federal agencies often have all they can do to issue permits as fast as the applications come in. There

is seldom the

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opportunity to do extensive monitoring or inspecting to double-check the honesty or the accuracy of the permit applicant " The Toxic Substances Dilemma,

(Washington, D.C., The National Wildlife Federation. 1980), p. 33.

30. On the assumption of the possibilities of checking, of "recourse to discourse", see note 9 above.

31. See note 27.

32. See R.R. McGuire, "Speech Acts, Communicative Competence, and the Paradox of Authority, Philosophy and Rhetoric, 10:1, Winter 1977, pp. 30-45.

33. On the importance of discourse, see Thomas McCarthy's introduction to Legitimation Crisis, and his Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas. pp. 304-310,

314-317, Cf. Habermas, 1973, n. 1, Chapters 3 and 5. See also Frank Fischer, Politics, Values and Public Policy. The Problem of Methodology, Boulder, Colorado,

Westview Press, 1980.

34. See also John Forester, "Planning in the Face of Power", Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter, 1982 and the related "Critical Reason

and Political Power in Project Review Activity", Policy and Politics, 1982.

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4 ADMINISTRATION IN DEVELOPING SOCIETIES

Satya Deva

In this section an attempt will be made to examine the nature and problems of administration in developing countries, with special reference to India. Administration

is only one aspect of the exercise of class rule, other aspects being economic, political, social and cultural. Administration refers to the exercise of

control through a bureaucracy. Since the exercise of control is deeply related to the possession of power, wealth, social status and cultural hegemony,

administration can be understood only in the total social setting. It is in this perspective of the totality, therefore, that we must try to place administration,

however stupendous the task.

The study of administration in developing countries assumes special significance in view of the imposition of military dictatorship, one after another,

in these countries. Since the military is a part of the bureaucracy, the military-cum-civil bureaucracy comes to rule. The situation in many of these countries

seems to be comparable to that obtaining in France after the seizure of power by Napoleon Bonaparte on Dec. 2, 1951 with the help of the army, a scene

described by Marx as follows: "The struggle seems to be settled in such a way that all classes, equally impotent and equally mute, fall on their knees

before the rifle butt."1 Such a situation, in which the bureaucracy is able to subdue all classes", is of great interest from the theoretical as well as

the

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practical point of view; for, here the power of the bureaucracy becomes overriding in nature and influences (in a dialectical fashion, over economic, social,

political and cultural factors.

In the developing countries, as a general phenomenon, capitalism is rising, old social formation is in dissolution and a new one is seeking to take its

place. This transition tends to lead to a exceptional type of state. Frederick Engels points out that as a rule, the economically dominant class, through

the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class; hence the state functions as the instrument of this dominant class. By way of exception,

however, "says Engels (in 1891), periods occur in which the warring classes balance each other so nearly that the state power, as an ostensible mediator,

acquires, for the moment, a certain degree of independence of both"2 Engels gives some examples of such an autonomized state, as follows:

(a) the absolute monarchy in 17th and 18th century Europe—it held the balance between the nobility and the class of burghers;

(b) Bonapartism, particularly of the Second French Empire, which played off the bourgeoisie and the proletariat against each other; and

(c) the New German Empire under Bismarck—here capitalists and workers were balanced against each other and equally cheated for the benefit of the impoverished

Prussian cabbage junkers (aristocratic landholders).

The nature of the autonomized state has been discussed at length by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. He points out that the bourgeoisie

in France in mid-nineteenth century was "split" into two sections. One of these consisted of large landowners who had been "rendered thoroughly bourgeois",

and the other of the "aristocrats of finance and big industrialists."3 Each of these wanted "its own supremacy and the subordination of the other." However,

they both faced the antagonism of the other classes, namely the petty bourgeoisie and workers. The bourgeoisie had a true insight into the fact that all

the

85

weapons which it had forged against feudalism, now turned their points against itself. It understood that all the so-called bourgeois liberties and organs

of progress attacked and menaced its class rule. In this situation, and in its condition of being split, it perceived that a parliamentary regime, which

"lives in struggle and by struggle" would be "a regime of unrest." Hence it realized that its own interests dictated, "that it should be delivered from

the danger of its own rule; that in order to restore tranquility in the country, its bourgeois parliament must, first of all, be given its quietus; that

in order to preserve its social power intact, its political power must be broken; that the individual bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes

and to enjoy undisturbed property, family, religion and order only on condition that their class be condemned along with the other classes to like political

nullity. . . ."4 Hence the bourgeoisie "recognized the army as the decisive state power" and "had to confirm" "the fact that it had long given up its claim

to dominate this power."5

Marx makes it clear that the role of the bureaucracy under the second Bonaparte was different from that under the parliamentary republic. Under the parliamentary

republic the bureaucracy was "the instrument of the ruling class," the bourgeoisie. Under the second Bonaparte, however, the state seemed "to have made

itself completely independent."6 "As against civil society", the "state machine" had consolidated its position under an "adventurer" (Bonaparte); he, in

turn, had provided liquor and sausages to the soldiery.7 The civil and military bureaucracy (consisting of half a million each, of officials and soldiers),

"this appalling parasitic body," enmeshed the body of French society like a net and choked "all its pores." While Marx calls the bureaucracy a parasitic

body, that is one living on others without making any useful and fitting return, Engels refers to it (in 1847) as the "class" which had come to exercise

power in Germany: "The present political system of Germany is nothing more than a compromise between the nobility and the petty bourgeoisie, which amounts

to resigning power into the hands of a third class, the bureaucracy."8

While in all developing countries the society is in transition

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and capitalism is underdeveloped, there are great variations within as well as between them. The situation is further complicated by the telescoping of

stages of development. The Asiatic mode of production involving state ownership of land, a large number of small peasants who pay ground rent either direct

or through intermediaries, and an exchange through barter of goods and services produced in the village community, is still in existence in parts of under-developed

countries. A study of the Planning Commission in India in 1956 showed that 45% of village artisans produced their goods for use within the village.9 The

feudal mode of production made a late entry, chiefly through the conferment of proprietary rights in land by the foreign power, as in some areas in India.

Merchant capitalism developed mainly through compradors; industrialization was impeded by colonialism. Consequently underdevelopment today means some kind

of mix of the Asiatic, feudal and capitalistic modes of production. The classes also are in a flux; if one of them is able to dominate over the rest, it

uses the state to maintain "order". Thus if the bourgeoisie is relatively developed and confident, it rules through a parliamentary regime. However, if

the landlords, or the proletariat, or the small-holding peasants, either alone or jointly, are difficult to curb, a dictatorial or autonomized state tends

to arise. If the bourgeoisie is divided into equally powerful sections, none of these sections can be supreme and an autonomized state can result. "The

"order" is in the interest of the exploiting class or classes, but the executive justifies its authoritarianism as being necessary to protect the interests

of the exploited classes. The situation suits the exploiting class and also the ruling bureaucracy. Administration, then, consists in perpetuating this

situation. The state machine maintains exploitation and impedes basic structural change.

Administration of Agriculture

Agriculture continues to be the base of the economy in underdeveloped countries. A large majority of the people are engaged in agriculture or related occupations.

Also, agricultural produce often constitutes the major share of the

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produce. Hence the role of the state can best be understood by examining the condition of agriculture. The base of agriculture, in turn, is land. The ownership

of land, then is a crucial factor of the social formation. As Prime Minister Indira Gandhi noted while inaugurating a conference of Chief Ministers as

far back as 1970 "land reform is the most crucial test which our political system must pass in order to survive."10

The importance of land reforms for landless labourers, sharecroppers, tenant farmers and small-holding peasants goes without saying. They often constitute

the majority of voters; the government claims that it "protects them against the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above."11 Hence pronouncements

by governments such as the one quoted above. However, the lack of a national bond and political organization prevents the peasants from functioning as

a class. On the other hand, the big farmers and landholders tend to function more and more as one section of the bourgeoisie—becoming so, if not already

so. They form powerful associations and enter political parties. In India they often constitute the upper rung of the parties who come to rule at the state

level. State leaders and chief ministers often belong to this class and derive support from it. National leaders acquire their power by representing capital

and balancing the two sections of the bourgeoisie. The maintenance of the status quo requires the continuance in power of both sections. Hence in India,

ruling party candidates for parliament are carefully chosen by the national leadership from among both sections of the bourgeoisie.

If we examine the programme of land reforms we find that its only part which has succeeded, concerns the abolition of statutory landlordism created by the

British. As noted by the National Commission on Agriculture, this part of the reforms brought nearly 20 million cultivators into direct contact with the

state. However, the reform has been carried out in such a way that it has led to the conversion of feudal landlords (owning 57% of the privately owned

land in British India in 1947-48) into farmers, through the payment of compensation at "high" rates and also through leaving large areas of land

88

in their possession in the name of these being sir, khudkasht or khas lands (except in West Bengal).12 Other reforms, relating to the rights of tenants

and the imposition of a ceiling on land holdings, have largely failed. It is, therefore, notable that both the success and the failure of land reforms,

are such as to lead, more and more, to the creation of a rural or agricultural bourgeoisie. This is obviously at the cost of landless labourers and tenants;

however, this tends to balance the power of landholders with that of the capital-owning section of the bourgeoisie.

The National Commission on Agriculture has raised the question of the responsibility for "the tragedy of land reforms in the country."13 In its view, while

both, the legislator and the administrator are responsible, "the major responsibility" lies on the administrative set-up. The Commission says that the

official machinery has been "trained and conditioned to function as the guardian of status QUO and the defender of existing property relations."14 Hence

it cannot, on its own, function as a "change agency" for bringing about "basic structural changes". This indicates the role of a bureaucracy which is an

adjunct to an autonomized ruler. It also gives the lie to Hegel's view of the bureaucracy as being the "universal class" or Weber's belief of it as being

"efficient"

Other programmes relating to agriculture also mainly help the rising agricultural bourgeoisie, often at the cost of weaker sections. Thus inputs, like high

yielding varieties of seeds, fertilizer, pesticides and mechanized implements are mostly used only by rich farmers. A study in Haryana has shown that tenant

and low caste farmers have been unable to use high yielding varieties of seeds.15 However, the prices of these seeds have been subsidized by the Government

out of general revenues derived largely from indirect taxes affecting the poorest of men. In other words, resources are being transferred from the poor

to the rich through programmes aiming at the green revolution. The programme of support prices for agricultural commodities also benefits only the rich,

surplus producing, farmers. In short agricultural administration is weighted in favour of the growth of an agricultural bourgeoisie.

89

Administration of Industry

As has been discussed above, the national leadership performs the function of maintaining a balance between landholders and big farmers on the one hand

and the owners of capital on the other, and also of maintaining "order" in their interest by controlling the working class through the bureaucracy. Hence

each section of the bourgeoisie tends to be controlled in its intercourse with the other one. Thus the Government regulates the availability and prices

of agricultural products (like cotton, jute and oil seeds) which constitute the raw materials of industry, and also of industrial products (like fertiliser,

pesticides and implements) which are needed by farmers. This regulation balances the interests of the two sections of the bourgeoisie. However, where the

interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat conflict, the bourgeoisie is given preference. Thus during the Emergency workers' bonus was sought to

be reduced, strikes were banned and trade union activity was curbed with the help of the police and the army.

The relationship between large and small industries is to some extent comparable to that between large and small farmers. Like small farmers, small industrialists

also are ill-organized. The Government constantly proclaims its great concern for small-scale industry. However, where the interests of large and small-scale

industry conflict, large-scale industry gets preference. The definition of small-scale industry is being changed, almost every six years, to make benefits

intended for it, be available to larger and larger industrial undertakings. Industries with an investment of up to twenty lakhs of rupees are now treated

as small. Large industrialists also avail of these benefits, by starting smaller ventures as ancillaries, for which the limit is rupees twenty-five lakh.

Further, the larger an undertaking, the easier it is to get a loan from a Government agency;16 which is a queer way, to say the least, of administering

a programme for assisting small-scale industries. The same applies to other assistance programmes, such as those of marketing research, quality marking,

and testing and supply of scarce raw materials.

It is thus notable that both the policy and its implementation,

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result in the cornering of the benefits, which are said to be intended for small industrialists, by larger and larger ones. Small industrialists are not

able to exercise sufficient pressure and are not properly represented in the legislature. The political executive and the bureaucracy both act in favour

of large industry. On the one hand, the laws, rules and regulations are so drawn up as to serve its interest; on the other hand their implementation also

has the same result. Thus officials tend to exercise their discretion in favour of bigger industrialists for larger loans. For, there is less risk in giving

loans to bigger industrialists. Hence the "rationality" of the bureaucracy leads to the fulfilment of its own interests as well as those of the powerful.

In this light, corruption is only one variant of the mode of the fulfilment of the interests of the powerful. Thus if a bureaucrat has the discretion to

grant a loan but is unwilling to take the risk, an "incentive" can make him do so. It can be, for example, in the form of a recommendation to the minister,

or consideration in cash. In this way, every small official act comes to have a price. Hence small industrialists have to regularly pay bribes to numerous

inspectors. A sample survey in Ludhiana District of Punjab, revealed that 76 out of 99 small industrialists faced this problem;17 some of them were even

afraid of putting up a signboard for fear of attracting inspectors. Large industrialists often avoid the inspectors by giving donations for the ruling

party or the minister. The size of the business, the donation, and the extent of benefit are, thus, correlated: the small industrialists remains small,

if he remains at all, for all his bribing.

One of the results of thus favouring big bourgeoisie is the growth of monopolies. It is not that the executive does not have the instruments to control

monopolies, evasion of labour laws, tax evasion, smuggling, or black money: the fact is that bourgeois political parties share the legal and illegal gains

of both sections of the bourgeoisie for fighting "democratic" elections. There is also no law in India to control donations by business corporations to

political parties. However, given a bureaucracy whose interests coincide with those of the bourgeoisie and the political executive, much cannot be

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expected from changes in the law.

Given the will, however, the executive can exercise checks on the bourgeoisie in many ways. Participation in the share capital of joint stock companies

through the agency of Indian residents abroad is only one such method. Hence the executive both supports and restrains the bourgeoisie so far as it is

in the interest of "tranquility."

"Socialism" and the Public Sector

Marx describes graphically how in the autonomized state of France in mid-nineteenth century every programme was claimed to be socialistic: "Even bourgeois

liberalism is declared socialistic. . ."18 Louis Napolean Bonaparte claimed to be the champion of the poor—"chief of the lumpen proletariat." At the same

time, in keeping with the government's role of exercising a check on both sections of the bourgeoisie, government participation in economic activity has

greatly increased, "whole of the banking business" being "interwoven in the closest fashion with public credit."19 The public sector expanded greatly:

"Every common interest was straightaway severed from society, counterposed to it as a higher general interest, snatched from the activity of society's

members themselves and made an object of government activity, from a bridge, a schoolhouse and the communal property of a village community to the railways,

the national wealth and the national university of France."20 This led to the contralization of governmental power. "All revolutions perfected this machine

instead of smashing it." The unemployed surplus population could now obtain, in this expanded machine, "state offices as a sort of respectable alms."21

The bureaucracy came to function as the base for the second Bonaparte's rule: "How could it be otherwise, seeing that alongside the actual classes of society

he is forced to create an artificial caste, for which the maintenance of his regime becomes a bread-and-butter question?"2-

Marx's analysis brings to light the close relationship between the maintenance of the autonomized state and the expansion of governmental activity. In countries

like India governmental activity has expanded greatly in the name of socialism, but only in name. The public sector is heavily

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subsidized from public revenues; its products, being mainly key goods for industry or agriculture, are mostly used by one or the other section of the bourgeoisie.

The public sector thus constantly functions as the channel for the transfer of resources from the poor to the rich. Some other functions of public undertakings

are to provide jobs to powerful politicians as chairmen and to their constituents as functionaries, and contracts to businessmen who give donations to

the ruling party. In the process, a whole "artificial caste" of bureaucrats is created whose interest coincides with that of the regime; it becomes a bulwark

of order in a situation of imperilled tranquility due to the agitation among workers, small peasants and small industrialists, and the infighting between

factions of the ruling party itself.

The slogan of socialism is useful also for keeping in check democratic liberties. Thus in the name of socialism restraints have been placed upon the judiciary,

the press, the legislature and citizens in general. These restrictions of democratic liberties indicate that not only was the state in India autonomized

during the Emergency, but that it continues to be so, even though in less acute form. Thus during the Emergency jurisdiction of the Supreme Court was reduced

by the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution; more recently the Supreme Court and High Court judges are sought to be controlled, through the promotion of

"committed" ones supersession of others, through the transfer of those who deliver unpalatable judgements, and through the continuation of additional judges

who are acceptable to the executive on the basis of their "performance". The Prevention of Publication of Objectionable Matter Act, 1976, was an all-India

law for rigorous provisions aimed at the press. The repeal of the Feroze Gandhi Act led to restrictions on the publication of certain proceedings of Parliament.

The 42nd Amendment also provided for exceptions to citizens' Fundamental Rights and the imposition of Fundamental Duties. Given the fact that the Government

is committed to the maintenance of the bourgeois order, the interaction of '•committed" judges and restrictions on liberties can only lead to the accentuation

of exploitation—as everyone who is involved in the workers' movement knows.

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Centre-State Relations

We have seen above that in countries like India chief ministers of states derive their main support from landholders and big farmers, while the central

leadership has the role of both, representing capital, and maintaining the balance between the owners of landed property and capital. In this light, centre-state

relations are seen as relations between the sections of the bourgeoisie. Before the Emergency, M.L.A.'s in Gujarat and Bihar were forced by the people

to resign—this was seen as the weakening of the rural bourgeoisie. The state chief ministers constantly champion the cause of large farmers and bargain

with the centre for support prices of agricultural commodities. The centre, on its part, provides incentives to the capital-owning bourgeoisie, for example,

even by helping to "whiten black money through special bearer bonds, and also balances the interests of the two sections of the bourgeoisie. Since the

Central Government maintains the balance, it must have an upper hand. This explains strengthening of the Central Government at the cost of State Governments,

even though the Constitution envisages sovereignty for each over separate areas of functions.

International Relations

The national leadership partly derives political and economic support from abroad, the better to be able to keep in check "all classes" within. Thus the

treaty of friendship with the U.S.S.R. provides for political support, both external and internal. It has helped the national leadership in obtaining some

support even from workers' movement in India. At the same time, the government, as well as the industrial bourgeoisie, functions in alliance with international

monopoly capital, as indicated by the facilities given to multinational corporations. Some of these corporations even avail of the concessions meant for

small-scale industry. The I.M.F. loan provides much needed economic support to the government at a time when the strife of classes, exemplified by work

stoppages, leads to scarcities. The purchase of more and more arms from abroad helps in many ways ; (i) in maintaining

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relations with the ruling class of developed countries, (ii) in obtaining whole-hearted support of the military bureaucracy within, and (iii) in building

up the image of the leadership as being "tough". Foreign assistance is sought even in building satellites, which bring glory to the leadership and helps

it in projecting its image through electronic media. International events, such as the ASIAD and the Non-Aligned Meet also help to buttress this image.

Administrative Reform

We have seen above that in an autonomized state the bureaucracy comes to be an "artificial caste" or "class" which exercises power in the name of the "adventurer"

who happens to come to the top. He in turn rules through the bureaucracy. The ruler and the bureaucracy, in other words, act as complementaries to each

other. In this situation it is futile to expect any reform which would lead to the reduction of the power of the bureaucracy. Thus the Administrative Reforms

Commission had recommended the conversion of the Indian Administrative Service into a functional service, instead of being a generalist one.23 According

to its recommendation, high administrative posts in the secretariat, whose incumbents would participate in policy formulation and implementation in their

capacity as advisers to ministers, were to be filled from among experienced specialists after training in administration. This recommendation, which the

Commission considered to be of great importance, has, however, been shelved by the Government. It is apparent that the acceptance of this recommendation

would have greatly reduced the power of both, the Central leaders and the I.A.S.; for, the I.A.S. functions as the steel frame of the administration—its

members serve at the top at all levels of government, central, state and district, and the central government exercises influence at state and district

levels through it.

This indicates how and why administrative reform is often difficult to achieve because it would interfere with the power of the rulers. Thus there has been

much criticism of the weightage given to the interview in the recruitment to all-India and central services. The interview is called a "personality

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test" although none of the known tools, such as psychological tests, for testing the personality are used. These tools have been in use in the armed forces

for long. Their avoidance in recruitment for the civil service gives a discretion to the rulers. One chairman of the Union Public Service Commission acknowledged

in a personal communication to the author that the present system is biased. Since the bias is obviously in favour of the powerful, reducing it would mean

reducing their power. Hence administrative reform must wait until power has been more evenly dispersed.

Conclusion

We have seen that the widespread phenomenon of military dictatorship in developing countries can be explained through the Marxian concept of the "independence"

of the state, caused by unresolved class struggle in a transitional situation. If the dissolution of feudalism led to the autonomized state in Europe during

the 17th and 18th centuries, the dissolution of colonialism and feudalism has led to it in mid-twentieth century in much of the Third World. The telescoping

of the development process leads to greater complexity in the Third World. In a vast country like India, the situation may vary from area to area. Thus

there are more of capitalist farmers in Punjab and Haryana than elsewhere. However, the capital-owning bourgeoisie being of an all-India character, the

role of the "national" leadership comes to be to balance it against landed property owners in general. Checks, therefore, have to be exercised over both

sections of the developing bourgeoisie, as well as the petty bourgeoisie and the working class. The ruler thus has to keep in check "all classes", and

does so with the help of the military and civil bureaucracy. The "tranquility" which authoritarianism brings serves the interests of the bourgeoisie.

The hypothesis of the autonomization of the state helps to explain a number of paradoxes of our society. The annoying failure of land reforms becomes understandable

when we realize that their function of the abolition of feudalism has been largely fulfilled; the reforms are not allowed to go further since this would

weaken the process of the formation

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of a rural bourgeoisie. Similarly, industrial policy mainly benefits the industrial bourgeoisie. Workers and the petty bourgeoisie, rural and urban, continue

to suffer but are kept under check in the name of "order."

The riddle of a public sector which has been set up in the name of socialism but is subservient to the bourgeoisie is solved when it is seen in its three-fold

role of supplying subsidized producer goods to the bourgeoisie, providing jobs as sinecures and alms, and serving the political executive as a prop. The

perplexing centre-state relations become understandable when the economic bases of the power of central and state governments are examined. Similarly,

the paradox of a national government running to imperialist powers for succour can be explained by its need to subdue "all classes." The failure of vital

administrative reforms is thus, due to the fact that reforms which would reduce the power of the bureaucracy—the prop of the ruler—cannot be allowed to

succeed.

The hypotheses discussed above may be said to constitute a model whose applicability in different developing countries would vary, and which can be tested

in the light of more data.

References

1. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Marx and Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1970), p. 168.

2. F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, (Moscow, Progress Publishers, 1977), p. 168.

3. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 110 and 118.

4. Ibid., p. 131.

5. Ibid., p. 163.

6. Ibid., p. 170.

7. Ibid.

8. F. Engels, The Constitutional Question in Germany in Marx and Engels, Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1976), Vol. VI, p. 79.

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9. Cited by Anupam Sen, The State, Industrialization and Class Formations in India, (London, Routlegde and Kegan Paul, 1962), p. 111.

10. Report of the National Commission on Agriculture (New Delhi, Controller of Publications, 1976). p. 79.

11. Marx, n.1.p. 171.

12. Report of the National Commission on Agriculture, pp. 50-51.

13. Ibid., p. 89.

14. Ibid., p. 90.

15. Satya Deva, "The National Seed Project in India", Journal of Administration Overseas, Vol. XIX (1980), n. 4, p. 268.

16. Shashi Bala, Government Policy and Administration with regard to Small-Scale Industries in a Punjab District— Ludhiana (unpublished doctoral dissertation,

Dept. of Public Administration, Punjab University, Chandigarh, 1982), Ch. III.

17. Ibid., p. 413.

18. Marx, n. I, p. 130.

19. Ibid., p. 157

20. Ibid., p. 169.

21. Ibid., p. 174.

22. Ibid.

23. Administrative Reforms Commission, Report on Personnel Administration, (Delhi: Manager of Publications,

(1969), pp. 17, ff.

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5 BUREAUCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT CASE STUDY OF RURAL INDIA

Dr. G. Ram Reddy and G. Dr. Hargopal

The bureaucratic organisation is considered as one of the best forms of organisation by thinkers like Max Weber. This derivation is based on an understanding

that this type of organisation functions on the basis of a set of objective norms. However, there has been considerable debate on this aspect as the experiense

all over the world in general and the third world in particular has been too distinct and different from what Max Weber portrayed in his discussion on

bureaucracy. It has come to be widely accepted that working of an organisation is based not only on its normative premises but the realities of the context

in which it has to operate. Any organisation for that matter reflects the larger socio-economic processes occuring in the society as a result of either

state intervention or the public response to the developmental process. Therefore an empirical investigation into the characteristics of the bureaucratic

organisations help both in understanding the limitations of such organisations on the one hand and in recognising the need to widen the theoretical basis

so as to incorporate fresh experience on the other. It is only such a process that can revitalise the theory and make it capable of explaining the causal

relations in varied situations. The present essay is one such attempt to analyse the rural bureaucracy with special reference to

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Andhra Pradesh based on empirical data.

The role of bureaucracy is examined mainly in the context of anti-poverty programmes for rural development. The post-independence development strategy in

India laid stress on removal of poverty. This approach gained further momentum in sevedties. The green revolution and land reforms programme which were

initiated in fifties and sixties did not make the intended impact. In the late sixties an anti-poverty strategy aimed at frontal attack on poverty was

launched. As a result, a number of special agencies such as SFDA, ITDA, SC BC Corporation, Women Finance Corporation etc , came into existence. The special

agency approach has been an attempt in post-colonial phase which put bureaucracy once again in a pivotal position so far as rural development is concerned.

It is necessary to analyse the organisational experience and see whether the existing set up possesses the vitality for carrying on such onerous responsibilities.

Organisational vitality, in turn, depends upon: one, the structure, which is intended to establish formal relations among the members of the organisation;

two, the value disposition and proper orientation of the group to the goals of the organisation; and three, the general conducement of environment with

which the organisation has to continuously interact. These factors are vital in addition to the commitment of political elite, ideology of the system and

the policies that emanate from it. The level of political consciousness in the society determines the challenge to and response pattern of the bureaucracy.

The discussion in this paper is confined to the characteristics of the bureaucracy in relation to these three vital factors.

Characteristics of Bureaucratic System in Rural Areas

The operational style of rural bureaucracy vis-a-vis the anti-poverty programmes require to be different from the traditional bureaucracy. It has to be

seen whether and how the bureaucracy in the rural areas has developed the new disposition suitable to anti-poverty programmes. In case it has failed to

develop positive characteristics, what type of bureaucracy is in vogue?

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A significant and widely noticed characteristic of the bureaucracy, has been the propensity for centralisation in decision-making. There are several instances

where functionaries working at the lower levels look to the higher levels even for small and routine matters. For instance, the applications for loans

by the rural poor, instead of getting processed at the block level, are sent to the district headquarters for processing and final decision-making. One

can cite an example for this: in a district of Andhra Pradesh, clarification was sought whether to include coconut trees in social forestry or not. These

instances are illustrative of the centralized nature of the structure. Such an over-centralisation of decision-making leads to a few consequences.

(i) The feed-back which is essential in a complex rural situation where anti-poverty programmes are being implemented is totally absent. Each level depends

upon and waits for the instructions from the higher levels and does not display any sense of initiative. The feed-back mechanism is stifled due to absence

of free and frank communication. The existing mechanism ignores the field experience and depends heavily on the ideas and sometimes fads of the functionaries

sitting at the 'top' and not those who are down the ladder. (ii) Centralisation and absence of proper communication also results in distorted reporting

from the field. There are quite a few instances where the records are manipulated for the consumption of the higher levels, who are in no position to varify

physically about the figures supplied. For instance it was noticed that "those who were included in the list of the beneficiaries under anti-poverty programmes

did not even know about it. Some of the officials openly admitted the existence of these practices and said: "what else do you expect when the targets

are thrust on us and the higher levels are not prepared to listen to our difficulties in the field." (iii) It is observed that the programmes and priorities

are frequently altered without any adequate notice, information and involvement at the field level. It is not uncommon that suddenly a new programme is

thrust on the field functionaries while they are engaged in some other programme, For instance when the

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field functionaries were engaged in special component programme meant for the scheduled caste, they were asked to give higher priority to family planning.

This ad-hocism of the top keeps the field functionaries under continuous tension and renders any planned and systematic effort difficult.

The second characteristic noticed in the rural organisational structure has been the proliferation of the agencies at the district level. This includes

several agencies such as panchayati raj, agricultural and cooperative agencies, revenue department, banks etc., which operate with vertical linkages. These

vertical structures, instead of operating as a pyramid, acquire the shape of parallel ladders—each operating in its own style and jurisdiction. They rarely

share a common purpose or perspective. Their understanding of developmental policies is not only varied but sometimes even contradictory. Added to it,

there is no collective responsibility in attaining the developmental goals. This results in two negative consequences; one, the rural poor are made to

go from pillar to post to have access to benefits that the policies offer and two, the agencies, sometimes operates at cross purposes neutralising the

developmental effort. For instance "the electricity department insisting on the 'would be' beneficiary to possess electric motor for getting electricity

connection and the banks demanding the beneficiary to produce electric meter with connection for getting the electric motor", epitomises the crisis of

linkages among various agencies engaged in developmental effort.

The third characteristic of rural bureacracy has been the criss-cross linkages. Functionaries placed at various levels in the formal administrative ladder

have 'non-formal' linkages. As a result the formal arrangement is put to undue stress. Sometimes an individual placed at a particular point in the hierarchy,

because of his 'non-formal' and personalised linkages with the top officers or influential leaders of the ruling party including the ministers, wields

considerable influence in the organisations. As a result the immediate higher level, instead of supervising the work of the subordinate. is compelled to

ignore his shortcomings, if not submit

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itself to his "supervision". Non-formal linkages greatly affect the formal functioning of an organisation and such an effect will not be visible to those

who are not familiar with the organisation.

Another dimension of organisational relations has been the tendency on the part of higher levels to lean on one or two members of the group instead of the

entire team. These individuals, it is observed, wield extra institutional influence. It is noticed that the relations between members of the team are based

not on the formal structure but on various extraneous considerations such as caste, region, religion, language and sometimes "common interests". This sort

of non-formal linkages cause tensions in human relations. In one samiti the progress assistant who belongs to the ministerial staff wields considerable

influence because of his "outside" linkages. In another instance an engineering supervisor was feared by his colleagues because of his linkages with the

samiti president. In the third case an assistant project officer relatively junior was considered important as the project director leaned on him very

heavily. There are quite a large number of such instances which cause strain in human relations and upset the 'hierarchical' arrangement.

The rural administrative structure has also developed stresses as the relations between the "line" and the "staff" are strained. The line functionaries

are responsible for achieving the targets in the field while the staff agency is expected to assist them in achieving the goals. Contrary to this assumption

the clerical staff confined to the office wield considerable 'influence'. They delay payment of T.A. and D.A. and sometimes even salaries. This is done

to prove their supremacy. They make the field functionaries go round them a number of times even for small and routine matters. The field functionaries,

on the other hand, look down upon the office staff as men of no consequence. They show "extra" respect when they have work and ignore them the other times.

There have been several such instances which divide these two set of functionaries almost into two hostile camps. This lack of positive attitudes on the

part of each

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other render work place tension-ridden and team work difficult.

The rural bureaucracy has no built-in mechanism for proper evaluation. It is rare that a hard working man is rewarded and a defaulter punished, instances

are not lacking where the officers at higher levels go out of the way to safeguard even those who are guilty of either violation of the rules or negligence.

The performance in achieving the target is the least important consideration in the evaluation of the merit of a functionary. There is also an impression

among the functionaries that it is not the work that is important but the access to and the connections with key persons that matter. As a result, carrying

of tales, flattery, exhibitionism, indulging in 'private' service to the officers or influential leaders, arranging dinners, etc., are becoming increasingly

important in the bureaucratic culture in the rural areas. They seem to make traditional bureaucratic values such as hardwork, integrity and devotion to

duty either irrelevant or out-moded in the present day administration.

There is also the trend by way of expansion of the bureaucracy more at the mid points than at the cutting edge. For instance, most of the special agencies

started in seventies have a number of assistant directors and full-time project directors. A number of new posts are created in various departments at

the district level. This expansion should be viewed as an expansion in the work-load on the administration. If this is so, this additional load falls on

the field functionary who is to deal with the target groups. Yet there has not been addition of new functionaries commensurate with the expansion at the

grass-roots level. This type of expansion in the middle levels can partly be traced to the pressure that the organised sector of employees apply on the

system for new avenues of promotion. But such an expansion would hamper the accessibility to the decision-making levels, further, it would take away the

experienced persons from the field administration.

The rural bureaucracy has also been characterised by a low level of competence-administrative and technical. This is partly a result of the promotional

system which pushes

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experienced functionaries into the offices and retains relatively junior, inexperienced and less qualified ones in the field, and partly due to over emphasis

on generalist administrator. There are instances of an extension officer of agriculture not being able to diagnose a pest and a veterinary doctor failing

to treat an animal. The failure of an engineering supervisor to plan any construction with available local resources is yet another example. There is paucity

of geologists, mechanical and electrical engineering staff to help the minor irrigation schemes. The fact that the scheme were launched without adequate

technological support speak of the lopsidedness in the organisational arrangement for execution of developmental policy.

Lastly, most of the precious time of the functionaries is swallowed up by the meetings and paperwork. They complain that they are locked up in unnecessary

paperwork and there is considerable duplication in such work. Although huge data is available at the State and district levels, frequent demands are made

for the same information. The field staff wonder about the repetitiveness of the demand for information. None in the field knows about the fate of the

information. This indicates the unscientific nature of information maintenance. There is a need to systematise the total paperwork through modern techniques.

The field functionaries maintain that the scope for reduction or elimination of such wasteful effort is quite large.

Behavioural Trends of Bureaucracy

The second important dimension of the rural bureaucracy is its behavioural disposition. It is not only the smooth structure but also the behavioural and

attitudinal pattern that determines the performance of a bureaucratic organisation.

Keen observation of administration at work in the rural areas reveals that the total developmental effort is guided neither by any concern for the poor

nor any clear-cut social purpose. It has become common in the meetings to invoke the name or office of the key officer at the superior level and caution

that they would incur the wrath of the higher-ups if the programmes are not implemented. It is this sort of

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'personality cult' devoid of social purpose that make the field functionaries feel that they are 'servants' of a few individuals and not of the public.

This in turn perpetuates a tendency to treat the rural poor as subjects and not as citizens.

Lack of social purpose breeds cynicism among the functionaries. The comments such as this country will not develop', 'it is impossible to improve the conditions

of the poor', 'the development programmes can never succeed', 'all the help for down trodden is a waste of national resources', etc., indicate the cynical

attitudes of the functionaries. Such an attitude is bound to be counter-productive in the case of developmental programme and more so to the programmes

intended for the rural poor.

An analysis of the capacity of the bureaucrats to comprehend the developmental phenomenon reveals that they hardly attempt to go to the root of the problems.

It is this poor and superficial understanding of the causal relations that accounts for ascribing the failure of anti-poverty schemes solely to the target

groups. They offer different types of explanations for the failures but rarely examine them in their larger socio-economic context. Such a poor understanding

incapacitates them as agents of development. It also stifles their innovative ability in coping with the complex problems of development.

There is also the trend for a widespread elitistic bias of rural bureaucracy. Most of these functionaries think that the benefits are doled out to the poor.

There are persons who maintain that if the same investment is extended to the medium and rich peasants, they would not only avail it but would also get

production increased. Such thinking is the exact negation of the philosophy of anti-poverty programme.

It is widely complained that officers contact only the influential persons in the villages. It is these persons who decide whether a person should get a

scheme or not. The officers confirmed this feeling and posed a counter-argument saying that it is physically not possible to contact all the villagers

in person. They add that implementing the programme without the support and cooperation of the village

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elite is difficult. A few of them concede that they are compelled to go to the houses of rich people in the village as there is not even a tea stall in

most of the villages. As a result, the decision-making is influenced by the whims and fancies of rural rich.

The rural bureaucracy further tends to possess a depersonalised nature". The Weberian norms expect the bureaucracy to be impersonal for reasons of "objectivity"

and "impartiality". These characteristics are hardly found in the operational style of the rural bureaucracy. On the contrary the rural bureaucracy is

depersonalised which is manifest in the large-scale indifference and hostile attitude towards the target group. Making a poor villager go round a number

of offices, deliberately delaying the decision, not showing a sense of personal involvement, etc, are symptomatic of 'depersonalisation' of rural bureaucracy.

The bureaucratic organisation in India has also been marked by a strained human relations within. A number of other problems stem from this trend. The higher

levels, in matters of supervision and guidance, resort to authoritarian assertions preventing the field functionary from frankly articulating his opinion.

There is a widespread feeling that free and frank expression would invite the wrath of higher ups. As a result they silently accept the decisions coming

from above knowing fully well that they cannot be implemented. The relations among the various functionaries particularly between the officers and subordinates

suffer from fear psychosis. This can be observed from the way they behave in the meetings and in their personal 'encounter' with the higher level functionaries.

Flattery on face and hatred on back has been one of the striking trends in human relations in these organisations.

Another characteristic is the "sons of the soil" trend. Most of them hail from the neighbouring places. For instance, several of the grass-roots functionaries

we covered are drawn from the villages of the same samiti area. They not only engage themselves in agriculture, business or some other subsidiary occupation

of their own but treat such occupations as primary and their regular jobs as part-time 'headache'. 'Localism' not only made the employee a part-time

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member but result in favouritism to their kith and kin reinforcing the traditional network of kinship ties.

Personal promotion and not the promotion of their official work is yet another feature of this bureaucracy. Self development, if not aggrandizement, engages

the attention of employees more than the development issues. Most of the time they are engaged in discussing the questions of D.A., T.A., pay revision,

chances of personal promotions, comparing their lot with the employees of other departments, etc. They are rarely found discussing exchanging their experience

with developmental programmes. It appears as though each functionary is an island unto himself. This indicates a high degree of individualistic and personalised

thinking among the functionaries. The consequence of such an approach appears to be the general escapistic tendency manifesting itself in widespread buck

passing. It is rare that accountability for implementing a programme is fixed and much less enforced.

Lastly, there is a widely shared feeling that subsidy based schemes accentuated the unhealthy practices like corruption in the rural areas. A fixed percentage

to various functionaries in the delivery of development benefits is an open secret. The pilferages in all facets of administration including development

administration have almost got institutionalised. While this phenomenon is neither peculiar nor isolated from the general bureaucratic behaviour, its harmful

effects on the programmes are devastating.

Impact of Environment on Bureaucracy

The third dimension of the rural bureaucracy relates to contextual conduciveness. The bureaucracies are largely shaped by the environment in which they

operate. The socio-economic environment can stimulate or strangulate the bureaucracy. In view of its importance one could point out the emerging trends

in the 'environment climate' vis-a-vis the development bureaucracy, as based on field observations.

During the last three and half decades the rural administration has been interacting with the rural poor at several

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points because of the focus of the public policy on rural poverty. There has been a shift in public policies dealing with poverty and rural development

from time to time. Each policy give rise to new hopes. And the performance prove to be no match to the publicity given to these programmes. No wonder there

is a growing disillusionment among the poor. The net result has been a gradual and increasing erosion of the credibility of the bureaucratic organisation

and its capability to perform the developmental role.

Not with standing their despair, one finds growing consciousness of development programmes among the people resulting in increasing articulation of their

demands. They are found to be vocal, outspoken and sometimes critical of the administrative system. There are instances of the rural poor openly demanding

the developmental benefits. As a result the bureaucracy which is habituated to treat the people as subjects, started finding itself in a quandary. Thus

the administrative system which lacks the culture of accountability to the masses is subjected to increasing pressure. The organisation with its inherent

rigidities is in continuous conflict with rapidly changing socio-economic conditions.

The logic of growing consciousness among the people results in a sharpening of social conflict in the rural areas. For the people in the rural areas are

divided into various groups on the basis of caste, traditional feuds and gap between the prosperous rich and poverty stricken poor. The administrative

machinery has to perform a tight-rope walking. The success of these programmes depends on its willingness to cast its support in favour of the poor even

at the risk of antagonising the richer groups. Whether the existing type of bureaucratic organisation can face such a challenge would determine the overall

place and role of the bureaucracy in rural transformation.

It is observed that the subsidy based developmental programmes in the rural areas gave rise to the institution of middlemen in a number of villages. This

institution enjoys the peoples support as it is rooted in the social, political economic and cultural ethos of the rural society. The middleman is a result

of widespread illiteracy, lack of proper

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information and inadequate exposure of the rural people to the bureaucratic procedural rigmarole. The field observations reveal that bureaucracy indirectly

encourages the institution of middlemen for various reasons. This gives rise to doubt about the capacity of development bureaucracy at the grassroots level

to take up the responsibility of directly dealing with the target groups. Absence of direct linkages between the people and the administration impedes

correct understanding of the problems and difficulties between the bureaucratic organisation and the people.

Conclusion

The characteristics in the working style of the bureaucratic organisations in the rural sector do not fit into any existing conceptual paradigms. For, while

the goals set for the organisation are ambitious, the structure suffers from innumerable infirmities. The growing centralisation of decision-making, proliferation

of the agencies, criss-cross and 'non-formal' linkages among the agencies and functionaries characterise the structure of the organisation. Further, absence

of reward and punishment, expansion at mid-points, low-level of technical and managerial competence and wastage of time in the routine meetings and paper-work

render the organisation so feeble that it cannot cope with the dynamic social system where the process of social change is triggered through a conscious

design. In these conditions, structures of this kind are likely to develop inverse relation with the developmental tasks.

The structural infirmities can be countered, if the behavioural pattern is adequately geared to the tasks of the organisation. The rural bureaucratic behaviour

is largely characterised by absence of concern for the poor which breeds pessimism, if not cynicism. The elitistic bias, authoritarian attitudes and a

depersonalised approach to the people are likely to prove counter-productive. Added to it growing 'localism', obsession with self-development, superficial

understanding of the magnitude of the problems lead to negative disposition harming the purpose of organisation.

These structural infirmities and the bureaucratic disposition

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has not been in consonance with the goals of development. The rural socio-economic environment has been undergoing qualitative changes throwing up new challenges.

The growing aspirations and political consciousness of people results in increasing conflict of demands on the scarce resources of the society. This gives

rise to new middlemen institutions outside the framework of bureaucratic organisations as support structure. As the environment keeps on changing and changing

rapidly, the slow, lethargic and indifferent bureaucratic organisational style neither fits into economy-efficiency model developed in the west nor Weberian

legal-rational model. Even the the Rigssian prismatic model also does not help us to understand it. This calls for a more dynamic and comprehensive conceptual

framework which is capable of embracing the totality of the development phenomena.

The administrative theory developed in response to the needs and demands of western societies cannot explain the nuances of organisational experience of

a developing country like India. The existing theories mostly look within and not to 'outer' conditions of the organisation. It is both the inner processes

and the larger socio-economic system and its political processes that determine the nature and character of any administrative system. Any theory that

does not deal with the larger system and its dynamics and dialectics would be inadequate, partial, lopsided, if not misleading. The discussion on the experience

with rural development bureaucracy further confirms the need to broaden the very base of the theory. Any failure to take note of this factor would reduce

the usefulness of the theory as an analytical tool to explain the social reality.

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6 ADMINISTRATION POLITICS AND SOCIETY: INDIAN CASE STUDY

A. S. Narang

Political regimes conventionally depend on public bureaucracy to make their will felt on the societies over whom they preside. The civil service is a key

instrument not only for the repressive and entractive activities of the government but also for their efforts to transform and develop societies. Even

while the function of indicating broad national development objectives and priorities, does not belong to them, the task of planning and administration

has traditionally been left in the hands of the career based civil service system of administration. It is more so in the developing societies, where it

is assumed that the administration is the only significant social sector willing to assume responsibility for transformation. That is why it is generally

recognized that forces for change in Indian society are predominantly located in a narrow range of occupational sectors.

The agricultural sector is thought of as basically conservative and oriented towards the status quo. In the business community, though there are individuals

and institutions who operate technologically and managerially sophisticated enterprises, much of India's entrepreneurial activity is still directed by

particularistic family concerns that see the maximization of short-term profit margins as the key to business success. And in the political sector despite

the

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dynamic character of Indian party politics, the more successful Indian parties have drawn their support from the generally traditional and conservative

agricultural and business sectors, which makes them unlikely sources of support for modernizing change. Thus, the major thrust of translating ideas of

modernity into significant patterns of social and economic change is generally seen to be taking place not in the private sector of the economy, nor in

the competitive political sector of the government, but rather in the public sector of the economy and the administrative sector of government. For most

advocates of modernization in India, it is the higher levels of the public administration that hold the key of social and economic modernization.1 Therefore

despite various alternatives which have been suggested, public bureaucracy in India retains the politico-administrative set-up of the country. Both as

an organisation and as an instrument of management the administration in India handles the bulk of the country's programme of development.

It may be reminded here that at the time of independence India's leadership had committed itself to secure and protect a social order in which justice,

social, economic and political shall inform all the institutions of the national life. To attain this good a strategy of planning under a democratic pattern

of socialism was adopted. It was assumed to be a creative approach toward solving the problems of production and distribution, an approach that sought

to combine goal of increase in growth and reduction in disparities, while avoiding the violence and regimentation of revolutionary change. It was in this

framework that the bureaucracy had to play a pivotal role as agents of change and effective instruments of modernization, initiating and managing social

change and to bring justice to every citizen.

Needless to say that in order to be an agent of change, public bureaucracy must have the capacity to forecast, project and understand the direction and

tempo of major of significant changes in its environment, to plan for necessary or desirable changes, to adapt itself to changes demanded or planned by

the political system and to innovate on its own. In other words, before embarking or on the gigantic venture of initiating and

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administering social and economic changes, the bureaucracy must itself undergo structural and attitudinal changes so as to acquire the right type of perception,

attitude, change orientation, values and skills essential for the success of developmental tasks. How far bureaucracy in India has played this role? What

have been its strains and problems? And what is its nature in general? These are important questions today with regard to overall political process and

developmental strategy.

The Colonial Legacy

Like many other governmental institutions, the administration also did not start with a clean slate. In fact of all the political institutions that the

British bequeathed to India, the civil service was by far the most vital and significant. It was, no doubt, par excellence the main support of British

imperialism. The Indian Civil Service (ICS) consisted of a small administrative aristocracy, generalist and non-technical in character, highly educated

and carefully selected by a difficult competitive examination, remarkably adaptable, exceptionally devoted to duty, imbued with an intense espirit de corps,

and, perhaps most important of all, Pan-Indian rather than regional or provincial in its loyalties.

It did possess strength and efficiency, coupled with aloofness, and exclusivences and conscious of its class position. It was a set of hierarchies, a close

well-knit administrative service, designed to maintain the stability and continuity of the British power. It was top to bottom authoritarian, though benevolent

in intentions. Primarily devised for maintenance of law and order and collection of revenues it was a government by civil servants, who were not responsible

to the people over whom they ruled. Their colonial and paternalistic attitude towards the local people blocked communication. What they thought was good

for the people was based on their social and professional prejudices. With little or no involvement in the development, it was fundamentally non-action

oriented.

This tiny body of senior-men ran the affairs of a vast country through a mass of not-very-highly-motivated minor

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bureaucrats, educated in the arts of absorption rather than of thinking, and trained mainly in the literal application of a formidable collection of detailed

regulations, hopefully providing for every possible contingency. Correctness rather than initiative was its watch word : find the right regulation, apply

it and, for the rest, carry out orders, treat superiors with deference, and do nothing that might prejudice job security. Despite the introduction of limited

self-government, the administrator, at least upto 1946, regarded himself as master. Nationalist politicians, from Nehru downwards, presented him with a

law and order problem. Whatever his private opinions may have been, his professional loyalties were to the British raj.2 Obviously, the Indian Civil Service

was the most despised and notorious as the instrument of foreign exploitation.

This was the legacy which India inherited at the time of freedom: a generalist higher civil service, not used to any tasks of gigantic nation-building,

trained in the traditions of law and order machinery based on fear and awe and without any institutionalised system of accountability to the people. An

irresponsible, unresponsive, autocratic, and bureaucratic structure was inherited by the country with a poor, and backward agricultural economy.3

Administrative System in Independent India

After independence, the total environment and ethos of the country underwent a qualitative change. Elections, political parties, competitive politics. Parliament

and ministers came on the scene. India launched her massive programmes of community development with a view to liberate the teeming millions. With the

adoption of planning the country attempted to embark upon a silent, arduous and non-violent socio-economic revolution to ensure social equity and economic

justice. The nature of governmental tasks in independent India, thus underwent a marked change. Its emphasis shifted from mere care and maintenance of

law and order to social welfare and individual progress. A suitable administrative arrangement was called for to plan and implement the developmental tasks

on the one hand and meet the immediate

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mounting challenges created by the partition of the subcontinent of India on the other.

As already mentioned, most of the nationalist leaders were suspicious of the colonial Indian Civil Service. They also considered its inbred, elitist and

caste-like characteristics to be incompatible with India's new democratic institutions. This demand, however, was strongly resisted by the more experienced

leaders, who because of their own orientation and background and the class interest they represented, saw the virtues of an Indian equivalent to the British

administrative system, both as a source of much needed administrative competence and as a means of cementing national unity. Sardar Vallabhai Patel, as

Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, particularly insisted on continuing with the old. He told the Constituent Assembly, "I have worked with them during

this difficult period...Remove them and I see nothing but a picture of chaos all over the country." Even Nehru, who had once denounced the ICS for its

"spirit of authoritarianism" declared "the old distinctions and differences are gone. . . In the difficult days ahead our service and experts have a vital

role to play and we invite them to do so as comrades in the service of India."

Thus, whatever changes came about subsequently, had to be in the form of piecemeal and minimal reforms rather than a comprehensive review of radical type.

In fact the privileged conditions of service of the officers of the ICS were protected by constitutional guarantees. The successor Indian Administrative

Service(IAS) established by Patel (with its own terms and conditions of service guaranteed under the Constitution) retained the structure and style of

its elite forerunner, perpetuating a national administrative system that, in numbers and outlook, was more suitable to carrying out the narrow colonial

functions of law and order than the broad responsibilities for economic development of a nationalist government.

The Administrative Structure

The structure of the public services, the "steel frame" of the British raj, was thus, left largely intact. The services are characterized by "open entry

based on academic achievement;

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elaborate training arrangements; permanency of tenure; responsible, generalist posts at central, provincial and district levels reserved for members of

the elite cadre; a regular, graduated scale of pay with pension and other benefits and a system of promotion and frequent transfers based predominantly

on seniority but partly on merit. The services are divided into three categories: state services, central services and all-India services. Each state has

its own services, both generalist and specialist. These are recruited by the states own Public Service Commissions. Structurally and organisationally,

the state's services are very similar to the all-India and central services. The central government services numbering more than twenty, include the Indian

Foreign Service, the Central Secretariat Service, the Postal Service and the Indian Revenue Service. Personnel for the more technical ones are separately

recruited on the basis of relevant qualifications, the others, although operating independently, rely on a common competitive examination. One of the characteristics

of these services (which is paralleled by the corresponding services at the state level) is a strong tendency to develop a caste-like exclusiveness. which

is inevitably accompanied by considerable and sometimes bitter inter-service jealousy. As each service has evolved its own grades, salary structure, promotion

rules and disciplinary regulations, transfer from one to another becomes difficult, if not impossible. Normally a man's only way out of the narrow confines

of the superior services which he has joined is deputation to the secretariat—a privilege that cannot be enjoyed by more than a small minority.*

The Constitution specifies two all-India services, the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service, but additional all-India services can

be created by Parliament, provided there is approval by two-thirds of the Rajya Sabha, With concern for national integration the States Reorganisation

Commission recommended in 1955 the creation of three new all-India services—engineering, health and medical, and forestry. The states have generally opposed

the creation of new all-India services, however. They have argued that the higher pay for ail-India officers would impose a financial

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strain; but in fact the states resist sharing the control over the services, with the central government. They also fear that local candidates may fail

in all India competition and that the posts will be filled by candidates from outside the state.5

Although centrally recruited by competitive examination organised by the Union Public Service Commission, the officers of All India Services are assigned

to state cadres, just as in British days they would have been assigned to provincial cadre. To this cadre an officer remains attached, at least in theory,

for the rest of his official life, even though the greater or at least more, significant part of it may be spent in one of the coveted secretariat posts

in New Delhi. When serving the union government he is on assignment to the centre with the agreement of the state concerned.

The Union Public Service Commission, is responsible for all matters relating to recruitment, appointment, transfers, and promotions and its advice is generally

decisive. The Commission also concerns itself with disciplinary matters affecting members of the services and functions to protect the services and the

merit system from political interference. Its relations with the government are coordinated by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The process of recruitment

and training serves to reinforce the elitist character of the IAS. Approximately 25 per cent of the yearly recruitment of less than one hundred are promoted

from the state services, but the remainder is directly recruited through competitive examination. Once the highest position to which a youth might aspire,

the IAS has lost much of its functional attraction for India's brightest youth, who now find business to be offering better both by way of greater prestige

and financial reward. The service continues to be dominated, nevertheless, by the urban, educated and wealthy classes.6

Socio-economic Background of Bureaucracy

Empirical studies confirm the elitist character of our higher civil services. With the expansion of the educational facilities, the boys and girls of the

middle and lower middle classes have been entering the administrative services. Vast increase in the functions of the government is partly responsible

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for broadening the social base of the administration. But the entry of the boys and the girls coming from the lower classes are thwarted because the norms

and methods which were followed during the colonial period have been bodily lifted and adopted after 1947. This approach has prevented the administrative

services from becoming 'non-elitist' as well as the democratisation of the services. Consequently those who man the top bureaucracy "generally come from

the wealthy, urban and educational classes." Their parents belong to the upper layer of society and are engaged in the modern professions such as law,

engineering, medicine and teaching in the universities.7 The bureaucrats, generally, belong to the higher castes and are drawn from the urban and rural

elitist classes. Their origin quite often decide their approach. A study of the IAS probationers has revealed that a considerable number of the new entrants

to the IAS, do not believe in equality, democracy, secularism, economic planning or reservation policy. They maintain very good relations with the business

community. Many of the retired civil servants get positions in the large business houses. More often than not the retired civil servants form the lobbyists

of business houses. As Stanley Kochnek says "Such people are selected because of their knowledge of government procedure or their ability to gain access

and because of former association with government, personal contacts based on school ties, and particularistic loyalties of caste, religion, community,

and language. Among the specially recruited personnel are former ICS and IAS officers, former members of the military or other government civil services."9

The civil servants also become governors, chairmen or members of the boards of the public corporations and the employees of the associations of the business

community. Against this background, the concept of the neutrality of the civil service cannot really be maintained. Many commentators have noted that the

attitude of the civil servants to socio-economic change has been 'negative'.

Even at the rural level, the lower level bureaucrats whose work is of crucial importance, do not have sufficient rural background. According to Charles

Bettleheim, "Most of

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them (village level workers) come from the urban petty bourgeoisie. They therefore have some difficulty in making contact with the peasants. There seems

to have been a tendency recently to recruit the better-off peasants' sons who have a fair level of education. This is a step forward, but the essential

problem of how to get through to the peasantry has not been solved. Because of their social origins, most village level workers are inclined to help the

richer peasantry and ignore the others.

Of late representation of scheduled and backward castes is gradually increasing in the bureaucracy because of reservation of seats and increased opportunities

for education. However it is still not satisfactory. Moreover, members of scheduled castes also belonging to relatively better off families get into higher

bureaucracy. People from these castes compete because of their aspirations to occupy important positions in the government hierarchy. They are motivated

by an understandable psychological complex, derived from their original social position, which tells them that a civil servant enjoys power and privileges

irrespective of birth. After gaining access to bureaucratic elite class, these people quickly adopt with a vengeance all the traits and characteristics

of their new found status. They become equally snobbish as the upper middle class officials and seek to compensate for childhood and adolescent snubs;

they also severe all connections with ordinary people and are often helped by matrimonial arrangements which ease their transformation into the new ruling

class. In these circumstances the poor masses feel alienated by the bureaucracy completely.

Role of Bureaucracy

After independence, though the system of bureaucracy continues to exist in the same shape as it was established by the British, it functions in a context

which is, in some fundamental respects, different from that of the British colonial rule. It has now to function under democratic political leadership

and operate within the framework of responsible cabinets, questioning legislatures, ever critical political parties

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and the highly demanding pressure groups. It has to be sensitive to the policies laid down by the cabinets and legislatures, the values and purposes of

the leadership and the interests and pressures of political parties and groups. One of the senior civil servants himself puts this position thus:

"The civil service in India is expected to play manifold rules. There is need to match the role perception and role expectation so that the role performance

by the civil service is the optimum and may satisfy the diverse needs and urges of the community .... (It) is an instrument for implementation of people's

will and aspirations as expressed in the Constitution. It is the focal point of stability and order in the shifting sands of politics. At the same time,

as an elitist class, it is an instrument of modernization and social change. It is an instrument of planning and economic development. It may be expected

to safeguard the rights of the underprivileged sections in society. It has to be all the time aware of the political milieu and the democratic context

in which it has to operate. Therefore, the civil service has to undergo radical structural, procedural and attitudinal changes if it has to serve as an

effective instrument of change and progress in a developing society. The civil service has to cultivate much wider social awareness and responsiveness

as well as social base apart from the traditional virtues of integrity, functional efficiency and a sense of fair play and impartiality."10

In practice, however, the administrative ethos has suffered very little change during more than thirty years of independence. In some respects it has become

reinforced as a result of the decline in the quality of secondary and further education and the increase in the severity of competition among the growing

mass of the half educated, for a limited number of government jobs. Hence, despite the development-mindedness of many of the newly-recruited top-level

administrators and the capacity shown by some of the older ones to take on new and unfamiliar tasks, together with some rather half-hearted attempts to

implement the impeccable recommendations of innumerable administrative reforms commissions, both central "and state, Indian administration remains, to

a remarkable extent, stuck in its pre-independence

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posture. This is the despair of the social and economic planners, who are always proclaiming, although with decreasing hopefulness, the urgent need to ginger

up the administrative machine so as to make it a more efficient instrument for the attainment of their goals.11

The dead weight of tradition is felt from the top to the bottom of the administrative hierarchy. For instance, the organisation of the secretariat, where

both at the centre and in the states, the most vital of administrative decisions are taken, is not substantially different from what it was in British

days, except to the extent that, with the expansion of governmental functions, particularly in the field of social and economic development, it has become

more cumbersome and complicated. Aloofness from ordinary people and alienation are generally characteristic, not only of the ICS-IAS, but of administrators

generally. The board observations tend to support the view that although there has been much discussion about the development of a more democratic administrative

style, there has been little change in the actual operation except to the extent that administrators' at all levels have, of necessity acquired the habit

of treating elected politicians with at least outward respect.

It is also pointed that of the many variables contributing to the implementation gap between planned goals and their achievements, perhaps the most significant

is the bureaucratic machinery whose function is to translate planned goals into action. Influenced by western education, experience and concept of development,

and encouraged by administrative feasibility our planners and administrators have interpreted development as economic growth without caring for distributive

justice. The non-implementation of land ceiling acts involving social and economic principles of agrarian reform is due to the fact that the administrative

machinery particularly at the lower levels which is responsible for the implementation of all legislative measures is either lethargic or indifferent or

hostile or corrupt. Of course for failure of land reforms, the bureaucracy cannot be squarely held responsible. In many cases non-implementation is due

to lack of political will in the corridors of powers. Yet the role of

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administration in this regard remains significant.

There are several reasons as to why changes in styles have been more than very gradual. An obvious one is the fact that the heirarchical structure and values

in the administration are constantly stimulated and sustained by the casteism that is still the predominant feature of the whole social order. Another

factor is to be found in recruitment to the IAS (and, to a considerable extent to the other superior services both at the centre and in the states) from

a very narrow social stratum. Typically, the top administrator comes from an urban family which enjoys advantages that approach a western standard of living

and has at least some of the elements of a western outlook. When to all this is added a need for proficiency in English, as the main all-India language

for mutual communication among the educated, it is clear that one has a public service which, at least in its higher echelons, is hardly more representative

than it was in British days. Given the actual distribution of both opportunities and expectations, it is inevitable that this should be so.12

Another factor is the creation of compartmentalisation of the various departments and organisations to deal with various aspects of administration. The

separate services, with their wide disparity in pay scales, have become rigid and self-conscious "classes", and thereby have stimulated jealousies and

resentment. According to Paul Appleby "there is too much and too constant consciousness of rank, class, title and service membership, too little consciousness

of membership in the public service, and too little consciousness turning on particular job responsibilities. Various services do not cooperate with each

other. They sometimes operate under a cloak of secrecy in a situation which often requires openness, consultation and coordination."

Further, the prevalence of formalism has served to stifle bureaucratic initiative and imagination. The normal procedure involves what Appleby has called

"the hierarchical movement of paper." Unwilling to accept responsibility even for minor decisions, the-petty bureaucrats refer the files, neatly tied in

"red tape", to a higher level. In India, it is said, "the British introduced red tape, but we have perfected it." Responsibility

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is diluted by delay and inaction. "Red tape becomes a technique of self-preservation", writes Rajni Kothari, "and reverence for traditional forms is matched

only by attachment to strict routine and unwholesome preoccupation with questions of accountability." Appleby argues, that it is not a question of too

much hierarchy, but rather that there is an irregular hierarchy, disjointed and impeding effective communication.13

One major element in the effective operation and in the public image of bureaucracy is corruption. Corruption may be greatly exaggerated in India. According

to some commentators administrative corruption is almost unavoidable in developing societies, where western type bureaucratic norms have not become fully

internalised, and where the social system is such that the distinction between corruption and the loyalties associated with caste, community and the extended

family cannot easily be discerned, it is also argued that economically frustrated individuals seek a scapegoat in official misbehaviour. But as A.D. Gorwala

argues, that "the psychological atmosphere produced by the persistent and unfavourable comment is itself the cause of further moral deterioration, for

people will begin to adopt their methods, even for securing legitimate right, to what they believe to be the tendency of men in power and office. Moreover,

the public may decry corruption, but traditional attitudes often condone it, and fatalism may lead many to accept it as inevitable. Nepotism is officially

condemned, but in traditional terms it may be viewed as loyalty to one's family, friends and community."14 Particularly when corruption is prevalent on

a large scale at the political level, the scope for corruption at administrative level, where the power of a public servant far exceeds his income, is

much greater.

Administration and Politics : Committed Bureaucracy

From the above discussion it emerges that the bureaucracy still exhibits a continuity with pre-independence traditions with its emphasis on formalism, impersonality

and deferential character, security and lack of initiative. The Indian administrative ethos have undergone very little change during the

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thirty-seven years of independence. However, with the passage of time there has been a marked increase in the change propensity of the people. The urban

section, particularly, is increasingly prone to changing the government for better and timely services. Even the rural people, of late are displaying much

more desire to participate in local political activities simply because of the desire to extract real benefits from the government. This has led to a power

struggle between the elected representatives and the bureaucracy for deciding the political issues relating to development administration. The bureaucrat

on the one hand, claims the sole authority to determine and administer the various governmental programmes. On the other hand, the political leaders take

a stand that they alone as the representatives of the people, know what is desirable, suitable and acceptable to their people.

The civil servants have expressed that they are prepared to do their best but are prevented from discharging their functions by political interference.

They feel that after the introduction of Panchayati Raj "political pull" had increased. Political interference in matters of appointment, promotion and

transfer, and the charges of favouritism, nepotism and corruption against the political leadership have been some of the most important factors causing

frustration among the bureaucrats. It is also pointed out that whereas in parliamentary democracy the ultimate responsibility for policies rests with the

minister and not with the civil servants, in case of detection of error or anamoly in policy formulation and decision-making, the entire responsibility

is thrown upon the bureaucrats. It is easy for the political leaders to blame the bureaucrats for their own ignorant or negligent or otherwise motivated

actions.

On the other hand politicians allege that in the name of neutrality and anonymity and under the cloak of ministerial responsibility the bureaucracy has

been augmenting its own authority. In the years immediately following Nehru's death, particularly the governmental instability following the 1967 elections,

the administration assumed increasing importance; at the same time it also became more irresponsible. Referring

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to the relationship between political leaders and the civil servants the Administrative Reforms Commission however pointed out that there has been a basic

failure on the part of the administrative leadership which has contributed to the present situation in the administration and that not all of it can be

attributed to the impact of democratic institutions. There has also been a recognisable fall in service standards for which full responsibility must be

accepted by the heads of administration. In its view there is no valid explanation for the failure to exercise supervision, for the various instances of

administrators' slackness and for their tacit acceptance of the present state of administration.

It is also argued that in a developing democracy, bureaucracy is neither neutral nor anonymous. For neutrality of civil service presupposes agreement on

the fundamental values in society. This is not possible in India of today. It may be possible in consensus-based societies where clashes and conflicts

can be resolved within the system and not in a transitional society like ours which is conflict ridden. Therefore it is required that a "commitment" to

a new social and economic order has to be consciously built and nurtured through the career of civil servants. It has been alleged that the commitment

to the new social and economic order envisaged in the Constitution is not there in the bureaucracy.

However in actual practice the commitment is being degenerated to compliance which has resulted in the increasing politicisation of administration. The

politicisation has been the result of a relentless pursuit of political power at a cost, if necessary, of the existing norms and standards of politico-administrative

relationship. Often the political leaders have sought to preserve their power by controlling the apparatus. Politicisation of administration has been a

phenomenon of unprecedented character and has permeated at all levels from the Union Cabinet to a Gram Panchayat.

Politicisation has had both healthy and demoralising effects on administration. It has had a healthy effect in the sense that it has provided a democratic

check on the growing power of the administration. It makes the administrators responsible and accountable on a day to day basis to the

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elected representatives of the people and responsive to the latters' problems. However, this process as yet operates in a most complex and sometimes even

in an uncontrolled manner. Consequently the administrative apparatus is often accused of becoming more and more servile to the political apparatus even

while shedding its earlier authoritarianism, whether or not the directions are legitimate and constitutional.

References

1. Stanley J. Heginbotham, "The Civil Service and the Emergency", in Henry C. Hart, ed., Indira Gandhi's India, (Westview Press, 1976), p. 70.

2. A.H. Hanson and Janet Douglas, India's Democracy, (Delhi, Vikas, 1972), pp. 131-32.

3. C.P. Bhambhri, Bureaucracy and Politics in India, (Delhi, Vikas, 1971), p. 61.

4. Hanson and Douglas, n. 2, p. 138.

5. Asok Chanda, Indian Administration, (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1958), pp. 102-4.

6. Robert L. Hardgrave jr. Indian Government and Politics, (2nd ed. 1975), p. 67.

7. V. Subramaniam, "Representative Bureaucracy: A Reassessment", The American Political Science Review, December 1967, p. 1050.

8. C.P. Bhambhri, "Administrative Elite and Political Modernization in India", Indian Journal of Public Administration, Jan-March 1971, pp. 47-64.

9. Stanley A. Kochanek, Business and Politics in India, University of California Press, 1974, pp. 313-14.

10. T.N. Chaturvedi's "Foreword", in A.R. Tyagi, ed. The Civil Service in a Developing Society, (Delhi, Sterling, 1969).

11. Hanson and Douglas, n. 2, p. 132.

12. Ibid-, P. 147.

13. Hardgrave, pp. 69-70.

14. Ibid., p. 71.

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7 PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND ADMINISTRATION: ANTI-CORRUPTION STRATEGIES IN INDIA

O.P. Sharma

Democracy in modern times is often distinguished from the other models of government, mainly from the point of view of its accountability and responsiveness

to the people, their aspirations and questioning. In all developing societies, due to the increased role of the State, the scope of activities for the

government has expanded manifold. In actual concrete terms this has meant a vast addition to the powers of the administration. With the social order not

changed drastically to a socialist pattern, but at the same time the public sphere magnified, this has resulted in the phenomenon of what is commonly described

as "corruption". The developing countries, therefore, have been forced to reckon with this problem and adopt measures to deal with them.

Corruption is the widely discussed topic in India. The problems of corruption are so complex and widespread that they have roots and ramifications in society

as a whole. Though corruption has been with us from the pre-independent days, the scope and incentive is much greater today.

The Government seems to be aware of the existence of corruption and has taken various measures to check its monstrous growth. It has had innumerable committees/

commissions of inquiry on corruption. It has set up special

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police establishments and vigilance units in departments of administration. We have a Central Vigilance Commission and Central Bureau of Investigation.

Some states have set up Lokayukts. We have all the laws necessary to combat corruption. But none of them have been effective enough in reducing the general

prevalence of corruption. Why? If one looks at the impact and effectiveness of anti-corruption measures, it looks like (a) the more effective and adequate

the anti-corruption measures, the greater is their impact on society, and (b) that the anti-corruption measures will be effective, if the commitment of

political leadership is strong.

An attempt has been made in this chapter to critically examine the efficacy of various anti-corruption measures initiated by the Government to contain the

corruption, both administrative and political. Towards this a few selected measures have been chosen for detailed investigation. While analysing the selected

measures; it makes an attempt to suggest some other remedies that might be fruitfully adopted to contain the evil within some managable proportion, if

not to root it out completely.

Definition

Before analysing strategies for combating corruption, it may be desirable to have a working definition of corruption. Corruption, we would all agree, involves

a deviation from certain standards of behaviour. What criteria shall we use to establish those standards? Broadly speaking there are three criteria from

which to choose: the public interest, public opinion and legal norms. The referents of all three overlap considerably but each implies a distinct analytical

focus and each raises certain operational problems.

On the basis of workability alone, the public interest and public opinion criteria pose great difficulties. Both the criteria are subjective in nature and,

therefore, it may not be desirable to adopt them as definitional criteria. By purposely leaving both considerations from the definition itself, we can

then empirically ask how a corrupt act affects the public and how it is regarded by the public.

The third alternative of relying heavily on legal norms in

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defining corruption, while it too has shortcomings, seems the most satisfactory alternative. Nye has followed this approach and, defined corruption as:

Behaviour which deviates from the formal duties of a public role (elective or appointive) because of private regarding (personal, close family, private

clique), wealth or status gains; or violates rules against the exercise of certain types of private—regarding influence.1

Though this definition of corruption is not entirely satisfactory in terms of inclusiveness of behaviour and the handling of relativity of standards but

it has the merit of denoting specific behaviour generally called corrupt by both developed and developing societies standards. For our present purpose

we, therefore, accept and adopt this definition. It covers most behaviours commonly referred to while discussing corruption in public life. Most abuses

of public power for private ends would fall into its net. It also includes favours done from motives of personal loyality or kinship as well as favours

done for cash.

Administrative Corruption

There is a popular belief that administrative corruption is extensively widespread, that nothing moves without money and that favours can be purchased.

Had the things been so, the social fabric would have collapsed long ago. The fact that this popular impression is wide off the mark is not important, but

the fact that this impression does exist has great significance. This 'folklore' of corruption can do incalculable harm in shaping the moral fibre of the

people and in bringing about the cynicism and resignation in which such corruption itself will flourish. In India, the government is not only aware of

the problem but is stated to be "deeply disturbed by it". It has, therefore, taken from time to time "systematic" steps to deal with this problem. Such

steps are said to be "vigorously implemented" by it. A mere listing of the measures taken by the government to check administrative corruption should inspire

confidence. However, a close examination of such measures shows the

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hollowness of the tall claim made by the government in this respect. For the reasons of space and time, we are not going to examine all the measures adopted

by the government to curb administrative corruption. We are going to select only two institutions, which have been established to deal with the problems.,

for detailed examination. The institutions selected are the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). These are

two main instruments of the government to deal with administrative corruption.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)

In pursuance of the recommendation of the Committee on Prevention of Corruption, popularly known as the Santhanam Committee after its Chairman K. Santhanam,

it was decided by the Government of India in 1963 to set up the CBI to cope with the problems arising out of expanding economy of the country. The nucleus

around which the CBI was formed, was the Delhi Special Police Establishment which was responsible for investigation of offences of bribery, misappropriation,

etc. against Central Government servants and certain other cases in which interests of the Government of India were involved. Thus, the CBI is an investigating

agency of the Government of India, which is concerned with investigation and detection of offences involving Central Government funds and Central Government

employees, as also infringement of economic and fiscal laws. To be precise, the main responsibility of the CBI is to collect intelligence about corruption

in the public services and the projects and undertakings in the public sector of the Central Government. It is required to investigate and prosecute the

cases of corruption in the Courts.

For making preliminary inquiries about the offences, scientific investigations, collection of evidences and initiation of proceedings, the CBI has been

organised in eight divisions. Out of eight divisions, five divisions, which deal with corruption cases are under the Department of Personnel and Administrativa

Reforms. The other three divisions dealing with normal conventional offences (Indian Penal Code crimes

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and all that) are under the Ministry of Home Affairs (proper). The division of the CBI between the Ministry of Home Affairs (proper) and the Department

of Personnel and Administrative Reforms is artificial. This arrangement does not look sound as far as cohesive working of the CBI is concerned. In actual

practice, it has created problems of coordination, delays and responsibility. This duality of control, has adversely affected the functioning of the CBI.

According to many, no consideration other than political is responsible for this duality of control.

Since its inception (i.e. 1964) to 1981, the CBI has investigated 29,435 cases of which 3421 were convicted and 1731 were punished departmentally. In addition,

3248 other persons were convicted and 2188 firms were fined or blacklisted. The percentage of conviction has been only 35.9, but for a institution like

the CBI which is responsible for eliminating corruption, the performance record is by no means satisfactory.

Detail about the nature of cases are not available. However, we have details of work done by the CBI during 1977 to 1981, which is given at Appendix I.

Though the number of cases registered with the CBI had gone up from 1186 in 1977 to 1229 in 1981, the percentage of cases ending in conviction (out of the

cases decided by courts) had come down from 82.1 per cent in 1977 to 67.9 per cent in 1981. The main reason for this decline, as advanced by the Government

of India, is that now the CBI is not taking simple and petty cases where the proof is easy to obtain. The corruption is direct in lower echelons of the

administration while in higher echelons of the administration it is indirect. The Government also feels that this decline in the conviction rate did not

indicate deterioration in the standards of investigation. The argument advanced by it in support of this is that the conviction rate in normal IPC cases

is 55 per cent whereas in respect of CBI cases it is 68 per cent. Though the performance of the CBI is not satisfactory yet the Government feels that is

has played an important preventive role. It is believed had there been no CBI, the size of corruption would have been more.

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Though the statistics explains many important things yet it hides vital things. It tells us about the number of cases but nothing about the nature of cases.

Normally, the CBI takes up only big cases of fraud involving Rs. 25 lakhs or more. The cases of smaller amounts are looked into by the local police. Thus

the services of the CBI are not available in cases of "small" corruption. The genesis of this novel idea goes back to 1952 when the Enquiry Committee on

Special Police Establishment (1949-52) suggested that Special Police Establishment should concentrate its attention on really important cases and should

not dissipate its energies and time in pursuing cause of minor irregularity or petty dishonesty.2 The Government of India accepted this recommendation

of the Committee.

The idea behind acceptance of this recommendation was that successful prosecution in a comparatively small number of big and important cases makes a greater

impression on other actual or potential wrong-doers than mere numbers of cases of major and minor importance sent upto Court. The Government was of the

opinion that from the point of view of society the punishment of persons occupying important and responsible positions is both more satisfactory and more

salutory than seeing conviction of say a petty official who has exorted a bribe of Rs. 5/-.3

Theoretically, the logic of the Government sounds quite convincing. The limited resources of the CBI should be utilised in the most effective and telling

manner by restructing the jurisdiction of the CBI. However, in actual practice it is not so. Actually, the restruction of the scope of the CBI has served

the interest of the Government in many ways. Firstly, to date not a single influential, important and big person has been successfully convicted by the

CBI. Inspite of exposures of politicians in corrupt measures by the press, to date no single politician of some stature has been convicted and successfully

prosecuted by the CBI.

Secondly, this helped the Government in defaming and winning its big and influential opponents. This can be achieved by threat of handing over the cases,

where they are involved, to the CBI for investigation. The Government can

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pressurise the CBI either to expedite or to withdraw such cases in accordance with its political expediency. It is not common to find such cases. Thirdly,

it can help the supporters and friends of the Government. It can help them indirectly. If they are "caught" or exposed and there is a mounting pressure

from the public and/or the opposition political parties, the government can calm it down by referring the case to the CBI for investigation. The CBI will

take its own time to complete the investigation, which may be delayed by the Government on one reason or the other. Cases may be delayed to the extent

that people might loose interest in them. If, however, the CBI for one reason or the other has been successful in filing the case in the Court, then the

Government has the power of withdrawing the cases. And this power has been successfully used by governments irrespective of which political party they

belong, to serve their own interests. To give one example of such misuse of power is the case of Jagannath Mishra of Bihar. Mishra's Government in Bihar

withdrew the |vigilance case against Chief Minister Mishra which was initiated by its predecessor government.

Secondly, the statistics do not tell us about the time taken by the CBI in deciding the cases. The maximum and average period for conclusion of a vigilance

case in the CBI was as under :

Maximum Average

Major cases 144 months 47 months

Minor cases 122 months 33 months

It is clear form the above that the CBI takes a lot of time in completing its investigations in both major and minor cases. Such long delays, actually,

whittle down the deterrent effect of punishment; the more prolonged the proceedings the greater is the difficulty experienced by the witnesses and greater

still is the hardship of persons involved.

The above delays become lethal when viewed against the back drop of the delays in law courts in deciding cases. As against 541 CBI cases pending in courts

in 1965, there were 1625 cases pending in courts in 1981.4 Cases filed by the CBI in courts are pending for many years. Some cases are

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pending since last 10-15 years. The persons who were involved in those cases have since retired and some have even died. Hence, it is not possible to successfully

pursue the cases in courts.5 Delays apart from causing the hardships to concerned persons lead to an increase in corruption and malpractices.

What are the factors responsible for this sad state of affairs of the CBI? Firstly, there is an acute shortage of staff. Though the staff of the CBI increased

from 1432 in 1964 to 3178 in 1982s yet it is not sufficient to carry out the work of the CBI. With this strength, it has to look after all the employees

of the Central Government and public undertakings which are around 70 lakhs. Thus, keeping in view its jurisdiction, the CBI has a small force. With the

existing strength, it is capable of dealing with 1000 cases annually at the maximum. However, on an average, it takes up 1200 cases annually.7 It is, therefore,

necessary that the CBI be strengthened on a war footing and be provided with more staff. Apart from shortage of staff, the CBI is also facing problems

in getting people from states on deputation. People will come only when they will have some financial gains. The CBI has been repeatedly requesting the

Government to look into this aspect. However, the matter is still pending with the Government.8

Secondly, the financial resources of the CBI are inadequate. Though the expenditure of the CBI has increased from Rs. 2.65 crores in 1972-73 to Rs. 4.88

crores in 1981-82 yet it is not sufficient for its activities. The increase in expenditure has been mainly due to sanctioning of additional DA from time

to time and general increase in establisnment charges and contingencies.9 Keeping in view the responsibilities of the CBI the funds available with it are

inadequate. For investigation work and appointment of new personnel, the CBI does not have requisite funds.11 To strengthen the administrative set-up of

the CBI and to make available more resources, the CBI has been sending its proposal to the Government since last five years. However, the Government has

not taken any decision to implement them,'0

Thirdly, the CBI face some problems while dealing with

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state governments. The CBI is empowered to investigate offences, modified by the Central Government, in the states with the consent of the Government of

those states. If a state government does not consent to the jurisdiction of the CBI over that state in respect of any offence, the CBI will not be able

to investigate cases even against Central Government servants or cases pertaining to Central Acts within the territorial limits of that state. Apart from

this, the CBI is also dependent upon states' police for the exercise of its functions. Though such assistance is generally forthcoming on an informal basis

but in some cases it is not for one reason or the other. The CBI has no power to compel state government to cooperate with it. This affects the functioning

of the CBI especially in those cases where state governments for their own reasons do not want to cooperate.

Last but not the least, the CBI has not paid, for the reasons best known to it, attention to inform public about its activities. Though, the CBI had published

brochures giving detailed information about the type of cases investigated by it and the same were distributed among public. There is also an Information

Officer who attends to publicity side by maintaining liaison with the press.12 However, the number of brochures published and distributed does not appear

to be very high. And this exercise is not done regularly too. Under the circumstances, its impact is going to be not much. In a country like ours where

illiteracy is quite high, the impact of printed material, which is not only limited but also insufficient, is not going to be much. Almost all the rural

people, whom we happened to talk, in several parts of the country, were quite ignorant about the functioning of the CBI. As a matter of fact almost all

of them had not heard the name of the CBI. Though situation was better in urban areas but was not satisfactory. Thus, there is an urgent need to make people

aware about the activities of the CBI. This is so when, in a country like India, the only ray of hope for curbing and punishing the corrupt lies with the

people.

All the above factors affect the functioning of the CBI. The problems faced by the CBI in its work are those problems which can be solved, without much

efforts, by the Government.

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It has not solved them simply because the CBI, as constituted presently, is serving its purpose. The Government is interested in using the anti-corruption

bodies to serve its own interests and not in actually curbing the corruption. So far, the CBI has nervously served the interests of the Government. However,

the people are not satisfied and have expressed a deep resentment about the working of the CBI. The people have started thinking that those cases in which

the Government wants to suppress the truth13 or save its own party men14 or harass the persons belonging to opposition parties15 are referred to the CBI

for investigation. They believe that the CBI now functions in accordance with the wishes of the Government. The Estimates Committee of the Seventh Lok

Sabha was very critical about the functioning of the CBI as an agency to curb corruption. It stated that the CBI "has, despite two decades of its existence,

failed to make any significant dent on the problem of corruption. The deterrent effect of the CBI has not been felt to the extent that it could be said

that corrupt practices are on the decline if not on the way out."16

Inspite of all the shortcomings and criticism of the CBI, the people still have some faith in it. This is primarily because there is no other agency on

which they can depend for independent and impartial investigation of corrupt practices and crimes. They don't believe in the state police machinery for

investigation of corrupt practices because of the fact that it is amenable to the pressure easily. They, therefore, either send their complaints direct

to the CBI or exert pressure upon state governments to entrust services and controversial matters for investigation to the CBI. Recent experiences tells

us that whenever a state government wants to shift its burden or to make a matter complicated or interested in lingering on or wants to harass its political

opponents, it refers the matter to the CBI.17 As a result the CBI is burdened with many complicated matters. To make the things worst, there appears no

end to cases of corruption amongst public servants. Under the circumstances, how effectively can the CBI work? If it has been successful, howsoever slowly,

in catching the corrupt people, then legal

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hurdles come in the way of awarding punishment to them. Courts take their own time in deciding these cases. People of low rank and status involved in the

corruption cases suffer whereas the big and influential flourish and are not affected at all. Rather they become more active in their corrupt practices.

Under the circumstances, we have to contend with by accepting the CBI as a part of our system. It may not be Utopian to expect the CBI will be able to

eliminate or even curb corruption from our society.

The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC)

On the basis of the recommendations of the Santhanam Committee, the Government of India set up the CVC by an executive order in 1964. While the recommendations

for setting up the CVC was accepted by the Government, the scheme of the CVC as finalised by the Government did not contain many of the important features

recommended by the Santhanam Committee. The basic objective to set up the CVC was to fulfil the need for an independent body with extensive functions designed

to ensure that complaints of corruption or lack of integrity on the part of Government servants are given prompt and effective attention and that offenders

are brought to book without fear and favour.

The CVC has jurisdiction and powers in respect of matters to which the executive powers of the Union extends. It can undertake or have an inquiry made into

any transaction in which a public servant is suspected or alleged to have acted for an improper purpose or in a corrupt manner or into any complaint that

a public servant had exercised or refrained from exercising his powers with an improper or corrupt motive or into any complaint of misconduct or lack or

integrity or any malpractices or misdemeanour on the part of a public servant. Where it appears after a preliminary enquiry that a public servant had acted

or refrained from acting for an improper or corrupt purpose, the Commission advises the appropriate disciplinary authority regarding suitable action to

be taken.

The CVC has also been charged with the responsibility of exercising a general check and supervision over vigilance and

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anti-corruption work in the Ministries/Departments and public undertakings, etc. The Commission calls from administrative authorities such reports and returns

as it may consider necessary for this purpose.

Though the jurisdiction of the CVC is co-terminus with the executive powers of the Union and extends to all employees of Government and central public undertakings,

it has been decided that the Commission will advise on cases pertaining to gazetted Government officers or officers of public undertakings who are in receipt

of pay of Rs. 1000/-per month or more.

The CVC, however, exercises a general check and supervision over vigilance cases relating to non-gazetted officers and officers of public undertakings drawing

less than Rs. 1000/- per month, by obtaining periodical returns and progress reports.

As a preventive measure, the CVC may advise changes in procedures on practices when it appears that they afford scope for corruption.

The functions of the CVC are purely advisory. As per para 4 of the Ministry of Home Affairs Resolution of 11 February 1964, the Commission exercices its

powers and functions with the same measure of independence and autonomy as the Union Public Service Commission. The Government did not give it statutory

status because the Santhanam Committee recommended that the Commission should be given a statutory form only after sufficient experience had been gained.18

The Commission is a one member Commission. The Central Vigilance Commissioner is appointed by the President. In actual practice, the selection is made by

the Home Minister and placed before the Prime Minister. After being approved by the Prime Minister, the name is submitted to the President for appointment.

The Government has not laid down a formal procedure for the selection of the Commissioner. There are also no general guidelines and qualifications, legal

or otherwise laid down for selection. The only stipulation in this regard is that the Home Minister has got to submit for consideration of the r rime Minister

the reasons why a

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particular person is recommended.19

The sanctioned and actual strength of the staff of the Commission is as under :

table with 3 columns and 3 rows

Year

Sactioned strength

Actual strength

31 March 1968

164

153

31 December 1981

168

151

table end

Though with the increase of number of public servants, the work of the Commission has increased yet its staff has not increased. Whereas the Commission

has 164 posts as on 31 March 1968, it had only 168 posts as on 31 December 1981. The position of staff actually in position is not satifactory since there

were 17 posts lying vacant on 31 December 1981. Since the details of vacant posts are not available one is not in a position to comment on how it is affecting

the work of the Commission.' But one thing is clear, for an organisation like the Commission this number of vacant post is alarming especially in view

of its nature of work.

The budget of the Commission forms a part of the budget of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Its budget has been as under:

table with 2 columns and 3 rows

Year

Budget (Rs. in lakhs)

1965-66

9.45

1981-82

32.4

table end

The budget of the Commission is mainly meant for pay and allowances of officers and establishment. The increase in budget is due to increase in allowances

of staff, office expenditure and the creation of new posts.

Before discussing the work done by the Commission, it may be desirable to make a distinction between the functions and work of the CBI and the Commission.

This is necessary for an appreciation and evaluation of the work done by the Commission.

Actually, there is some confusion between the functions of the CBI and the Commission. The CBI makes an inquiry and makes its report to the particular department

through

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the Commission. It is not the function of the Commission to make an inquiry either separately or jointly. The Commission calls for records of the CBI, if

any, calls for defence statement, consults the department concerned and gives its decision. It may be possible that on the basis of the records produced

by the CBI, it does not find that this is a case fit for prosecution or for departmental inquiry. That is a question of opinion. The Commission being an

independent and autonomous authority, is required to discharge its functions in a judicious manner. It has to bear in mind the principles of justice. It

is not its functions to detect an offender as the CBI does.20

Thus, the Commission acts on the advice of the CBI. Final reports of investigation by the CBI in the cases involving gazetted government servants are required

to be sent in the first instance to the Commission. Action is taken by the department concerned on the recommendations of the CBI only after considering

the advice of the Commission. Since its inception till 31 December 1931, the Commission has completed 9,878 cases only.21 This performance of the Commission

was by no means satisfactory. On an average it had completed 581 cases per year. In a large country like India, such a performance is not going to have

any impact on the practice of corruption among public servants.

The things look bad when this performance of the Commission is viewed against the time taken by it in completing the cases. The maximum and average period

for conclusion of a vigilance case in the Commission was found to be :

table with 3 columns and 3 rows

Nature of Cases

Maximum period

Average period

Major

132 months

29 months

Minor

81 months

18 months

table end

Thus, we find that the Commission takes a lot of time in completing a vigilance case. It becomes worse when viewed against the time taken by the courts

in disposing of these cases. This aspect has already been discussed in detail while discussing the functioning of the CBI.

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The CVC and the CBI : Difference of Opinion

It is inherent in the nature of relationship between the Commission and the CBI, as discussed above, that both may not necessarily agree with each other

in awarding punishment in corruption cases. In a large number of cases investigated by the CBI, the Commission had differed with the recommendations of

the CBI and had advised the administrative authorities a course of action different from that proposed by the CBI The total number of officers against

whom action at various stages has been recommended by the CBI and the Commission in all cases completed between 1964 and 1981 is as under :

table with 12 columns and 3 rows

No. of Gazzetted and Equivalent officers involved

CBI Investigation Report

CVC's First Stage Advice

CVC's Second Stage Advice

Prosecution

Major

Minor

Others

Prosecution

Major

Minor

Others

Major

Minor

Others

4,485

298

2439

519

1229

227

1766

766

1657

687

541

942

table end

It is clear from the above table that in a fairly large number of cases the Commission had differed with the recommendations of the CBI and advised a course

of action different from that proposed by the CBI. This is so because of the difference in appraisal of the material on record and the chances of successful

prosecution. The advice of each one is based on the merits of each case. However, something could certainly be done to minimise the differences between

both of them. The Commission could have formulated and supplied guidelines to the CBI with a view to minimise such differences and thereby avoid a substantial

amount of infructious work at both ends.

The functions of the Commission are advisory in the same sense as those of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). It is expected that administrative

authorities, to whom it will make recommendations, will implement them. However, to put some check on the Government, it has been made obligatory for the

Commission to mention, in its annual report to the Ministry of Home Affairs, those cases where

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recommendations made by it had not been accepted or acted upon by the concerned department. The Ministry of Home Affairs, in its turn is required to lay

down in Parliament the report of the Commission along with a memorandum explaining the reasons for non-acceptance of any recommendations of the Commission.

In the initial years, the recommendations of the Commission were given utmost attention by the departments. Hence, upto 31 March 1968 there were only three

cases of non-acceptance of its advice by disciplinary authorities-one in 1965-66 and two in 1967-68.22 However, with the passage of time the situation

changed. The number of such cases rose to 14 in 1979, 16 in 1980 and 27 in 1981.23 Thus, the arrangements made for ensuring the acceptance and implementation

of the recommendations of the Commission by departments have not worked to the satisfaction of the Commission as well as of the public. The government,

for the reasons best known to it, have chosen not to agree to the recommendations of the Commission. If those persons on whom lies the responsibility of

making the Commission an effective and efficient organisation to curb the incidence of corruption, choose to by-pass the Commission then nothing can be

done. Members of Parliament press etc. may criticise the government but have not been able to compel it to accept all the recommendations of the Commission.

The success of the Commission depends upon the cooperation extended to it by the people. One major source of work of the Commission is in the field of complaints

received from the people against corrupt charges/practices amongst public servants. Out of 2,791 such complaints received by the Commission during 1965-68,

only 18 per cent were found to contain serious charges of a verifiable nature. Of the rest, 71 per cent were found as "vague and unverifiable" and 11 per

cent were found as "not worth pursuing". During the present authors' visits to various parts of the country he tried to find out from the people about

functioning, etc. of the Commission. Not a single person in rural areas knew about it(though a few of them had heard the name

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of the CBI) and very few knew about it in urban areas (the number of such persons was less than those who knew about the CBI). Thus, on the whole very few

people knew about the existence, and functioning of the Commission. It is clear from the above discussion that there is an urgent need for a concerted

effort by the Commission as by the Ministry of Home Affairs to make the general public aware of the functions of the Commission and of the nature, type,

manner and content of complaints which the Commission takes effective notice of.

However, no concrete programme for publicity is formulated by the Commission. The Commissioner told that "apart from extensive tours and visits to almost

every part of the country by his predecessor and his meeting the press informally, no publicity was undertaken, nor was it possible for the Commission

with present work-load, to do so".24 He confessed this in 1969 but the things have not changed since then. The situation is the same at present.

The role of the Commission may broadly be divided into two parts i.e., preventive and punitive. A perusal of the annual reports of the Commission shows

that it has so far been concentrating mainly on the punitive side i.e. dealing with actual vigilance cases. The preventive side, which is really more important,

has rot so far received adequate attention. While detection and punishment of corruption and other malpractices is certainly important, what is even more

important is the taking of preventive measures which could reduce the number of vigilance cases considerably.

The task is not limited to interfering after faults and errors have been committed. The foremost object is to prevent faults. The extent of corruption can

not be judged by the number of vigilance cases. In fact, a vigilance case arises only when there has been lack of vigilance and what we describe as "vigilance

case" is, in actual fact, a minus vigilance case.

It is clear from the above discussion that the Commission has not been able to discharge its responsibilities in a most effective and efficient manner.

This is so because of the number of difficulties faced by it in its working. Some of

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such difficulties are found in the constitution of the Commission—certain things have been inveriably kept vague so as to give the Government the option

of acting in accordance with its interests. What are the problems/difficulties faced by the commission? In the first instance, the Commission does not

enjoy statutory status. This affects the functioning of the Commission vis-a-vis government departments. It does not get the requisite cooperation from

them. Its recommendations are not accepted in all cases and in some cases inordinate delays take place in their implementation. Inspite of repeated requests,

both inside and outside Parliament, the Government has not given it a statutory status.

Secondly, the Commission faces the problems of inadequate resources, both personnel and financial. There is only one person namely the Chief Vigilance Commissioner

to look after the work relating to giving advice on the basis of the investigation reports of the CBl and Central Vigilances Officers. All the cases coming

to the Commission are decided only by one persons i.e, the Commissioner. He has to study each and every case personally and take decision himself. In addition,

he has to undertake tours to various parts of the country and also attend various meetings, etc. It is humanly impossible for one person to handle the

large volume and variety of work transacted by the Commission. Inspite of repeated requests26, the Government has not done anything to help the Commissioner

to discharge onerous duties entrusted to him. Though the work of the Commission has increased manifold (both quantitatively and qualitatively), the staff

of the Commission has not increased. As long back as 1969, the Commissioner was complaining about the shortage of staff.26 The staff of the Commission

at that time was 164 and in 1981 it was 168. With a staff of 164 he was finding it difficult to cope with the work of the Commission which was much less

than what it is in 1981. With an addition of just four persons, how can the Commission discharge its responsibilities to the satisfaction of all?

Thirdly, only public servants drawing a salary of Rs. 1,000/-per month or more are under the purview of the Commission. This has been done so because the

Commission

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has to undertake a heavy load of work with a limited number of staff and, therefore, should concentrate on few officers to ensure optimum deployment of

their meagre personnel resources. While at the face value it may sound logical but in actual practice it is not so. The setting up of the Commission has

served the dual purpose of the Government. First, whenever there is a pressure from whatever quarter it may be, the Government can easily meet that by

referring the case to the Commission for necessary action.

In this way, the opposition is subdued. Since cases pertaining to big officers are going to attract public attention at large, the Government has brought

them under the purview of the Commission so that demand of the people for an inquiry can be met easily and without causing any problem. By this very act

(i.e. referring the matter to the Commission) the Government either saves or damages (as the need of the situation may be) the personality concerned. If

it wants to harass the person, it can "ask" the Commission to expedite the matter. On the other hand, if it wants to save the person, then it is ensured

(either by asking investigation officers to go slow or by not extending cooperation to the Commission through denial of documents, etc.) that maximum possible

time is taken in investigating the matter. Apart from the Government, such a provision also helps politicians belonging to opposition parties. Because

high level corruption, as C.V. Narasimhan, former Director of the CBI tells, poses special problems for detection as there is no adequate machinery to

deal with it effectively.27 In his opinion, the Commission, like other anti-corruption agencies, can not be expected to measure up to the. task.

Political Corruption

Interest in politics is a national obsession in India. This was an asset in the pre-independence days because it provided the nation with a single-minded

determination to free itself of foreign rule. But after independence it has not been such an unmixed blessing. With the decline in national leadership

in independent-India and with the intellegentsia by and large shunning politics, politics has become the

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preserve of those who generally cannot make much of a headway in other walks of life. The 'power elite' which has emerged in India especially after the

sixties, is unseasoned, cultureless and alienated. It is politically uneducated, morally morbid, intellectually deficient, asthetically insensitive and

has no great values of life. Political corruption is a consequence of the rise of this class to power and eminence. For want of creative genesis, sociological

imagination, and lack of affinity with the people, they resort to short cuts, compromises and adjustments. In order to conceal their inherent weakness

and in a bid to remain in power, they raise slogans, pass ordinances/acts and play gimmickry. As a matter of fact, the power elite has built up a closed

monopolistic power grid in which they insist that power must flow along such channels as will promote their interests and the interests of their principals.

As a result of this the incidences of corruption in political life have increased manifold.

We have enough legal provisions to deal with political corruption. However, most of them have in practice become inoperative due to one or the other procedural

defect or obstacle. In what follows, an attempt is made to critically examine some of the important measures initiated for eradication of political corruption

in India. The measures selected are: "the Election Commission, Codes of Conduct, the Commission of Inquiries Act, the Anti Defection Bill and the Scheme

of Lok Pal and Lok Ayukt.

The Election Commission

To deal with political corruption in the field of elections. Article 102 and 171 of the Constitution appoint the Election Commission as the permanent statutory

body to look into complaints of some types of misconduct by Member of Parliament (MP) and Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA). On the recommendations

of the Commission, the President or the Governor, as the case may be, has got to dismiss the MP or MLA concerned.

However, the powers of the Commission are limited in this respect. It has no power to enforce the attendance of witnesses or the production of documents.

The Chief Election

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Commissioners have repeatedly requested the Government to ask the Parliament to frame rules under Article 118 for MPs and under Article 208 for MLAs so

as to confer the necessary powers to the Commission. However, so far the Government of India has not done anything in this respect.

The Commission can be a most potent agency for inquiring into cases of misconduct during elections if it is given those powers which the Election Tribunals

are empowered under Section 92 of the Representation of Peoples Act, 1952. The Commission's powers of inquiry may also be widened by adding a new clause

on the lines of Section 163 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) defining more precisely the disqualifications of MPs and MLAs in the event of their found guilty

of accepting illegal gratification during the course of their official work.

Apart from the Commission, the judiciary in India is also given power to try cases pertaining to fraudulent and corrupt-practices adopted by the candidates

during election times. However, this power of judiciary has failed to make any visible impact on the evils of corruption. In the first instance, judiciary

takes lot of time in deciding a case. Normally it takes couple of years to decide a case. And, secondly, if a case is decided then there is no guarantee

that findings of the judiciary will be implemented. In many cases the findings remained inoperative. For example when in 1975 the Allahabad High Court

indicted the then Prime Minister of India using, what the Court believed to be, the corrupt practices during election times, the election law itself was

later changed with retrospective effect to declare those practices on which the Court held the candidate guilty, as not corrupt practices. Though this

was done in a constitutional manner but political morality did suffer a crushing blow.

Codes of Conduct

The question of providing some institutional safeguard to ensure integrity among Ministers was, first, raised and discussed at the time of framing of the

Indian Constitution. K.T. Shah and H.V. Kamath, members of the Constituent Assembly, moved certain amendments requiring Ministers to

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declare their assets. B.R. Ambedkar, Chairman of the Drafting Committee while agreeing with the principle of the amendments conceded that it was a laudable

object to maintain the purity of administration but did not agree to incorporate these amendments in the Constitution. He was of the view that there should

be a declaration at the time of appointment as a Minister and also at the time of quitting office. In cases of assets being found abnormal, the Minister

concerned should be required to explain and penalised. Instead of a legal sanction in this respect, he was of the view that a much better sanction would

be to mobilise public opinion and focus it in the legislature.28

The Congress Party took the initiative in this regard. The Congress Working Committee during the presidentship of Sanjiva Reddy in 1960, asked the Government

to ask the ministers to submit an annual statement of assets and liabilities. This was only a party affair in the sense that ministers were required to

submit the statement to the President of the Congress Party. Hence, the general public had no right to know details of these annual statements. Besides,

the practice also did not have any constitutional sanction since these statements could not be presented to the legislatures for scrutiny.

H.V. Kamath was not satisfied with the reply of Ambedkar and was determined to frame some sort of code with regard to assets of Ministers. In 1963, he revived

the issue and introduced in the Lok Sabha a Private Member's Bill to provide for the periodical disclosure of assets of Ministers. The Bill was called,

The Disclosure of Assets of Ministers Bill 1963'.29 The Government opposed the Bill and thus it was lost. The Government was of the view that the basic

thing that would prevent Ministers from misbehaving was to accept certain conventions that they would themselves disclose their assets, if they wanted

to, to their chiefs and they would not hide anything. Declaration of assets was matter of party convention and could not be really laid down by legislation.30

Thus, the Government did not want to make this matter, a matter of public concern but was willing to make it a matter of party. Because in this way, no

outside people can exercise.

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direct or indirect, any check or pressure on the Government. However, if the Government was honest in its endeavours then why it was fearing from the disclosure

of assets of its Ministers to public?

The Santhanam Committee while suggesting measures calculated to produce a social climate both amongst public servants and in the general public in which

bribery and corruption may not flourish, urged the evolution of a code of conduct for ministers including the provisions suggested by it for public servants

relating to acquisition of property, acceptance of gifts and disclosure of assets and liabilities. The code of conduct was to be placed before Parliament

and state legislatures. The Prime Minister and Chief Ministers were to consider themselves responsible for enforcing the code of conduct.31

In pursuance of recommendations of the Santhanam Committee, the Central and State Governments framed codes of conduct for ministers. The code of conduct

for Central and State ministers was published by the Government of India on 29 October 1964. The code inter alia provided for the disclosure of the assets

and liabilities and business interests of himself and all members of his family by any person taking office as minister, accepting of contributions and

gifts and other related matters. However, to this day the code has been practised more in breach than in observance. The practice of individual ministers

at the Centre and in the states submitting annual statements to the Prime Minister and Chief Ministers has lost its relevance. Certainly, the public has

ceased to treat it with any seriousness, like the statements about election costs submitted by candidates before the Election Commission. Neither the successive

Prime Ministers nor the Chief Ministers, who were responsible for ensuring the observance of the code of conduct could exercise any moral influence on

their colleagues.

In 1969, the Madras Assembly adopted a resolution about the disclosure of assets of members of lagislature and Ministers and requested the Central Government

to enact a law in this respect. The Assembly was of the opinion that in the public interest "it is necessary to avoid even the slightest

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degree of suspicion in the mind of the common people regarding the absolute integrity of the Members of the Legislature and the Ministers".32 The Central

Government did not take any action on this resolution.

R.P. Ulaganamli, a member of Lok Sabha from Madras, however, pursued this resolution by introducing on 27th July 1973 a Private Member's Bill (no. 47 of

1973) in the Lok Sabha. The Disclosure of the Assets of Members of Parliament Bill, 1973 was introduced with a view to providing for compulsory disclosure

of assets of members of Parliament and their families. Whereas Kamath Bill sought to cover only Ministers, this Bill required all members of Parliament

including a Minister who might not be a member of either House to declare their personal and family assets. The Bill could not be passed because of the

opposition of the Government.

On 5 April 1974, B.K. Das Chowdhury introduced in the Lok Sabha another Private Member's Bill (no. 24 of 1974) on the subject of the conduct of members

of Parliament. The Parliamentary Integrity Commission Bill, 1974 sought to provide for the constitution of a Parliamentary Integrity Commission to examine

declaration of income, assets and liabilities which would be required to be made to it by every member on becoming such member and every year thereafter.

Like earlier Bills in this respect, this Bill could not be passed because of opposition of the Government.

There is a code of professional ethics for doctors and lawyers and, the Government is seriously thinking of framing a code of conduct for teachers. Whereas

it seems to be worried about others and has tried to regulate their working through the system of codes of conduct, it has avoided the framing of a code

of ethics for politicians who, after all, largely determine the conditions which vitally affect all sections of society. Whenever and wherever the issue

of code of ethics for members of legislature has come up, the Government opposed its formation and giving it legal sanction on the plea that such norms

should be governed by convention. The sanction of public opinion, in a democratic society like ours, is more powerful than the legal sanction. Surprisingly,

all the political parties have agreed with the

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Congress in this respect.

Defection

After independence, the persons who came to occupy the ministerial office in the governments at the Centre and often in the states were men of high quality

and prestige, considerable personal and political integrity and were influenced with a sense of national purpose. However, the tall leadership of the freedom

movement gradually departed from the scene. As a result, politics became more of an exclusive profession and a specialised craft of something getting to

positions of power and retaining and augmenting that power by all means. The same desire of sharing the fruits of power that kept people together in political

parties also caused discussions, dissidence, defections and splits. During the years following the fourth general elections when the ruling Congress Party

grip over states loosened, the conduct of legislators including ministers was subjected to much open criticism in the context of unprincipled floor-crossings

or defections on a large scale. The defections began to occur with a frequency and on a scale which undermined political stability and started undermining

respect of people for politicians and confidence in the political process. It is not possible to give upto date figures of defections in the Indian politics.

However, according to some studies during 1967-73 some 45 state governments were toppled in quick succession with as many as over 2700 cases of defections

by legislators. Over sixty per cent legislators all over the country were involved, many of them changing their affiliations more than once and some of

them as many as four or five times within a year.33 These figures are bound to be much higher if the statistics for the last ten years are also available.

However, the old figures give a clear idea about the dimensions of defections and their destructive effect on political stability and morality. What are

the causes of defection? The most motivational force behind defections is the prospect of political power and the lure of ministerial office.34 Many also

defect because of temptations of office other than ministerial, money or status.

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The public became concerned about the defection of legislators. The matter was discussed in the Lok Sabha at length. It resolved that a committee of constitutional

experts and representatives of political parties be set up to consider the problem of legislators changing their party allegiance.36 Accordingly the Committee

on Defections was appointed under the Chairmanship of Y.B. Chavan, the then Home Minister. The Committee made a number of recommendations which were of

a not too radical character. The report of the Committee was placed before the Parliament on 18 February 1969. Thereafter a Bill was drafted in 1970 and

its provisions were discussed by the Prime Minister with leaders of political parties. The views expressed by leaders showed considerable divergence. However,

the Bill, the Anti Defection Bill— Constitution (Thirty Second) Amendment Bill 1973, was introduced in Lok Sabha on 16 May 1973 and referred to a Joint

Select Committee of the Parliament. But before the Committee could submit its report, the Lok Sabha was dissolved in January 1977. However, defection continued.

For example, in Sikkim the Congress Party, which had come to command an overwhelming majority by accretion of strength through defections, changed over

wholesale to the Janata Party. In 1978, yet another Anti Defection Bill—Constitution (Forty Eight) Amendment Bill—was sought to be introduced but because

of strong opposition within the Janata Party itself, the proposed legislation was withdrawn. So Janata became even with the Congress. On coming to power,

the Congress-I has not shown any interest in bringing out the Anti-Defection Bill.

Inspite of all hue and cry made by political parties about the defections, the defections are going on unabashedly. This is a reflection on the abysmal

depth to which political standards have sunk. The arguments put forward against an anti-defection law have been the importance of the individual member's

freedom of association and the need to allow healthy polarisation of political forces. As a matter of fact, defections have had little to do with either

and have continued to be patently unprincipled and self-serving. Thus politicians in their own interests had not been able to adopt

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any measure, to curb the evil practice of defection in Indian politics.

The Commissions of Inquiries

The most popular device to investigate into the alleged deeds of misconduct and political corruption used in India has been the Commissions of Inquiry Act,

1952. The Act provides for appointment of special inquiry commission(s) to deal with inquiries into 'definite matters of public importance'. Though the

Act is much wider in scope but its provisions can be set in motions only if the Central or State Government so desires.

Of late, a large number of Commissions have been set, under the Act, concerning the conduct of persons in authority and the particular subject has acquired

special importance in the recent past. Cleanliness of public life is a matter of vital public concern. Public life of persons in authority ought to be

such as would not admit of allegations of abuse of official position being levelled against them. It is not that whenever an allegation of misuse of position

is made against a person in authority we should hasten to presume his fall from norms of public conduct, because cases have not been wanting where political

rivalry motivated the making of such allegations. However, whenever such allegations are made and are not frivolous, prima facie, an inquiry is both necessary

and desirable, either to establish the allegations or to clear the names involved.

Suspicion, howsoever grave, can not substitute evidence. Commissions, are, therefore, entrusted the task of collecting reliable data and of giving dependable

findings on facts, with a view to enlightening the government in regard to true state of affairs on definite matters of public importance.

During its existence of about 31 years, more than 200 commissions have been set up by the Central and State Governments.36

The working of the Act so far as it relates to inquiries into the allegation against ministers has not been free from controversies. In the first instance,

the discretion to launch an inquiry is kept vague so as to give leverage to the ruling

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party to use it as a powerful political weapon. The Prime Minister claims that it is for her "to determine whether or not there is a need for a Commission

of Inquiry" (in her letter to Jyotermay Basu). Thus, inquiries into charges of ministerial misconduct are entirely for the government of the day to institute

and its discretion has been exercised almost invariably on partisan grounds or in deference to a public demand which could not be evaded. In other words,

commissions of inquiry are ordered only under extraordinary pressure or when there is polarisation of political affiliations.37

Secondly, Commissions have followed different procedures and adopted different approaches and in some cases converted themselves into trial courts.38 Yet

in almost all the cases, the verdict given by these commissions of inquiry has won public acceptance instantly. The pity of it is, as Noorani puts it "that

many an offender went scot free and many a charge sheet has been ignored". The Central/State Government concerned decided to leave them well alone. If

the offenders in the front rank of the administration are thus shielded, the result can only be a steady deterioration of public standards and a demoralisation

of the public services. Thus, failure to evolve a uniform code of rules concerning inquiries into charges of ministerial misconduct, which is acceptable

to the country at large, is a grave lapse.39

Thirdly, there have been cases of parallel proceedings by the commission and the court. This creates problems not only for the commission but also for the

court. Such a situation creates embarrassment and difficulties for the court. When a court is seized of a case and has to go into the facts and circumstances

pertaining to it, it would be most inexpedient for a commission to go into the matter and give its findings especially if the evidence before both the

forums is practically the same. If a commission were to arrive at certain findings, the invisible effect of such findings as a brooding omnipresence in

the mind of a court cannot be denied by anyone who makes a realistic approach to the question.40

Fourthly, there have been cases of parallel commissions ordered on the same subject by the Central and State Government.41 Such commissions faced difficulties

in conducting

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their proceedings effectively. As a matter of fact, sometimes to halt the functioning of a commission, the Central/State Government resort to such an exercise.

The motives behind such an exercise are purely personal-cum-political.42 Also, the Act does not make it clear as to what would be the final outcome in

the event of the two commissions, one centrally appointed and the other state-appointed, submitting materially variant findings and recommendations. In

the event of there being a contradiction or clash between their respective reports, how are the two to be reconciled or harmonised and whether one of them

is required to give way to the other, and if so, in what respect and to what extent, are matters all left unprovided in the Act. Though so far no such

problem has arisen. But the fact that the practice of appointing parallel commissions may be used by the governments, central and state to harass each

other, it is necessary that these matters are clarified in the Act itself. Though, the Central Government is aware of these problems, it has not done anything

so far to rectify the situation.

Commissions take fairly long time to complete their inquiries. Whereas, many commissions have taken as long as six years to complete their work, the average

time taken by a commission has been two years.43 By the end of such a period, the public interest in the matter is likely to diminish considerably. In

order to be effective, a commission should finish its work as early as possible. This can be so only if a commission is not burdened with too many cases

involving a large number of persons and necessitating the recording and sifting of voluminous evidence. There has to be discerning selectiveness when deciding

about the matters referred to a commission.

Further a period of six months has been allowed by the Act to enable the appropriate Government to lay before the appropriate House of the Legislature the

report submitted by a commission. This period is too long. The findings and recommendations of a commission should be made public at the earliest so that

people know the facts of the concerned case. However, governments, both the Central and State, have shown the least concern for public in this respect.

They

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place the report of a commission in the legislature at their own convenience and in some cases, for one reason or another, (however, none convincing and

justifiable), they have not made the inquiry report public.44 Under the circumstances, it should be made obligatory for the government to lay before the

legislature the report of a commission, and the time for doing so needs to be reduced from six months.

The Commissions also face problems of non-cooperation from the concerned quarters. Government departments not willing to supply the necessary information,

government servants and common men not willing to give evidence, non-cooperation of the very persons in the proceedings of inquiry who had made complaints

in the very first instance and the commission's helpness in securing it are some of the problems which a commission faces while carrying out its work.

!t is asked to perform a job but has not been statutorily adequately equipped to perform it.

Section, 3 (4) of the Act provides that the appropriate governments shall lay down before the legislature the report of a commission along with a memorandum

of the action it has taken on the report. Thus, there is no obligation on the part of the appointing government to implement the recommendations of a commission.

Implementation of the recommendations of commissions is a political question. Despite the talk of the majesty of law, or of the law taking its own course,

the issue is a political one and is invariably decided on the basis of a careful calculation of political gains and losses. A study of the implementation

of recommendations of commissions makes a painful reading. The Shah Commission pursued the findings of the earlier commissions appointed by the Central

and State governments to probe into the conduct of ministers of the State Governments45 and stated that it was "not aware of the action taken, if any,

in response to these Reports submitted from time to time".46 It is really astonishing that the guilt of all those indicted by these commissions were later

condoned by the political parties they belonged to or by succeeding governments. Thus, corruption gains respectability."47

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And lastly, a word may be mentioned about the attitude of the people towards commissions of inquiry especially with regard to the implementation of the

findings of the commissions. The common masses have lost faith in the commissions. This may be gauged from the fact that inspite of being indicted by commissions,

the people have supported the politicians. Strictures, etc. have not made the slightest difference to the political and electoral fortunes of indicted

gentlemen. Almost all of them have repeatedly won elections hands down. The most instructive case in this regard is that of Devraj Urs. The Janata Government

dismissed his ministry and appointed the Grover Commission that found him culpable on several counts. And yet Urs won a resounding victory in the State

Assembly poll in 1978 under the Congress-I banner. This has happened despite the findings of the Grover Commission which, if pursued to the logical conclusion

might have led to prosecution and possible conviction. It is a typical case of a democratic society negating the very values of its own criminal justice

system and highlights the growing dichotomy between formal law and public perception.

Lok Pal and Lok Ayukt

As long ago as July 1959, CD. Deshmukh, the then Chairman of the University Grants Commission and former Finance Minister demanded the establishment of

a "high-level, impartial, standing judicial tribunal to investigate complaints" against people in high places. He claimed to be in possession of evidence

relating to improprieties committed by Ministers and offered to lay it before such an investigative tribunal. But Nehru, the then Prime Minister, opposed

the formation of such tribunal on the ground that it would be repugnant to democratic practice and result in an atmosphere of mutual accusation.48

Compelled by the deteriorating situation, the Government set up the Santhanam Committee which recommended that President may constitute, on the advice of

the Prime Minister, a national panel from which three persons may be chosen from time to time to set up ad hoc committees for enquiring

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into allegations against Ministers.49 No action was taken by the Government to implement this recommendation of the Santhanam Committee.

The Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) headed by Morarji Desai picked up the thread and recommended the appointment of a Lok Pal. The Lok Pal is the

Indian version of Scandinavian Ombudsman. During her earlier administration, Indira Gandhi had a Lok Pal Bill and introduced it in the Parliament in 1968

and again in 1971.50 But both the times it lapsed when the Parliament was dissolved.

Morarji Desai, on assuming the office of the Prime Minister, initially showed signs of translating his moralism into practice as the Lok Pal Bill was further

refined and made more comprehensive during the Janata regime by also bringing within its purview the office of the Prime Minister.51 However, when it came

to the crunch, the Janata Government failed, taking recourse to the well-worn parliamentary escape: the Bill was referred to an unwieldy Joint Select Committee

of the Parliament. The second phase of Indira Gandhi also has shown no interest whatsoever to rescue the Bill from the legislature dung-heap.

How serious are political leaders to set up the Lok Pal can be guaged from the above discussion. That all the Prime Ministers of India—barring Lal Bahadur

Shastri, who never really got a chance—should have developed cold feet in the face of this measure is an eloquent testimony to its potential effectiveness.

Lok Ayukt

A number of states have enacted laws for the appointment of Lok Ayukts.52 The Lok Ayukt, assisted by one or more Upalok Ayukts, is expected to go into complaints

of corruption against ministers and the bureaucracy. In some states, the Chief Minister comes under the purview of the Lok Ayukt. There is, however, no

uniformity in this respect.

The working of the Lok Ayukt in various states shows that the governments had not been serious about it. In some cases, it is appointed in such a hurry

that instead of waiting to get the bill passed by the legislature, the government

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appoints it through an ordinance. The seriousness of the government in this respect may be seen from the fact that the ordinance is allowed to lapse because

it could not be given statutory footing within the stipulated time. Then, again an ordinance is passed for its creation.53 Secondly, the government takes

lot of time in appointing the Lok Ayukt and Upalok Ayukt.54 Further, the government failed to provide office accommodation and supporting staff to Lok

Ayukt. After several months the supporting staff, etc. is provided to the Lok Ayukt by the government. Still that staff was not adequate for the working

of the Lok Ayukt.56 The powers and jurisdiction of Lok Ayukt are also so designed that it may not be possible for it to discharge its responsibilities

in an effective way. For example, the Lok Ayukt and Upalok Ayukt of Maharashtra believed that the limitations placed on their jurisdiction under the Act

were stringent and numerous and had affected their functions. They further said that the various provisions of the Act gave almost complete immunity to

the police from their jurisdiction. They found it difficult to see in which case of corruption, they had jurisdiction at all. They were of the opinion

that the Act, in its present form, would not achieve the very useful and laudable objective for which it has been framed.56 Last but not the least, the

government has not extended full cooperation to the Lok Ayukt. On the other hand, we find from the annual reports of the Lok Ayukt of various states the

incidents of negative and uncooperative attitude of governments.57

Thus, we find that though state governments have created an impressive authority to deal with mal-administration and graft complaints, it proved to be a

thoroughly hypocritical measure. This is so, as shown above, because of the cumbersome and hurriedly enacted legislation under which the office of Lok

Ayukt has been established. The powers vested in the Lok Ayukt by one section of the Act are so sharply eroded by other provisions and the number of listed

and unlisted 'sacred cows' is so large that the sum total of the entire exercise under the Act worked out to an easily distinguishable naught. The irony

of the situation is that state governments have not tried to learn from the experiences of

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other states which have set up Lok Ayukt earlier. Had they done so, they might have avoided problems which now their Lok Ayukts are facing.

Wherever, the Lok Ayukts have been appointed the impression created is that the governments are trying to hoodwink the public by playing possum and pretending

to be waging a relentless war against corruption. However, the functioning of Lok Ayukts in various states has shown that the object of the governments

was merely to play to the gallery. The Central Government is also watching the whole exercise in a detached way. It also does not seem to be keen about

the institution of Lok Ayukts. Otherwise it would have issued directives so as to make the law uniform in all the states. Thus, the Central Government

as well as the state governments do not appear to be keen in eradicating corruption.

Attitude of Legislature

A word may also be said about the role of legislature in eradication of corruption. Whenever discussions about corruption takes place in the Parliament,

we find that the 'willing-to-wound-but-afraid-to-strike' attitude marks most of the speeches made by members belonging to both the treasury and opposition

benches. Perhaps, this is not difficult to understand, considering that it is not only the politicians in power at the moment who can claim the distinction

of misusing authority in overt or covert ways. After all many of those who are now in opposition did wield power at the Centre or in States at sometime.

And, thus, they have a "past" of their own not qualitatively very different from the past or the present of today's rulers. And those members who had no

ministerial berths have also, in their own limited way, enjoyed the fruits of corruption.58 Bringing out skeleton from cupboards is a game both sides can

play and both are only too conscious of this fact. We, therefore, always witness colourless debates which bring out nothing—neither facts nor serious thinking

about ways to check the growth of malpractices of all kinds.

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Concluding Observations

An analysis of various anti-corruption measures adopted by the Government to fight both administrative and political corruption in India confirms both the

hypotheses which we set to test about the efficacy of anti-corruption measures. The fitst is actually dependent upon the second in the sense that the efficacy

of anti-corruption measures is dependent upon the commitment of political leadership. If there is a strong political will to eradicate curruption then

anti-corruption measure are going to be adequate enough so as to be effective in curbing the corruption. If during the course of their working some of

their shortcomings have come to the notice then the government is going to take immediate steps to remove those shortcomings. If the commitment of the

government is not strong than it is going to make only promises and nothing in concrete terms. It will formulate schemes which would not be perfect. Thus,

its anti-corruption drive ultimately will turn out to be fake and it will be a form of corruption in disguise.

The above review of anti-corruption measures of the Government of India shows that the basic problem in fighting corruption has not been lack of avenues

or suggestions of reforms but the lack of desired will to enforce the available remedial measures. The problem is three-fold. First, the fault lies with

the thinking of the government with regard to the problem of corruption. The fundamental fallacy of our thinkers and law-makers in matters pertaining to

corruption, as also social and moral reforms, is that they cannot conceive of aims and objects that are modest, moderate, practical and within reach. The

government has postulated for itself the object of preventing corruption altogether—and not checkmating it by removing its many causes to the extent possible,

and by starting the attack from the fountain-head levels of corruption. Even, otherwise how can an unwanted, undesirable and unethical thing like corruption

be prevented altogether in Indian society? It can only be curbed, controlled and contained. For this too an environment is needed.

Second, vocal condemnation of corruption may be a

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shrewd exercise in political pragmatism but without positive action at an operational level, it amounts to little else than spouting political shibboleths.

Inspite of pledging to eradicate corruption, all the political parties have done nothing in concrete terms. They have not implemented the suggestions/

recommendations made from time to time by several bodies; and, done nothing to remove the lacuna/loopholes experienced in the working of various Acts and

institutions. In this context, especially New Delhi has dismal record and this manifests gross indifference. Today, the penalty for ministerial corruption

amounts to mere dismissal from one office and immediate appointment (in some cases after some time) to other office. Thus, instead of awarding punishment,

the person is rewarded. And lastly, contrary to their assurances, all the political parties have not brought out legislations like anti-defection law or

an act to appoint Lok Pal which are going to hit them directly.

Conditions of Success

Combating corruption in any field is not merely a matter of having perfect conduct and disciplinary rules or appointing an adequate vigilance organisation.

This is, however, not to suggest that all this has no role to play in curbing corruption. They are important and going to play an important role. But with

these the battle against corruption cannot be won unless a social climate can be created in which corruption is recognised as a social evil and integrity

is rewarded. It is for both the state and the society to change their attitudes towards corruption and corrupt. Unless political leaders at the top can

bring about a basic change in their attitudes, it may not be possible to eradicate or even significantly reduce the volume of corruption—howsoever strict

the anti-corruption laws or howsoever perfect the conduct rules or howsoever efficient the CBI or the CVC or police establishment may be.

Who can create the social climate needed for the purpose of eradication of corruption? People are the only one who can do this job. While the general public

is very much concerned over the evil of corruption and its extent, they are unfortunately neither organised not effective. The Sadachar

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Samiti, the one attempt so far made to organise public opinion, has a chequered career and lies dormant now. Similar has been the fate of Peoples' Committees

organised during the Janata regime. It is essential that public opinion should be organised so that it can create a social and moral climate in which corruption

cannot flourish, which will foster high ethical values and develop and sustain the will and capacity of the people to fight corruption.

In organising and educating public opinion, the press can play an important role. Inspite of its limitations (low level of literacy as well as limited circulation

of newspapers) the press has a role to perform in ensuring that Indian democracy does not degenerate into mobocracy and anarchy. The press should expose

wrong doing in high places so that those in authority feel compelled to observe some standards of public morality. Such an act on the part of the press

can also influence the people and can create an enlightened and aroused public opinion. Thus, the press can make a contribution, howsoever limited it may

be, to the creation and sustenance of a public opinion against corruption.

Political parties can also play an effective role in mobilising public opinion against corruption. They can organise mass protest and mass action against

corruption and corrupt persons whether in the political set-up or in the administrative. However, political parties, have to exercise a sort of self-restraint

while organising public opinion—not for furthering their own interests but for the sole purpose of creating a social climate conducive for eradication

of corruption.

Apart from bringing about a fundamental change in the attitude of people, there are certain conditions which are necessary for the successful working of

anti-corruption measures. In the first place, there should be a basic soundness about the administrative machinery before anti-corruption measures can

succeed. There is a need for right type of people not only at the top but also in lower echelons of administration. There should be men of integrity and

should inspire confidence in the public. For anti-corruption measures succeed most where they are needed least and they succeed

164

least where they are needed most. It hardly needs to be emphasised that the institution can never be a substitute for a good and just administration; nor

can it help much to discipline an administration which has very low standards of integrity. It is, therefore, necessary that the Government should initiate

a special drive for general improvement of administrative and political standards.

Secondly, there should be a special public relation campaign to explain to the political leadership, the officials and the public the implications of various

anti-corruption measures. The successful functioning of these measures needs a clear understanding among the political parties to keep above party politics.

These measures must be allowed to operate effectively irrespective of the fate and vicissitudes of political parties.

Thirdly, the public officials must be impressed upon to accept and quickly implement the findings and recommendations of various anti-corruption bodies.

Unless there are reasons to the contrary which are positively in the larger public interest and can be explained to the Parliament, all recommendations

be implemented without any delay.

Fourthly, the legislature must exercise its power and authority to compel the executive to accord due respect to various anti-corruption measures. It should

see to it that the executive is not able to bypass it in this respect. A vigilant legislature is a sure check on the misuse of the privileges by the executive.

And lastly, even after the introduction of various anti-corruption measures, it will be necessary for the administration to play a major role in eradication

of corruption on an extended and more effective basis. The responsibility of government departments to deal adequately with corruption must squarely be

faced by them at first instance. Various anti-corruption measures serve as the ultimate and not as the initial remedy for an aggrieved citizen. The final

answer to the problem of eradication of corruption lies not in anti-corruption measures but in making the administrative system more efficient and responsive

in terms of need of the citizens.

165

The success of various anti-corruption measures will, therefore, depend not only on their character, jurisdiction and powers but equally on the toning up

of the wider framework within which they operate. Anti-corruption measures are not a panacea for the evils of corruption nor a substitute for good, efficient

and honest administration. The age-old problem of corruption is far too complex to be solved by anti-corruption measures alone. We need a whole variety

of controls over administrative and political action and the strategy of anti-corruption measures must be accompanied by a number of other reforms, as

suggested above, that are needed to plug the gap in our systems of control. Otherwise our anti-corruption strategy may fail.

References

1. J.S. Nye, "Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis", American Political Science Review, vol. LXI, no. 2, June 1967, p. 419.

2. India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Report of the Special Police Establishment Enquiry Committee: 1949-1952 (New Delhi, 1952), p. 12.

3. India, Fourth Lok Sabha, Estimates Committee, Seventy-Eighth Report (New Delhi, 1969), p. 44.

4. India, Central Bureau of Investigation, Annual Report. 1982 (New Delhi, 1983).

5. This information was given by J.C. Bawa, Director, CBI in an interview. See, Dharamyug, 2 October 1983.

6. India, Fourth Lok Sabha, Estimates Committee, n. 3, p. 25 and India, Seventh Lok Sabha, Estimates Committee, Forty-Ninth Report (New Delhi, 1983), p.

20.

7. This information was given by J.C. Bawa, Director, CBI in an interview. See Dharamyug, 2 October 1983.

8. Ibid.

9. India, Seventh Lok Sabha, Estimates Committee, n. 6, p. 21.

166

10. Ibid.

11'. This information was given by J.C. Bawa, Director, CBI in an interview. See, Dinman, 17-23 July 1983, pp. 16-17.

12. India, Fourth Lok Sabha, {Estimates Committee, n. 3, p. 45.

13. LN. Mishra's case is one such example. Results of the CBI's investigations are not made public even after number of years.

14. Bobby case of Patna (wherein a woman named Bobby was found dead) is one such example. The case has been referred to the CBI to save the criminals who

are prospering under the disguise of servants of people namely politicians belonging to the ruling party.

15. Baroda Dynamite case involving George Fernandes and others is one such example.

16. India. Seventh Lok Sabha, Estimates Committee, n. 6, p. 29.

17. The number of cases sent by the State Governments to the CBI for investigation over the years are as under:

table with 2 columns and 10 rows

Year

No. of Cases

1972

34

1973

29

1974

9

1975

39

1977

9

1878

23

1979

67

1980

19

1981

37

table end

Compiled from the Annual Reports of the CBI from 1972 to 1981.

18. India, Fourth Lok Sabha, Estimates Committee, no. 3, p. 5.

19. Ibid., p. 13.

167

20. Ibid., p. 43.

21. Details of 9,878 completed cases according to groups of misconduct are :

table with 2 columns and 10 rows

Abuse of Power

3,218

Disproportionate Assets

350

Cheating

149

Making or Using False Records

1,304

Favours

1,754

Misappropriation

652

Negligence

1,435

Private Business

140

Vengeance

49

Other Misconducts

827

table end

See India, Central Vigilance Commission, Annual Report: 1-1-81 to 31-12-81 (New Delhi, 1982), pp. 80-83.

22 India, Fourth Lok Sabha, Estimates Committee, n. 3, p. 81.

23. See India, Central Vigilance Commission, Annual Reports: 1979 to 1981 (New Delhi).

24. India, Fourth Lok Sabha, Estimates Committee, n. 3, p. 80.

25. Ibid., p. 38. Time and again members have raised this point in the Parliament.

26. Ibid., p. 18.

27. Indian Express, 4 December 1983.

28. India, Constituent Assembly, Debates, vol. VII, pp. 1158 and 1185-88.

29. Bill was introduced on 3 May 1963 and discussed on 20 December 1963 and 14 February 1964.

30. India, Lok Sabha, Debates, 14 February 1964, cols. 5993-99.

31. India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Report of the Committee on Prevention of Corruption (Delhi, 1964), pp. 101-10.

32. Quoted in Subhash C. Kashyap, The Ministers and the Legislators (New Delhi, 1982), pp. 146-47.

168

33. Quoted in Kashyap, n. 32, pp. 12-13.

34. This is also confirmed by the study conducted by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1967 in this respect. Quoted in UP. Singh, Morality in Public Affairs

(New Delhi: CPR, 1983), mimeo, p.

35. India, Lok Sabha, Debates, 8 December 1967.

36. Some of the notable Commissions that were appointed by the Central and State Governments in India to inquire into the alleged misuse of power, authority

and use of corrupt practices by men holding high public offices in the Government are:

(a) Chagla Commission (1956): To inquire into the Mundhra Group of Companies and the alleged role of the Ministers of Finance and the Principal Secretary

and the Chairman of the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) to influence the decision of the LIC under-writing Mundhra shares.

(b) Das Commission (1963): To inquire into the allegations of corruption, etc. against Sardar Pratap Singh Kairon, Chief Minister of Punjab.

(c) Ayyanagar Commission (1965): To inquire into the allegations of abuse of office and acquisition of wealth, etc. against Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, Chief

Minister of Jammu and Kashmir.

(d) Khanna Commission (1967); To inquire into the charges of corruption and improprieties allegedly committed by Biju Patnaik and other Ministers of Orissa

who were in office from 1961 to 1967.

(e) Aiyer Commission (1967): To inquire into the allegations against K.B. Sahai and five other Minister of Bihar.

(f) Mudholkar Commission (1968): To inquire into the charges against Mahamaya Prasad Sinha and thirteen other ex-Ministers of Bihar.

(g) Mudholkar Commission (1968): To inquire into certain allegations against Dr. V.K. Mahtab regarding

169

acquisition of wealth, withdrawal of criminal prosecutions, grant of remission to kendu leaves contractors in 1959 and grant of lease of Chromite mines

to M/s. Serajuddin&Co. in 1957.

(h) Kapoor Commission (1969): To inquire into the complaints received by the Government of India against the Dayanancd Bandodkar, Chief Minister of Goa.

(i) The 1 969 Commission to inquire into the allegations against P.K. Kunju, a Minister in E.M.S. Mamboodripad's Ministry.

(j) Sarjoo Prasad Commission (1971): To inquire into the conduct of M.K. Mehtab, ex-Chief Minister of Orissa.

(k) Mathew Commission (1975): To inquire into the general background and facts and circumstances pertaining to the incident that occurred at Samastipur

on 2 January 1975 resulting in the death of L.N. Mishra, a Central Minister and two others and serious injuries to a number of persons.

(I) Sarkaria Commission (1976): To inquire into the allegations of misuse of official position and bribery and corruption on the part of the former Chief

Minister of Tamil Nadu, Karunanidhi and some of his cabinet colleagues.

(m) Shah Commission (1977): To inquire into complaints of excesses, mal-practices of abuse of authority during the Emergency and other related matters between

1975-77.

(n) Reddy Commission (1977): TO inquire into the allegations relating to the contract entered by the Government of India during Bansi Lal's tenure as Defence

Minister.

(o) Graver Commission (1977): To inquire into certain allegations against Dev Raj Urs, Chief Minister of Karnataka and some of his cadinet colleagues.

170

(p) Iqbal Hussain Commission (1977): To inquire into certain allegations levelled against the Karnataka Chief Minister, Dev Raj Urs and some of his cabinet

colleagues.

(q) Vimadalal Commission (1977): To inquire into the allegations against the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Vengala Rao and some of his cabinet colleagues.

(r) Gurdev Singh Commission (1979): To inquire into the allegations of nepotism in making appointments and misuse of authority regarding export of wheat

during 1974-75 against Zail Singh, Chief Minister of Punjab and some of his cabinet colleagues.

(s) Vaidyalingam Commission (1979): To inquire whether any prima facie case exists against Kanti Desai, son of Prime Minister, Morarji Desai for wielding

extra constitutional authority to interfere in the top affairs of the Central Board of Taxes and Smt. Gayatri Devi, wife of Charan Singh, ex-Prime Minister

of India.

(t) Kailasam Commission (1981): To inquire into the spirit scandal that rocked Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

(u) Sadasivan Commission (1981): To inquire into the spirit scandal that rocked Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

(v) Ray Commission (1981): To inquire into the spirit scandal that rocked Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

37. How partisan politicians can be in asking for and/or appointing commissions of inquiry may be gauged from the following incidents. Politicians change

their stand in accordance with their political convenience. When Mrs. Gandhi was the Prime Minister a motion was moved in August 1968 against Morarji Desai,

who was then Deputy Prime Minister by George Fernandes for instituting an inquiry against Desai for some charges. Mrs. Gandhi opposed and rejected the

demand. And in 1978 with the change in political situation i.e. Janata Party coming

171

to power at the Centre, the Conpress-I members of Parliament (who opposed the inquiry ten years ago) were asking for an inquiry into the charges labelled

against Morarji Desai, Prime Minister. George Fernandes who was asking for an inquiry ten years ago, was now opposing the inquiry. This is an example illustrative

of partisan attitude of politicians.

As for the inquiries ordered under extraordinary pressure, the inquiries ordered against Pratap Singh Kairon, Biju Patnaik and Bakshi Ghulam Mohamad by

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru may be mentioned. More recently, the Vaidyalingam Commission was set up under pressure. It was set up in 1979 by the Government

following the mounting protests both inside and outside Parliament against the wielding of extra-constitutional authority by Kanti Desai. It was set up

to inquire whether any prima facie case existed against Shri Kanti Desai, son of Prime Minister Morarji Desai for wielding extra-constitutional authority.

There had been many inquiries which were instituted as a result of polarisation of political affiliations. The most recent one had been the setting up of

the Ray Commission (June 1981) by the Central Government to inquire into the spirit scandal that rocked the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Before the

Ray Commission, the State Governments of Kerala and Tamil Nadu had appointed the Kailasam and the Sadasivan Commission to look into the spirit scandal.

The genesis of the appointment of the Ray Commission is deep rooted. It goes back to the time when the AlADMK appointed the Sarkaria Commission to inquire

into corruption charges against its predecessor DMK Government headed by M. Karunanidhi. The Sarkaria Commission found Karunanidhi and his colleagues guilty

on several counts. The DMK men were irked at the verdict and wanted to take revenge by humiliating the AlADMK Government at the first opportunity available.

The DMK had been an ally to Mrs. Gandhi in 1980 mid-term polls to Parliament. They, therefore, persuaded

172

Mrs. Gandhi to appoint another commission of inquiry against the AIADMK Government. Also, the Congress-I was in opposition in Kerala and was eager to discredit

the CPM Government. So when 21 Members of Parliament, many of them from the DMK and some Members of Legislative Assembly of Kerala submitted memoranda,

the Central Government appointed the Bay Commission.

The appointment of the Ray Commission was challenged by the affected parties and they got the stay. Thus, the work of all the three Commissions had come

to a halt. The Secretary of the Ray Commission has time and again requested the Central Government to expedite the Courts proceedings. But all such requests

have been treated with indifference. Reportedly, the Central Government is deliberately keeping the matter in abeyance. Mrs. Gandhi has not yet finally

chosen her electoral ally out of the two parties—DMK and AIADMK. Once a decision is taken on this score, she would decide either to wound up the Ray Commission

or expedite the court proceedings.

When Mrs. Gandhi came to power in 1980, she wound up all the commissions which were probing into the allegations against her or her men. Also she had rejected

the demands for instituting inquiry commissions against Antulay, Gundu Rao, Jagannath Mishra, Ram Lal and Bhajan Lal. Evidently, the retention of the Ray

Commission, in6pite of legal hazards that the Government is facing, is not solely guided by her concern for public morality.

38. This happened particularly in the case of Das Commission enquiring against Pratap Singh Kairon.

39. A.G. Noerani, Minister's Misconduct (New Delhi, 1973), pp. 31-41.

40. Justice K.K. Mathew faced these problems while enquiring L.N. Mishra's case. See, K.K. Mathew, "Introduction"

173

in S.C. Gupta, The Law relating to Commission of Inquiry (Delhi, 1977).

41. For example, the Karnataka Government appointed Santosh Commission to inquire into allegations of ill-treatment of Lawrence Fernandes and Snehlata Reddy

and the Central Government appointed Shah Commission to inquire into allegations of excesses during "Emergency'. The Santosh Commission had ultimately

to be wound up, for the reason inter alia, of overlapping subject matters of the two Commissions. Another case is the appointment of Iqbal Hussain Commission

by the Karnataka Government and Grover Commission by the Central Government, both to inquire into allegations against the Karnataka Chief Minister and

his Cabinet colleagues. Another case is the appointment of Kailasam Commission by the Kerala Government and the Sadasivan Commission by the Tamil Nadu

Government to enquire into the spirit scandal that rocked Kerala and Tamil Nadu. While these two Commissions were working, the Central Government appointed

the Ray Commission to look into the same problem.

42. Kailasam Commission and Sadasivan Commission were appointed by the Kerala and Tamil Nadu Government to inquire into the spirit scandal which took place

in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

43. The illustrated Weekly of India, 24 July 1977, p, 10.

44. Mathew Commission's report in L.N. Mishra's case has not been made public so far.

45. The Shah Commission examined the reports of S.R. Das Commission, which inquired into the conduct of Pratap Singh Kairon, Chief Minister of Punjab (1963-64);

Rajgopal lyengar Commission, which inquired into the conduct af Bakshi Gulam Mohammad, ex-Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir (1965-67); Venkatarama Iyer

Commission, which inquired into the conduct of certain ministers of Bihar (1969-70); Mudholkar Commission, which inquired into the affairs of the ministry

of Mahamaya Prasad Sinha, Chief Minister of Bihar and other

174

ministers (1968-69); A.N. Mulla Commission, which inquired into the affairs of Govindan Nair and T.V. Thomas, minister of Kerala (1969-71); and G.K. Mitter

Commission, which looked into the Kendu leaves purchases in Orissa (1969-74).

46. India, Shah Commission of Inquiry, Third and Final Report (Delhi, 6 August 1978), p. 332.

47. Khushwant Singh, "What We Can Do About Corruption", Hindustan Times, 18 February 1982.

48. Nehru opposed the formation of such a tribunal at a Press Conference on 8 January 1960 and also in Parliament. He suggested the appointment of a judge

for looking into the allegations made by Deshmukh.

49. India, Ministry of Home Affairs, n. 31.

50. Bill No. 51 of 1968 and No. 3 of 1971.

51. Bill No. 88 of 1977. Introduced on 28 July 1977.

52. Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, and Tamil Nadu have set up Lok Ayukts.

53. This has happened in Karnataka.

54. For example, the Maharashtra Government took more than ten months to find an incumbent for the post of Lok Ayukts and another ten months after that

to appoint Upalok Ayukt.

55. Most of the Lok Ayukts have complained about the inadequacy of accommodation, staff etc.

56. R.K. Dhawan, Public Grievances and the Lokpal: A Study of the Administrative Machinery for Redress of Public Grievances (New Delhi, 1981), p. 236.

57. See for example, annual reports of Maharashtra and Rajasthan Lok Ayukts.

58. It is not suggested here that all the Members of Parliament had been corrupt. Few of them were/are really honest person but their number is not very

large.

175

BOOK REVIEW

ORGANIZATION, CLASS AND CONTROL by Stewart Clegg and David Dunkerley, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980, pp. x+595. Price £ 14.50.

Theorists of administration have, so far, generally tried to be pragmatic and hence concerned with the maintenance of organizations. Taylor, Fayol, Gulick,

Urwick and Barnard were all managers or administrators; many of the contemporary theorists like Argyris, Likert, Katz, Kahn, and Rice are consultants and

hence identify with managers. This seems to partly explain as to why the theoretical frameworks, which were devised to legitimize the social "order" in

times of crisis, have now become obsolete in other areas of social theory but still continue to hold the field in organization theory. Thus positivism

arose in early 19th century as a new religion for legitimizing industrial capitalism, with its elitism, social disorganization and pollution. Functionalism,

which is based upon the assumption of a moral order, arose in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930's when millions had become unemployed.

The method and theory deriving from positivism and functionalism were incorporated into modern social theory and proved to be particularly useful for organization

theorists. Thus positivism became the base of the behavioural approach and Simon's theory of decision-making; and functionalism became the foundation of

the systems approach. Now, in social theory in general, " 'Positivism' has today become more of a term of abuse than a technical term of philosophy", as

pointed out by Giddens1; and the death knell of functionalism was sounded by Gouldner in 1971 in The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. However, Simon's

theory, behaviourism and the systems approach still continue to reign supreme in Public Administration as well as Business Management.

1. Anthony Giddens, "Positivism and Its Critics" in Tom Boilomore and Robert Nisbet,ed., A History of Sociological Analysis, London, 1979, p. 237.

176

On the other hand, theorists of administration have treated Marx's critique of bureaucracy as anathema. The importance of this critique is obvious from

the fact that most later theory has been a "debate with Marx's ghost".2 Thus Max Weber tries to legitimize capitalism and bureaucracy by describing them

as rational, but is constantly aware of the truth of Marx's critique: he realizes that these involve "dehumanization" and other aspects of alienation.

Similarly, Veblen refers to "trained incapacity", Dewey to "occupational psychosis", Warnotte to "professional deformation", Merton to "timidity, conservatism

and technicism" and "domineering attitude", Likert to "exploitation", McGregor to "coercion", and Argyris to "human and organizational decay". Thus theorists

subsequent to Marx have accepted his critique of bureaucracy conceptualized as "alienation"; however, texts of administrative theory hardly ever contain

an analysis of his contribution. The work of other revolutionary thinkers and leaders like Lenin, Mao, Gramsci and Ho Chi Minh is also excluded from the

courses. It is not that Western writers are unaware of the incisiveness of these contributions. If that were so the refutation, for example, by Selznick

of Lenin in The Organizational Weapon, would be unnecessary. The stance, mainly, is not to allow the younger generation in universities and business schools

to come into contact with this body of critical thought.

In this perspective the work of Stewart Clegg and David Dunkerley is of great value. They have published, individually and jointly, several volumes between

1972 and 1980. They adopt a Marxist point of view and make a number of valuable theoretical and methodological contributions. Organization, Class and Control

provides a good critique of much of mainstream organization theory. Basing themselves upon a mass of literature, mainly in the field of sociology, they

examine critically the classical theory, "human relations", systems approach, behaviourism, and theories related to decision-making and technology. They

also provide a number of alternative hypotheses. An incisive

2. Irving M. Zeitlin, Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory, New Delhi, 1969, p. x.

177

point is that modern technology and Taylorism together aim mainly at maximum control over labour, through de-skilling and the denial to the worker of any

judgment, discretion or decision-making (p. 342). About power, their criticism, that it has been typically formulated as a variance from formal structure

in organization theory" (p. 458) is perceptive. Also highly perceptive, is their criticism of Tavistock researchers' conceptualization of uncertainty as

causing informal organization (p. 326). They have rightly emphasized the possibility of developing a non-alienating system of workers' self-management

(p. 552).

The suggestions for new research are contained in the last chapter. Two abstract models are presented. The basic principle of both is that "organization

theory become more historically sensitive and less empiricist in theory construction" (p. 502). One of the models aims at the study of rationality as contained

in rules of different types-extra-organizational, technical, social regulative, reproduction, strategic and State. The relationship of these rules with

the orientations of workers, managers and entrepreneurs are to be examined. The second model concerns the classification of organizations in a table, one

side of which represents different kinds of capital and the other different sectors. The different kinds of capital are industrial, merchant, finance,

technological, agricultural, and extractive. The sectors are as follows : non-capitalist state activities, capitalist state activities, monopoly, competitive,

and residual labour power.

Some other merits of the book are discussion of Gramsci's concept of hegemony, description of workers' self-management in Yugoslavia, and critical examination

of the re-emergence of one-man management in the U.S.S R. and China. Of particular interest to students of under-developed countries is the discussion

of the functioning of multi-national corporations. The book also contains a good bibliography, mainly relating to contributions from a sociological point

of view.

What one misses, however, is an extended exposition of the Marxian view of bureaucracy. It is true that Marx

178

himself has not dealt with bureaucracy in detail at any one place. However, he has referred to it in many of his works and it is for students of this field

to bring his ideas together. The authors hardly attempt this. What is worse, they make some misleading observations. Thus referring to Marx's ideas on

bureaucracy they say that, "the type of middle classes he envisaged were composed largely of domestic servants and the relatively uncomplex category of

commercial wage-workers—the type of clerk characterized by Dickens in many of his novels. In the twentieth century domestic servants have disappeared..

. ." (p. 485). This certainly is a caricature which does no credit to the learned authors. One wonders whether they have read The Eighteenth Brumaire of

Louis Bonaparte and The Civil War in France, which contain a far-seeing, even if not a rounded, theory of bureaucratization in capitalist society and de-bureaucra-tization

in socialist society.

The authors' interpretation of Lenin's ideas on management also seems to be in error. They do note that Lenin was aware of the refined brutality of bourgeois

exploitation of the Taylor system; they also note that the "objective conditions" in the U.S.S.R, immediately after the Revolution were not conducive to

workers' self-management. However they maintain that Lenin's views changed between 1917 and 1921 and came closer to the traditional conception. It is difficult

to agree with this thesis of change in his views. As a matter of fact, Lenin was highly critical of the bureaucratization and the concentration of power

in Stalin's hands. However, his health deteriorated and he was unable to save the achievements of the Revolution.

While the work does not purport to be a history of organization theory, one does wish that the discussion of particular topics were in chronological order.

Thus it hardly stands to-reason that in the same chapter Weber should be dealt with before Marx. Also, the size of the book could be reduced with out harm

if it were not cluttered up with long extracts from other works: it almost gives the impression of being a dissertation by a brilliant student who is afraid

of an ignorant examiner. There is some avoidable duplication also; it seems

179

that the text incorporates what the authors sometimes wrote separately.

One last failing is common to all those who have been brought up under the present system of reified knowledge. The authors say (p. 374) that/This is not

the place to investigate" questions relating to the inter-relationship between organizations and the politico-economic environment. It would be well to

remind ourselves that one of Marx's most important contribution was to highlight the need of studying the totality.

Satya Deva

Dept. of Public Administration

Punjab University, Chandigarh.

DEVELOPMENT BUREAUCRACY by V.A. Pai Panandiker, R.N. Bishnoi and O.P. Sharma, New Delhi, Oxford and IBH Publishing Company, 1983, pp. 248, Rs. 75/-

The relevance of development administration a sub-discipline of Public Administration is growingly felt in the developing societies like India. Centuries

of colonial exploitation and union government have left the countries of third world socially depressed and economically backward. Mass poverty, unemployment,

illiteracy and social instability are the legacies of foreign rule. Development administration had to undertake a gigantic task of nation building. Only

rapid socio-economic transformation can ensure their prosperity, security and stability. It will require honest effort and constant hard work on the part

of the people, planners and administrators to ensure economic growth with social justice. For the enormous task of national reconstruction and rehabilitation

a suitable organizational structure has to be built up. Such institutional arrangement has to involve the people into the governmental process. It creates

an environment of shared partnership between the administrators end the administered. In this way the efforts of the people themselves can be united with

those of the governmental authorities to bring about a balanced economic growth which will start the process of social and political development. It is

needless to emphasise

180

that the governmental apparatus will have to be decentralized and taken to the door steps of the people where the involvement of the masses can be ensured.

The book under review attempts at putting the performance of development bureaucracy in proper perspective. The book of Pai Panandiker and his colleagues

is a comparative study of rural upliftment of two districts—Karnal (Haryana) and Gorakhpur (U.P.) and attempts at identifying the prerequisites of successful

performance of grass-roots bureaucracy. As regards development, in the opinion of authors, inspite of having similar development potential the two districts

have performed differently. Why it is so, perhaps, is the basic problem before the researchers. According to the authors the answer lies in the characteristics

of bureaucratic structure, articulation and orientation of administrators towards development and management and organizational strategy. The way to successful

performance of bureaucracy in Karnal in the opinion of the authors, lies in the better administrative strategy and planning.

With regard to administrative structure in the districts, extent and nature of co-ordination, skills and tactfulness of officials, the responsiveness of

cultivators and interaction between the cultivators and bureaucracy, the valuable data were collected in 1977-78 through intensive field study technic.

The merit of the study also lies in the fact that it provides detailed socio-economic profile of both the districts—Karnal and Gorakhpur. The comparative

study of two districts reveals many developmental contradictions.

The effectiveness of the bureaucracy depends on how they motivate the cultivators and enable them to enter into the competitive market and snatch the opportunity

in their own favour. A point in hand is whether the small and marginal farmers were benefited because of bureaucratic activities. So far as the improved

irrigational practices are concerned, the authors point out "no adoption was not due to any lack of motivation on the part of the non-adopter (small cultivators)

but because either they could not have the improved facilities or these facilities were not available to them".

181

The most striking and valuable contribution of the book under review lies in its recommendations in regard to management system. The recommendations, if

taken in proper perspective, will certainly help the policy makers in diagnosing the problems at the implementational level. It is a useful contribution

to the literature of rural development administration.

S.N. MISHRA

Indian Institute of Public Administration,

New Delhi.

INDIANISATION OF ALL-INDIA SERVICES AND ITS IMPACT ON ADMINISTRATION by J.D. Shukla, New Delhi, Allied, 1982) xiit+500p., Rs. 175/-

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the study of British imperial policy and administration in colonial empire in general and in India

in particular. Hopefully the passage of time enables us to look at the issues with greater perspective, while the opening of archives and growth of monographic

studies based upon fresh sources give us better command of a number of complex and vexed aspects of the whole. The new vantage point we can now attain

does not, obviously, render less complex the imperial processes of administration. The subject matter continues to demand a high degree of analytical skill

and an awareness of the many faceted nature of the process under investigation.

The British imperial rule in India has to be studied at a variety of levels. Among its contributions in India, the creation of the civil services is one

of the most remarkable. These services constituted the spine of the Indian body politic and to them people looked for the protection of person and property,

of life and liberty. Their form and character developed under the rule of the East India Company.

A number of works both scholarly and memoirs, are available about the formation and development of the Company's civil services, but most of them do not

deal with the indianisation of the civil services. L.S.S. O'Malley's The

182

Indian Civil Services 1601-1930; N.C. Roy's The Civil Service in India; and, B.B. Misra's The Administrative History of India are some of the studies which

have tried to deal with the Indianisation but their treatment of the subject is scanty and inadequate. The book under review tries to fill this gap by

focussing its attention to this aspect. It presents a coherent and comprehensive account, based on primary sources, of the attempts made, and with what

results, towards the Indianisation of the civil services. It also tries to find out the impact of Indianisation on administration.

In the political field, the British officials formed a solid phalanx against a common threat, namely the educated Indians. The goal of the officials was

to maintain their monopoly of the elite covenanted positions. British officials were of the view that increased Indian representation in Superior Services

would dangerously lower the status and prestige of the services. A.P. MacDounell's racial response to one moderate reform proposal typifies the general

response of all his colleagues. Ending the virtual British monopoly of posts would tantamount to destroying "one of nature's own monopolies—monopoly in

the sense that strongest man wins".

On the other hand, the Viceroys, especially of late nineteenth century, showed move readiness to give some positive response to the educated Indian class

than did the British officials. Atleast outwardly, Lytton, Ripon and Dufferin showed some degree of willingness to Indianise one or another segment of

the Superior Services. But British officials repeatedly showed that this was one area in which they would defy the initiatives of Viceroys. These officials

often based their resistance on the specific charge that it would not be possible for Indians in Services to handle disturbances arising from religious

divisions of the Indian society. Lacking, what the British called "depth of character", Hindu or Muslim officers in high posts would presumably risk throwing

large areas of the country into communal turmoil.

Neither the vindicative judgement of some Viceroys and British aristocrats nor the unsupportable praise of British officials by scholars were (or are) correct.

As a mattar of fact

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the comments of Lytton, Dufferin, Curzon, Hamilton and others demonstrated more class bias than objective analysis. The assessment of scholars were (and

have been) based on little more than nostalgic memories of what ICS men thought they had done in India. However, the truth lies elsewhere. It lies partly

in the conclusion that the major impetus of British official behaviour was basically human: promotion and security of individual officers. Self-interest

is the mare of British imperial bureaucracy. It clearly played an important role in the formation of imperial policy.

While analysing the impact of indianisation of the Services on the administration, the author has heavily relied on the views expressed by some of the former

British and Indian members of the Services. He has not tried to assess this aspect with various administrative and political measures introduced in India

from time to time, by the British Government. For example, the 'Dyarchy' in 1921 influenced, heavily, the impact of indianisation on the administrative

and political fields. The introduction of the 'Dyarchy' actually proved the impracticability of the hopes raised about the services. Dyarchy was a stage

between bureaucratic supremacy and popular control. It created difficulties an both sides. For example. Governments of Bihar and Orissa wanted the indianisation

of All India Services. They wanted to have indianisation in a form that might extend their own control over them. They, therefore, advocated provincialisation,

which is essence was Indianisation but which could also ensure popular provincial control.

The new form of indianisation through provincialisation was not based on sound administrative considerations. It arose immediately from the introduction

of ministerial control over the 'transferred' subjects, a measure which the British had adopted to satisfy the demands of politics rather than to weaken

the hold of the Government of India over the Superior Services. However, as the Indian politicians regarded provincial autonomy as the first step to national

independence, any popular demand for the provincialisation of these services had the merit of being looked upon as a step forward in the direction of control

over the Central Government itself. Thus,

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in their preoccupation with politics they failed to appreciate the broad national significance of the existing administrative arrangements and favoured

the provincialisation of the All India Services from motives of immediate and narrow political gains. It made the members of the services to feel insecure

about their future. Their sense of insecurity gave birth to many Service Associations. The European Government Servants' Association, for example vied

with the association for the Indian members of the Services. All this took a racial turn and affected the quality of administration.

The issue of indianisation of Civil Services, as pursued during the British rule, led to a number of problems to be faced by the Services themselves and

the Government in independent India. Politics arose as part of an agitation to secure increasing employment for Indians in the Superior Services. It remained

limited for a time to Indian vs. Europeans and Anglo-Indians, and then extended to Hindus vs. Muslims, its repercussions filtering downwards with the growth

of political democracy at a later stage.

So far as the methodology and data of the study is concerned the sources used in the study tend to support narrow and traditional points of view. Prominent

in the references are Parliamentary proceedings. Command Papers, administrative reports and publications methodically produced by the British Government.

While these documents undoubtedly contain a wide assortment of valid information, still they mirror what the colonial administrators wished to discuss

or to make public. Thus, these documents need to be examined with great care. Otherwise, the scholar is easily going to be absorbed in the suppositions

and the aura of competency, omniscience and "order" underlying these polished productions. The things become worse in the Twentieth Century when the British

unabashedly are playing to audiences both at home and in outside world. We all know propoganda, distribution of "correct news" and cultivating a "friendly

press" lay at the heart of much of colonial political strategy.

The reinterpretations about the themes and processes involved in a decentralised and at times fragile bureaucratic system have broader implications than

just arranging the

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historical record concerning one colonial administration. Indigenous subjects should be given priority for research as well as indigenous source material

like newspapers, tracts and institutional records available in indigenous languages. While the author has chosen an indigenous topic for investigation,

he has not used indigenous source material for his study.

O.P. SHARMA

Bhagat Singh College,

Delhi University, Mew Delhi

PANCHAYATS AND DEVELOPMENT, by V. Shivalinga Prasad, Light&Life Publisher, Trivandrum, 1981, pp. 219.

The present book under review is a study of organisation and working of Panchayats in Andhra Pradesh which is based on the empirical work done by the author.

In sequence to many books on Panchayati Raj and Rural Development, the book seeks to answer some of the questions that relate to operational dynamics in

achieving the objectives of rural development. The book has been divided into ten chapters with an index suffixed. The first chapter is an introduction

where the concept of development, inherent rural development problems and reference to the historical perspectives of development etc. together with evolution

of Panchayats and its importance has been highlighted. The methodology and the organisation of the study is also given in the first chapter.

The socio-economic and political setting of the panchayats is given in the second chapter. The author has observed that "Although the socio-economic pattern

in Haveli exhibits certain changes, it has not undergone any fundamental transformation. For, traditional institutions such as caste and religious rituals

continue to have a strong grip on the social life."

This village retains its traditional nature largely intact. The economic pattern of the village also exhibit a structure based on inequality. The author

has found that political pattern is characterised by divisions in the village centred around certain individuals, based on personal considerations.

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In fact the political parties, though exist in the village, their ideological base is very poor. The author has summarised these shortcomings and has observed

that "The result of the socio-economic pattern in the village in the inegalitarian social, economic and political structure which is not conducive for

concentrated community effort".

In the third chapter, the author has presented the various methods that were adopted by the different contestants. Interestingly the personal qualities

of the candidates were found to be just an obscure reason. The other things included invoking group interest and caste feelings, casting aspirations on

the character of opponents, putting voters under personal obligations, putting pressure on them, making promises and taking full advantage of their economic

power, political prestige and political links of the groups etc. The author has also brought about the question of Harijan participation in the elections.

He has commented that "Harijans and other labourers felt that their direct involvement in the elections was a luxury." Thus the total electoral process

in the village in found to be largely devoid of democratic content and political development of rural people for which it is meant. As a result of this

the objective of rural development is either subverted or is totally lost sight of.

The fourth chapter and the subsequent chapter is devoted to the panchayat systems and the principal political executive of this panchayat, i.e., the Sarpanch.

The author has found that different members and sarpanch and other leaders have not been able to constitute the statutory committees under panchayat due

to the simple reason that awareness and understanding and clarity about their role is not there.

This has resulted in lack of involvement on the part of members. The author has found that all the institutional devices viz.. Gram Sabha, Panchayat and

Committees intended for direct and indirect participation proved to be falling short of expectations. Even though the institution of Sarpanch is powerful

enough to initiate faster development, the institutional arrangements, socio economic factors and the behavioural

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style of different Sarpanchs have been highly unfavourable.

Subsequent chapters deal with linkages, the financial resources, working and case histories of the panchayats. The author concludes that "the linkages are

based on personal convenience of leaders and devoid of any principles", the auditing of expenditures is a mechanical exercise" and the panchayati infrastructure

has benefited the richer sections and impact on the life of poor people is negligible."

Finance is the life of any organisation. Financing of Panchayats has always been a matter of debate. The author has given the sources of Panchayat incomes

and has observed that the examination of audit reports and its impact on functioning had just become a routine and mechanical exercise which does not throw

any light on the performance of the Panchayats. Further, the financial management of the village panchayat was found to be wanting on developmental thrust

and direction.

In chapter VIII and chapter IX working of the panchayat and case histories are given. Most of the functions undertaken by the Panchayat reveals that they

are mostly civic welfare and infrastructural in nature which mostly benefited the richer sections in the village. The activities to improve upon the conditions

of the rural poor have simply been ineffective. In addition to this, the author feels that "For want of perspective plan, whatever is designed to be achieved

is incidental in nature. The case histories throw enough light as to how the enthusiasm of the Panchayat functionaries wane after a period of time and

the commitment, supervision, technical guidance and public cooperation which are considered essential for the successful functioning were found lacking.

In the last chapter the author has given conclusion and an outlook for the future. Though the book gives quite an enriched information about the state of

panchayats, their modus operandi etc. it has not taken into consideration the kind of new steps which can be taken up for the development. Also, effort

has not been made to deal with the local level planning and people oriented development schemes

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which is needed in villages. Moreover, the panchayati Raj institutions, which are expected to make a significant contribution in dealing with the vast task

of rural development, demand certain steps. Now, what were the steps taken by the Panchayat Haveli and how they could be brought into functioning is also

missing. Predominance is not the reflection of deficiency. Mere narration does not lead anywhere near to finding out any solution for rural development.

In fact the book though highlighting many issues, has not taken into consideration the disequilibrium and imbalances in the availability of resources and

its deployment which perhaps is the main cause of socio-economic disruption of life in rural areas. In short the book is another useful addition to an

already existing vast field on Panchayati Raj and Development.

J.N. UPADHYAY

Indian Institute of Public

Administration,

New Delhi.

PATTERNS OF PANCHAYATI RAJ IN INDIA, edited by G. Ram Reddy, Macmillan Company of India Ltd., Delhi, 1977, p. 312, Rs. 29/-.

India is a land of villages. More than 75% of its people live in villages. Naturally, therefore, the Indian democratic polity must have its roots in the

village community. It is a well-known fact that there was a well established system of local Government in ancient India. "The village communities are

little republics, having nearly everything they can want within themselves and (are) almost independent of any foreign relations", wrote Metcalfe. There

existed village Panchayats which attended to the needs of the village folk. Later, the Mughal and the early British rule led to their disintegration. However,

some viceroys, specially Lord Ripon tried to revive these institutions and laid foundations of modern local government in this country. A number of legislations

were passed to this effect. During the national struggle for independence great emphasis was laid on the role of local bodies. The founding fathers of

the Indian

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Constitution, under the influence of Gandhian ideology and to fulfil the aspirations gave this directive under Article 40 of the Constitution of free India:

"that the State should take steps to organise village panchayats and endow them with such power and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function

as units of self-government.

The book under review is a compilation of original essays on the working of Panchayati Raj System in 15 states of the Union of India. Each essay in the

book is devoted to the study of Panchayati Raj institutions as they operate in each state highlighting its distinctive features and making a comparative

study within the socio-economic and political background obtaining in each state. The book begins with an exhaustive introduction of almost 30 pages wherein

the author presents a comprehensive picture of the Panchayati Raj in India. In this introduction, the author has dealt with the origin, philosophy and

patterns of the local self-government institutions operating in various states of India.

Dealing with the structure of Panchayati Raj the author identifies 3 levels of local Govt.—Panchayats, Panchayat Samities and Zilla Parishads. The Panchayats

represent the lowest level of popular participation in Government. The samities represent the next level, and at the apex are the Zilla Parishads. Though

it is true that there is panchayat raj of some kind or the other in almost all the states but they vary in respect of number of units. While Kerala and

J&K have only one-tier, the village panchayat, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Orissa have two tier system, the village panchayat, and panchayat samities.

In fact, there is a four-tier system in West Bengal. The author provides elaborate statistics relating to the distribution of panchayat raj institutions

in the country and says that by the end of March, 1973 there were 222,050 village panchayats covering 5,56 lakhs villages. Thus, 90% of the total villages

in the states and union territories were covered by village panchayats. Similarly, the all India average of Panchayat Samities is 53.3 village panchayats

per panchayat samiti and the average per Zilla Parishad is 13.7 panchayat samities. These figures reveal that 54.3% of districts in the country have been

covered by Zilla

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Parishads.

The Panchayati Raj institutions in the opinion of ShrijjRam Reddy have not yet settled down and are in some kind of formal and it will take some more time

for them to stabilise. He correctly points out that although the Panchayati Raj institutions are charged with the responsibilities of developmental work

the experience of most of the states seems to be that these bodies have not been given enough freedom to function. They have no choice with regard to administrative

and technical personnel with whom they have to work as also the constraints on their functioning imposed by financial limitations. The lack of government

support and bureaucratic apathy further add to depletion of efficacy of these institutions. Towards the end, the author poses the problem of the extent

of autonomy to be given to the Panchayati Raj vis-a-vis the state Government and bureaucracy. He says total autonomy is inconceivable as they have to conform

and fulfil the plan objectives and limit them to local needs. Though certain amount of autonomy is postulated yet it has not been concretely spelt out.

The Panchayati Raj in some states like Maharashtra and Gujarat seems to have fared better than in the other states. Whether their superior performance is

due to the structural differences in the Panchayati Raj institutions in these states is not very clear. The more plausible reason seems to be the greater

confidence reposed by the respective state governments in these institutions than in the other states. If one is to ask the question, how far they have

succeeded in democratising the real political structure or have they succeeded in ending the stranglehold of bureaucratic mal-administration the answer

is no. The panchayats still remain institutions specially lacking either in vision or in mission and still under the tutelage of political bossism, elitism

and bureaucratic patronage. The reasons for all this, as in all other spheres of life, is our approach to institutions, our sincerity in taking democracy

to grassroot levels, our social fabric and social awareness which have remained stagnant for so long and without which no meaningful democratisation of

institutions is possible.

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So far as acquainting an interested reader or a layman with this unique experiment in participative government is concerned, the book is able to impart

knowledge on the basis of facts and figures. At the end, however, one wishes that the actual role of this experiment had been assessed and evaluated in

a more detailed manner so that one could get an idea as to how far we have or have not succeeded in our efforts to involve over five hundred million people

living in Indian villages in the decision-making process and whether we could think of adopting alternative systems of participative government and decentralised

administration and decision-making.

K.S. GOYAL

Dyal Singh College,

University of Delhi, New Delhi.