In the context of the celebration of the Public Service Day today , I thought that it may be of interest to repost a previous article (a slightly modified version) on the reform of the our public sector especially when our politicians and servile trade unions will be carrying out their usual show ( “une véritable parodie de la Journée internationale de la Fonction publique” comme le dit G.S in his article “"La mascarade du service public”) highlighting the contribution of public service in the development process, acknowledging the work of public servants and trying to encourage young people and graduates to pursue careers in the public sector.
-Some of the "unsung heroes of our public service" -Dev Manraj, Bhinod Bacha ….rightly deserves the tributes and eulogies from one and all - remarkable but not infallible men indeed . Our public sector, that has not changed much from what we inherited from the colonial times, needed such quick decision takers and authoritarian characters with the required leadership qualities for it to deliver.
When we have a bureaucracy that suffers from indecision and risk aversion, resulting in an inordinate focus on routine tasks, the steep hierarchies or those higher up the pyramid often demonstrate autocratic and transactional forms of leadership whereby strictly defined roles and their importance are overemphasised.
Lines of hierarchy and authority are clearly drawn , and ideals of conduct help maintain compliance and subordination to such a rigid structure. All civil servants are groomed to operate within the traditional public administration paradigm meaning total acceptance of the authority of those above them in the hierarchy- a well defined hierarchy, adherence to rules and, by and large, impersonal functioning.
With such a pyramid structure, the whole of the public service, with perhaps the exception of some technical ministries, is geared towards serving its head/leader and the Ministers rather than the country. The accountability of officials were to their superior not to citizens in this uni-centric system of state rule.
Dev Manraj, Sir Bhinod Bacha and others of their league fitted to the letter to this top-down, hierarchical and elitist organisational structure, that have stood the test of time to a considerable extent, but is more suited to command and control functions and less so when it comes to developmental, promotional and facilitative functions of the state-in a way limited on various key human development and economic parameters which has remained well below desired levels.
No political party has shown even an iota of interest to reform the system. It’s not in their interest; a more malleable public service with hierarchical power structures answerable only to the Ministers serves their purpose- the covid corruption and scandals that rocked the Health Ministry and the STC are a perfect example.
It applies equally to our bureaucrats who continue to behave like little emperors under an archaic structure framed under the colonial regime that serves little for an independent nation even after five decades, though some cosmetic rewriting supervened spasmodically in between. Their powerful union has regularly shot down the proposal of beefing up the service with technically knowledgeable people.
Why would these very ones want to change the system where a major part of the pie (missions abroad, per diems, allowances and special allowances, appointment on committees, boards, promotions and other perks... u name it ) is being shared among the servile trade unions, the bootlickers , the political appointees , other “protégés” and the “chatwas” au "bon vouloir" of the emperors, leaving the crumbs for those who have no choice but to unwillingly toe the line.
The modest moves to improve the system has meant just ““plucking the low hanging fruits” without affecting the hierarchical power structures while elsewhere public sector organizations were rethinking traditional stratification in favor of distributing influence across a wider group of stakeholders and reorienting culture from a culture of administration to a culture of results (ref: my post “The PRB award-a futile and onerous exercise -https://www.blogger.com/.../377245560.../2973539966586336981 ), a culture built around collaboration and shared governance, a culture that engage, retain, and align with the professional values of emerging ways of working, a culture that define the new ways of working together, establish goals, determine accountability, and scale capabilities—all rooted in the end goal to better serve citizens.
As long as our public sector does not embrace these changes and draw on a range of public management models that are appropriate to different contexts while putting the needs and interests of citizens at the heart of the public sector reform efforts consistent with a culture of of results , we will be needing an autocratic leadership à la Manraj , à la Bacha, à la..... - a leadership that has proved beneficial in emergencies especially in time of high stress and panic.
But for a more modern public sector , a more collaborative approach to leadership- transformational leadership- could help in mitigating its major dysfunctions by “creating flatter structures, decentralized organizations, and improved horizontal coordination within government and between government, the market, and society.”
