By posting Bassi to UPSC, Modi has rewarded incompetence
BS Bassi, the infamous former Delhi police commissioner, has at last been rewarded with a plum after-retirement posting as the member of UPSC - the body that selects India's top bureaucrats.
While everyone had got around to the inevitability of the nation being saddled with Bassi on some or the other coveted job (given how loyally he had served the ruling regime without any consideration for probity or fairness), still his appointment to the UPSC is the last thing India's malfunctioning democracy needs.
This appointment is reprehensible as it endangers and degrades Indian democracy in multiple ways. Some of them are listed below:
1. How will he choose good bureaucrats being a poor one himself?
Bassi's tenure as police commissioner was marked by a mixture of incompetence, unabashed partisan conduct, questionable integrity and a mockery of service norms. Under him the Delhi Police failed to prevent the rising crime against women, went on a witch-hunt against the AAP - the political rivals of his reporting authority - Rajnath Singh of the BJP, brutally thrashed students who were protesting at the RSS headquarters, and indulged in moral policing with the Kerala House beef raid.
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| The weakening of the UPSC's autonomy through appointees like Bassi is another way in which our democracy is degraded. |
Bassi was accused of misusing his position to illegally allot and retain a goverment cooperative house and he repeatedly took on the elected chief minister in public, violating service norms. He was accused of unabashedly doing his masters' bidding, who in turn extended him full protection for all his transgressions.
So here is a bureaucrat with doubtful integrity, overtly partisan conduct, terrible incompetence and a total disregard for service norms. In short, Bassi has all the qualities that a bad bureaucrat should have.
How can an individual with such a spotty record choose good bureaucrats for the future?
The malaise of a malfunctioning State will become worse with an incompetent, biased and unethical civil service aspirant having a guardian angel on the selection panel. Also, given his well-known political bias, his presence on the panel will create a bureaucracy committed to a particular party and ideology, seriously undermining and degrading the Indian democracy.
2. It will erode the confidence of students in civil service
The attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) made waves around the world and was marked by shameful conduct by the Delhi Police (JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar was beaten up at the Patiala House Court by a group of lawyers with the police being mute spectators and there was also an allegation of custodial torture on Kumar), which happened under Bassi's watch.
Being loyal the "king", he ensured that India's capital gained notoriety as the place where students are jailed for critical thinking rather than being free to explore ideas. Bassi's police force left no stone unturned to fudge evidence and create an environment where the nation was made to believe that our true enemy were the students of JNU. Bassi, unhesitatingly took part in the conspiracy of maligning one of India's premier universities - the JNU.
Now with such a person in the top echelons of the UPSC, how will the students who appear for various examinations conducted by the UPSC have confidence in the promise of equal opportunity and rule of law? Yes, those who are hardcore supporters of the ruling BJP may be gladdened by having their man in the commission, but even they will be filled with the cynical belief that nothing in this country is immune to manipulation by the one wielding power.
And for those from JNU or those who support parties other than the BJP, Bassi's appointment will be a rude awakening that will instill in them a pessimism about the Indian State and society. Thus Bassi's appointment will deepen the crisis of confidence that the Indian youth harbour have on the State today.
3. Message to serving bureaucrats is clear: serve the party and you can party, serve the Constitution and you shall be doomed
By any yardstick that values competence, integrity, impartiality and conformity to rules of service, bureaucrats like Bassi should have been shown the door or severely disadvantaged. It would have happened in a system which incentivises a good bureaucracy. However, rotten apples like Bassi are sadly the ones who get rewarded in the rotten system that prevails.
When an individual like Bassi is awarded, the message is loud and clear: serve the party and the power that be and you can party, but serve the Constitution and do your rightful duty, and you will languish like a Sanjeev Chaturvedi and an Ashok Khemka.
The stark contrast between how Chaturvedi and Khemka are made to run from pillar to post for getting their due, while Bassi, Kiran Bedi, and others are given lucrative postings creates a perverted system of incentive for officers.
They learn that honesty and showing spine is a recipe for trouble while dishonesty, and partial and servile conduct are the ladders to the top. The casualty in such a system are the Indian people who get a third-rate government.
4. Undermining institutions and making them subservient is becoming the hallmark of the Modi government
Bassi's appointment reveals one of the darkest sides of the Modi government: it is hell-bent on destroying independent institutions and insists on making them its lackeys.
The undermining of the UPSC's integrity and independence through Bassi's appointment is only a small chapter in this long story.
The story includes how the government has been ill at ease with RBI governor Raghuram Rajan's assertion of independence, how it scuttled Gopal Subramanium's (someone not at very good terms with BJP) appointment to the Supreme Court, how it undermined the autonomy of universities, how during his Gujarat days Modi destroyed careers of officers who had deposed against him in the 2002 riots and had protected Muslims, how office of the central information commissioner (CIC) and Lokpal were kept vacant for long while and many other such instances where the government has made clear its intention of using its executive power of appointment to stuff institutions with yes men and prevent independent voices from existing in them.
Insofar as democracy relies on these independent institutions for checking political figures looking for absolute power, the weakening of the UPSC's autonomy through appointees like Bassi is another way in which our democracy is degraded.
Therefore, while the Indian democracy has survived many an adversity before and will survive this one too, Bassi's appointment to the UPSC is a burden India can do without.