(Pawan Khera is a political analyst with the Congress party.)
Ashok Khemka is in the news again - probably one place he would not like to get transferred from.
Last week, he was transferred for the 45th time in 24 years. But he is not the only officer facing the consequences of a complex system of transfer and postings of bureaucrats. According to the 10th Report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission submitted in 2008, 60 per cent of IAS officers spent less than a year in their respective postings. Very few of them became breaking news.
For the way they went to town riding on Ashok Khemka's perceived crusades when they were in the opposition, the BJP certainly needs to do some explaining for the way its government in Haryana has dealt with him.
Khemka allowed himself to be used by the media and the opposition during the UPA rule and went public by tweeting file notings and giving sound bytes about Robert Vadra's allegedly illicit land deals from the Hooda government- unwittingly becoming a pawn in the hands of the then opposition.
The agenda for political parties and the authority of governments is increasingly being conceded to breaking news bullies and hashtag mafia. The CAG (state auditor) report on Vadra's company, Skylight Hospitality, that the media went to town with, also carries a damning reference on Ashok Khemka. Barring one newspaper in Chandigarh, there was no mention of the observation of the CAG on the wrongful tendering process adopted by Khemka as Managing Director of the Haryana State Warehousing Corporation (HSWC). Not that a CAG report is a certificate of honesty or dishonesty of a minister or a bureaucrat, but in the case of an adverse observation, there can't be two measures for dealing with the political head of a Ministry and its Administrative head.
Interestingly, Ashok Khemka was rejoicing the findings of the same CAG report on Twitter that indicts him too.
Action should have been taken against Ashok Khemka on the first tweet he posted in 2013 against the very government of which he is an essential part. A bureaucrat has the greatest weapon in his hands - his pen, and the legitimacy accorded to it by the State. There are mechanisms of dissent available within the system, and if a bureaucrat decides to bypass them and go public, there is more than meets the eye.
Not every bureaucrat who makes headlines is a whistleblower, just as not every politician who sits on a dharna is a revolutionary. In the din of prime time activism, we fail to make a clear distinction between whistle blowers and trumpet blowers. A man tweeting about a department, which he has now nothing to do with, only shows a desperate bid to pick and choose cases that can bring him media glare. The last time an officer behaved like this, he ended up as Chief Minister of Delhi, barely able to conceal his ambition behind a fasting Anna. There are countless bureaucrats fighting silent battles and making their mark, albeit without making news.
Ashok Khemka got transferred 45 times in 24 years - and therefore he is honest and efficient, is a weird argument. Does that mean all those who did not get transferred as many times as him were corrupt and inefficient? If a Minister were to get transferred from one portfolio or the other, how will he or she be viewed by Lutyens' cynics? How would a reporter be viewed if he or she kept getting different beats every six months? If a bureaucrat keeps getting transferred, surely there is a need for a system to streamline transfer postings, but questions must also be raised on the bureaucrat's ability to handle difficult situations deftly.
One needs to have a measure about an officer's efficiency....is he a true change-maker, or just someone who craves attention and wants to be a newsmaker? Is he part of the problem or the solution? The country needs efficient people to run it...not people who complain and seek fame alone.
Just as an honest bureaucrat is not an exception, a corrupt politician too is not a rule. The political class has become the most vulnerable class over the years. No other professional faces such close scrutiny as a politician. Let's for a moment agree that the honest bureaucrat is not only an exception, but is also always tossed around because he or she does not succumb to the unsavory demands of the political master. If only those bureaucrats who keep getting transferred are honest, the Supreme Court order of October 2013, directing states to fix tenures of bureaucrats, ends up helping the majority of corrupt bureaucrats to continue staying on lucrative positions, despite complaints of corruption or non-performance. How do we, then, propose to remove an SDM against whom there are regular complains of corruption and inefficiency? Why should the people of a district suffer a bad bureaucrat because of a poorly-conceived law?
Observations by the CAG notwithstanding, there is nothing to suggest that Dr Khemka is not an honest bureaucrat, but his well-timed public outcry during the last Lok Sabha elections raises a big question mark on the officer's intentions. The political leadership too must reclaim its moral authority it lost to an activist media and do what it is supposed to do - take action against those who violate conduct rules - irrespective of the TRP ratings they get for the myths around them.
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