Will Lateral Entry be the New McCarthyism?

Recently a headline appeared in main stream media, saying that the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) issued a mandate to the Department of Personnel and Training asking it to frame guidelines for an innovative selection process, called lateral entry. As per this process, suitable people from a vast pool of private sectors will be selected to work as Joint Secretaries in selected ministries, on a contract basis. This is not first time Modi has tweaked the UPSC selection norms. A few weeks ago, a statement was issued by the government saying that the cadre allotment for the selected UPSC candidates shall only be awarded after completion of training, leaving an enormous scope for undoing the established practice, and DoPT rules and regulations. The way things are taking shapes forces one to think whether this lateral entry process is going to become the new McCarthyism. The weight of this comparison is known to those who have an idea of the post second world war administrative reforms initiated in USA under leadership of McCarthy, which shut the doors for all leftist, rational, atheistic and even sane voices from entering into academics and public administrations. The fate of Paul A. Baran, famous economist and colleague of Paul M Sweezy, is the best example to understand the impact of McCarthyism.

The mandate raised eyebrows of administrators and analysts at large, for varied reasons. One reason behind the criticism is that this attempt undercuts the rigorous screening and selection process in place for the last seven decades, in the form of Union Public Service Commission, Staff Selection Commission and other common boards. In the existing procedure, there is no scope for any person to be appointed as a joint secretary, whatever may be their experiences and qualifications. Only through elevation can a person selected through the UPSC selection procedure reach that position. This ensures that the said person, intended to be elevated to the post of joint secretary, is formally absorbed into the administration system through the process of prior entry, the selection by the UPSC after three rounds of screening: preliminary examination, main examination and interview.

The lateral entry process is not something new. During the United Progressive Alliance 1 period, the same was attempted, but the government buckled under the pressure of sane voices, including that of the Left. One may recollect that the then Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission intended to rope in experienced hands from private sectors to head the policy divisions under its command. This would have opened flood gates for the private sectors, making it easy to hijack the Planning Commission by seeding it with their personnel. Earlier, though in a different manner, NDA under Vajpayee attempted this. Vajpayee appointed several commissions headed by the big names from private sectors to suggest policy priorities to the government. One such committee, on reforms in higher education, was headed by Kumar Mangalam Birla in early 2000s. This committee chalked out the road map for overhauling the higher education sector and opening up for foreign entities. Though it was criticized, the Vajpayee government stood by the process by declaring that the said commissions are only advisory in nature, and the government is bounded to follow their recommendations.

Lateral entry means that any person can enter and exit the administrative services at the will of the functioning government. The said person doesn’t need to undergo the rigorous recruitment process conducted by respective branches of administration. That is why it is called lateral entry, as opposed to prior entry. This process will obviously give undue privilege to those chosen by the government to serve their interests. This uncharted path of administrative reforms has its own pitfalls, the biggest one being that it leads to discrimination between those who were selected only for the purpose of administration through a process, and those who would be selected, if the process turns out to be a reality, at the whim of current day’s dispensation, destroying right to equality and constitutional privileges. This could become the bone of contention in the coming days, if someone the IAS association, or for that matter, any person choses to file a petition in the Supreme Court.

Responding to these criticisms, the government clarified that it would undertake rigorous screening process akin to that of UPSC screening. For any person to be elevated to the post of joint secretary from the available pool of eligible UPSC cadres, Central Vigilance, Intelligence Bureau, etc. ought to give no objection after going through their track record. If anyone implicated in any case of corruption, malpractice, nepotism, violates conduct rules designed by DoPT, (s)he would never be elevated to the post of joint secretary until and unless has been cleared by law. How this procedure is executed for the people selected under lateral entry process is yet to be seen.

Here, one faces the key question about the conduct rules and definitions of certain notions, such as corruption and violation of law. For those in private sectors, from where the Modi Government is intending to rope in administrators, everything that ensures profit and viability of the said firm they belong to, is legal. But the ethics in the government service are different. Another important aspect that comes into play is accountability. For a government servant, accountability for the deeds committed during the course of them heading the given department, rests on their shoulders until the day of their retirement. That is why several IAS, IPS, and IRS officers are forced to attend legal proceedings even after two three decades of their moving out of the positions that led to a certrain situation. How this accountability would be established for a person who has been roped in through lateral entry, and what types of contracts would be signed by them with the government, are all matters of concern for public ethics and removal of corruption.

Finally, latest news headlines indicate that the PMO shortlisted the recruitment mechanism which includes, apart from background check by Intelligence Bureau, a consideration for the said person’s approach and behavior on social media. This is one step of the seven step filtering process that would be used for selecting a candidate under later entry process. According to this, “The right candidate for key institutions are checked for what they said or did on their Facebook/Twitter accounts, and the comments they make about the (BJP) government,” apart from getting feedback from their peers, and this is termed as perceptional audit. The most unethical step of this filtering, according to media reports, is “candidates are assessed on their past association, professional, personal and ideological affiliations with previous government or with organizations seen as anti-government in any way.” It further says the Prime Minister Narendra Modi takes final call on all appointments, thereby undermining the established practice of Cabinet Committee on Appointments.

This kind of filtering process, which may not have anything to do with the so called aims of the policy, reminds one of McCarthyism. This will also have an element of uncertainty in democracies, like ours, where the governments are elected through public mandate, and hence keep changing. This lateral entry is another way of restricting the new government’s Personnel Policy by imposing a set of people belonging, or affiliated to the ruling dispensation. One may not necessarily be bothered by the integrity check, but this perceptional audit is devoid of any scientific logic, and serves no purpose, apart from implanting trolls in the highest policy making positions. This perceptional audit may also provide the trolls with leverage to help the government eliminate administrators they consider to be anti-BJP, anti-Modi, pro-Left, Secular, or even Nehruvians. Those who served the State honestly, and completed their duties, would always have rubbed several people on wrong sides. The fate of these responsible and honest personnel would be severely affected, when it comes to the question of elevation/selection to the top notch positions in bureaucracy. That is why the fear of new McCarthyism is not unfounded, or why it is not a speculative adventure.