Wisdom lies in knowing what to reckon with and what to overlook. An officer being engrossed with the periphery, ignoring the core issues before him, is not rare in the bureaucracy. Do you agree that such preoccupation of an administrator leads to travesty of justice to the cause of effective service delivery and good governance? Critically evaluate. UPSC IAS Mains 2022 General Studies (Paper – 4)
Goal orientedness, identification of core issue, focus on achievement of objective are considered as cardinal virtues of a good civil servant. Wisdom is the ability to differentiate between ethical and unethical conduct, between core and peripheral issues on the basis of rationality and human values.
Core issues in governance
- Strong and ethical decision making.
- Innovation and creativity.
- Improvement in work culture.
- Promoting good governance.
- Better and efficient service delivery.
- Values of empathy and compassion.
- Long term goals and visions for organization and nation.
- Combatting corruption.
- Improving transparency and accountability.
- Reducing red-tapism.
Peripheral issues in governance
- Focus on traditional work culture.
- Rules as end in itself.
- Office politics.
- Office perks.
- Over centralized decision making
- Dependency on subordinates.
- Political biasness.
- Colonial mind-set.
- Reluctance to change.
- Reluctance to incorporate ICT in work culture.
- “Chalta hai” attitude towards work.
In civil services, there is no dearth of officers who focus on above peripheral issues. This preoccupation with peripheral concerns causes issues like-
- Dismal bureaucratic performance.
- More than 300 million people still poor in the country.
- Consistent low HDI rank 131.
- Global hunger index ranking of 101. Way forward.
- Improving competencies of civil servants through regular trainings.
- Attitude change from colonial to developmental bureaucracy.
- Multi stakeholder approach- involving NGOs, civil society, citizens in decision making and implementation.
- 360-degree performance appraisal- fixing accountability of officers.
- Converting outlays into outcomes for effective evaluation.
Recently, Government announced mission “Karmayogi” to transform bureaucracy from rule based to role based to address core issues, effective and efficient delivery of services, and good governance.
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