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DNA THEME: Bowing to Neta Clout

Home disadvantage? Cadres of the administrative services have to toe the political line while serving the home state. Yuvraj Shrimal has his hands on a report that states that Raj ‘stooped’ to political pressure

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A recent research revealed that IAS officers who work in their home state perform worse than those posted outside, and are prone to be becoming more corrupt as well as less able to withstand political pressure.

Rajasthan stands in the ninth place among 14 states where bureaucrats posted in their home state surrender before political pressure easily.

Currently, out of the 246 IAS officers posted in Rajasthan, 126 hail from the state.  

‘Social Proximity and Bureaucrat Performance: Evidence from India’ research was done by Guo Xu, Marianne Bertrand and Robin Burgess, who are scholars at the University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and the London School of Economics.

In their research done in 14 states - Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, the scholars find that bureaucrats assigned to their home states are perceived to be more corrupt and less able to withstand illegitimate political pressure.

In a chapter of the research, the scholars measured the ability of IAS officers to withstand illegitimate political pressure and Raj cadre officers when given posting in home state stand perform badly. The research established this while measuring their performance by giving points in and close to five ranges (+5, 0, -05, -1, -1.5) from positive to negative.  

It says that officers posted in Andhra Pradesh are in the top position in tackling political pressure. They are fearless and don’t bend before politicians. Their score is close to 0.5 (positive). It is followed by West Bengal, Punjab, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, Haryana with reduced ability with scoring range between 0 and 0.5.

Rajasthan comes at ninth place (in reduced ability) and has scored in the o to -5 bracket. It reflects that the officers are not able withstand political pressure, compromise on their assignments and tend to be corrupt when getting a posting in the home state. The worst two states where political pressure rules on IAS are Karnataka and Bihar which are followed by Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra respectively, claims the study.      

The research finds that IAS are more corrupt with higher social proximity when posted in their state. “Home state officers are more likely to remain in their state, are reshuffled more frequently and more likely to serve on the boards of private companies while holding public office. These patterns are consistent with social proximity, adversely impacting bureaucrat performance through local capture,” says the research.

THOSE COVERED

Overall, the survey covered 1,450 bureaucrats who were serving in 2012-13 and with at least 8 years of tenure. This corresponds to a coverage rate of 71%. Beside this, the research was based on a detailed data of IAS officers who were given posting in 30 years to reach on conclusion of home state attraction factor. The scholars used administrative data from the descriptive rolls and the executive sheets of the IAS. The descriptive rolls contain a rich set of individual background characteristics for 5,635 officers who entered between 1975-2005. Characteristics range from year of birth, their home state, caste, family background, educational degrees and work experience. It has been found in the research that in accordance with the merit-based home state allocation, home state allocated officers tend to rank, on average, higher. Within a given intake, officers who receive their home state rank on average 17 positions higher than those who do not. Also home state allocated officers are, on average, less likely to be from the Other Backward Castes and more likely from Scheduled Castes.

MEASUREMENT SCALE

Subjective performance rating method was introduced to measure the performance of civil servants. Performance scores were collected for a cross-section of centrally recruited IAS officers working in 14 major states of India with at least eight years of tenure. These scores were provided by a wide range of stakeholders in each state, ranging from IAS officers, state civil servants, politicians (MLA) to representatives of media, business and NGOs. Each officer was rated on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high), covering five dimensions of performance: effectiveness, probity, the ability to withstand illegitimate political pressure, pro-poor orientedness and overall performance.

PRESSURE THAT EXISTS

Research concludes that “local bureaucrats may simply care more about helping the communities they are representing due to the personal ties they have to these communities. On the other hand, local officers may be more susceptible to be captured by the political elite; also, their deeper personal networks in the community they serve may provide more opportunities for bribe taking as well as a more efficient technology for bribe extraction.”

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