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Saturday, January 15, 2005
Fighting Parkinson's Law?
The Indian Express reports, in an exclusive story, that a committee set up by the Indian government to recommend administrative reforms has come out with some interesting suggestions. The two that stand out: bring the maximum age for recruitment down from 30 to 25; and introduce regular performance reviews to weed our corrupt or incompetent officers, and to reward excellence. The committee is headed by the cabinet secretary himself, and I wonder: is the country’s biggest bureaucrat actually tilting against Parkinson’s Law?
Parkinson’s Law, explicated by C Northcote Parkinson in his classic work with the same title, states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. From this, Parkinson derived two observations about any civil service: "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals"; and "Officials make work for each other." This is why bureaucracies grow even when their work reduces, in a self-sustaining feedback loop that bears no relation to any external criteria, such as performance or workload. (For a similar phenomenon that determines CEO pay, click here.)
These two recommendations won’t have a drastic impact on the size of the Indian civil service. In fact, reducing the maximum recruitment age from 30 to 25 will actually lead to an increase in the number of civil servants, as new IAS officers, being younger on average, will spend more years in the service on average. But that would, in theory, be more than balanced out by the other recommendations of the committee, of weeding out incompetent officers and rewarding those who excel. (It would address some of the flaws that Jayaprakash Narayan spoke of in “Nature’s fury compounded by human folly”, a wonderful piece on the systemic malaise that was exposed by the tsunami – link via Yazad.)
This process of enforcing accountability is, however, fraught with danger, and it is bound to be politicised and likely to be misused. While the intent of the suggested reforms is wonderful, so is the intent of the civil service itself, and we all know the state that’s in. (Barring stray exceptions, of course, that highlight the rule.) Parkinson’s Law cannot be fought by bringing criteria like performance into play, because they will never be enforced. Downsizing is the only way to fight the redundancies built into the system.
Parkinson’s Law, explicated by C Northcote Parkinson in his classic work with the same title, states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. From this, Parkinson derived two observations about any civil service: "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals"; and "Officials make work for each other." This is why bureaucracies grow even when their work reduces, in a self-sustaining feedback loop that bears no relation to any external criteria, such as performance or workload. (For a similar phenomenon that determines CEO pay, click here.)
These two recommendations won’t have a drastic impact on the size of the Indian civil service. In fact, reducing the maximum recruitment age from 30 to 25 will actually lead to an increase in the number of civil servants, as new IAS officers, being younger on average, will spend more years in the service on average. But that would, in theory, be more than balanced out by the other recommendations of the committee, of weeding out incompetent officers and rewarding those who excel. (It would address some of the flaws that Jayaprakash Narayan spoke of in “Nature’s fury compounded by human folly”, a wonderful piece on the systemic malaise that was exposed by the tsunami – link via Yazad.)
This process of enforcing accountability is, however, fraught with danger, and it is bound to be politicised and likely to be misused. While the intent of the suggested reforms is wonderful, so is the intent of the civil service itself, and we all know the state that’s in. (Barring stray exceptions, of course, that highlight the rule.) Parkinson’s Law cannot be fought by bringing criteria like performance into play, because they will never be enforced. Downsizing is the only way to fight the redundancies built into the system.
