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Monday, May 09, 2005
The density of bureaucrats
Here are some of the responses to my post on India’s BDI (Bureaucrat Density Index). Alan Little writes in:
Murli Adury writes in:
Nice calculation, but what about Parkinson’s Law, which states two things: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals" and (2) "Officials make work for each other." (Courtesy Wikipedia.) The BDI is a direct reflection of the power of only the bureaucrats at the bottom of the chain; and the higher up you go, the more power you have via subordinate bureacrats. Multiplying subordinates would thus increase power and lessen work, and a high BDI serves this purpose well. In fact, the higher the better.
But some people want more babus. Bruno Mascarenhas writes in: “We are in the process of building a nation and for these we need bureaucrats.” Um, I disagree. People build a nation, not bureaucrats, who need to get out of the people’s way to enable them to prosper. And we haven’t, sadly, scrapped enough of the license raj yet.
Postscript: One bureaucrat I rather like, my Kolkata-IAS-officer friend JA Prufrock 1, writes about his experiences with our beloved state-owned broadcaster, Doordarshan, here. We like you, JAP 1, but we would still like to see you out of a job. We know you understand.
I live in Munich, where I was shocked to note a couple of years ago that the city government was replacing 14,000 Windows PCs with Linux [PCs]. Replacing Windows with Linux is fair enough, but 14,000 PCs? That's over 1% of the population of the city. And that's just the city government: we also have major infestations of bureaucrats from the state of Bavaria, and I'm sure probably some federal government offices too. In total we must be somewhere around the 2% mark.
Of course, Germany is notoriously one of the most bureaucratic and over-regulated countries in the world, so being in the same league gives India nothing to be proud of.
Murli Adury writes in:
[The] US bureau of labor statistics lists 20 million people employed in the government sector in the U.S. BDI for the U.S. if all govt. employees were considered bureaucrats would be 1 in 25. A more reasonable approximation would be to assume half of the govt. employees are actually bureacrats with the other half being lower level workers. That gets you a BDI of 1 in 50 - close to the Indian equivalent. Seems reasonably accurate that a typical bureacrat's job would be designed to "serve" 50 people. Lets call this the BC - Bureaucratic Constant, leading us to a remarkable conclusion.
Conclusion: All bureaucracies will strive to achive a BDI equal to the BC. A BDI greater (1 in 25) than the BC would diminish a bureaucrats power. A BDI of less (1 in 100) than BC would result in too many people to serve and consequently too much work thus limiting the exercise of afore-mentioned power.
Nice calculation, but what about Parkinson’s Law, which states two things: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals" and (2) "Officials make work for each other." (Courtesy Wikipedia.) The BDI is a direct reflection of the power of only the bureaucrats at the bottom of the chain; and the higher up you go, the more power you have via subordinate bureacrats. Multiplying subordinates would thus increase power and lessen work, and a high BDI serves this purpose well. In fact, the higher the better.
But some people want more babus. Bruno Mascarenhas writes in: “We are in the process of building a nation and for these we need bureaucrats.” Um, I disagree. People build a nation, not bureaucrats, who need to get out of the people’s way to enable them to prosper. And we haven’t, sadly, scrapped enough of the license raj yet.
Postscript: One bureaucrat I rather like, my Kolkata-IAS-officer friend JA Prufrock 1, writes about his experiences with our beloved state-owned broadcaster, Doordarshan, here. We like you, JAP 1, but we would still like to see you out of a job. We know you understand.
