Of late, what kind of press is the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General) getting? The more important question is: should he be in the media spotlight at all? Now holding a high constitutional position, he is a part of the civil services whose “heaven-born officers” are expected to keep a low-profile in public (or in their “earthly” interactions). It can be assumed that seeking an answer to the last question would be preceded with retorts, as you may ask – why not? After all, he is the man whose office was described by Dr Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly as “the most important office in the Constitution of India”. As the guardian of the public purse, standing at the apex of public finance accountability and auditing in the country (Article 148 of the Constitution of India defines his responsibilities), he has the power to make skeletons tumble out of the cupboard. His reports bring spells of impasse in the Parliament to a degree that the agitation-led inactivity might echo, to borrow a phrase from Ambedkar again, “the grammar of anarchy” (this grammar seems to be guiding the language of the ongoing stalemate in Parliament).

And he has been getting the press, even internationally. The Economist carried a story on India’s present CAG (In Vinod We Trust, The Economist, August 11, 2012) with a strapline that reads: “India’s unlikely anti-graft tsar speaks his mind”.

So another question surfaces: for the media, is Vinod Rai to the office of CAG what TN Seshan was to the office of the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) in the Nineties? Yes and No.

Yes, because in unprecedented ways both bureaucrats asserted the constitutional rights of the institutions they headed. And with their skirmishes with the political executive of their times, they became blue-eyed boys of a section of the population which mainstream media (at least the English component of it) targets for readership/ viewership – the urban middle class.

No, because unlike Mr Seshan it can be fairly said that Vinod Rai hasn’t been keen on giving “quote of the day” soundbites (though a vastly expanded media space today gives him more avenues to do so). One thing more. The technicalities involved in understanding the heroic acts of an accounts watchdog seem prosaic vis-à-vis the poetic bravado of the CEC in taking on the might of political parties and leaders during elections.

Yet the frequency with which CAG reports have hit the national headlines has ensured that from reams of paper in the national press and air-time on news channels to the pages of The Economist, the media has been chasing the man who is defining the measuring standards of scams in the country. So we return to the question – should Mr Rai revel in the media gaze? How much (or how less) media presence should he restrict himself to? And of course, for the media the question to be examined is – can’t it keep away from weaving a personality cult around top officials who are performing the duties which the Constitution has mandated them with? These questions remind me of something that had sought to probe these questions through something as simple as this – a letter to the Editor.

Five years ago Outlook had published a cover story on the new breed of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) recruits (Backwoods Babus, Outlook, August 6, 2007). Responding to the cover story, a reader wrote a letter to the editor and remarked: “Agreed that your story got the facts right, but publishing them was not in the right spirit – of the civil services or journalism. For, a civil servant is ideally expected to function efficiently but keep low key – any publicity may only spoil his or her devotion to duty”.

The letter raises an important question in the context of the public interface of a public service. As interaction with the media and becoming a newsmaker have become a part of civil servant’s job, the expectations of being low-key in public dealing requires a delicate handling. The problem is that a bureaucrat showing hyper-sensitivity to this expectation also runs the risk of being accused of inaccessibility or worse, arrogance. So how to come across as human and accessible, without sounding or being seen as someone keen on hogging limelight or extending one’s public persona? And the balancing act becomes trickier in a country where popular perceptions of a bureaucrat are that of a hubris-filled Hobbesian Leviathan and his office as a site of masterly (and sometimes mysterious) inaction. So to frame the puzzle in a not-so-apolitical phrase of the times: should civil servants “govern in silence”? The standard replies to such questions are shrouded in bureaucratic mysticism – “to an extent, yes, and then let the situation decide what needs to be done”. This raises another question: how to define that “extent” and who will define it? Well, the civil service! Aren’t they mandated to draft rules on behalf of the political executive?

Taking note of the emergence of media as an important arbiter of public discourse, (more modestly even public communication), a module for polishing media interaction skills is now a part of the training of IAS officers. When a twenty-something can have as vast discretionary powers as a District Magistrate has in numerous districts of India, hubris could be foreseen as an occupational hazard. But the greater danger of overstepping the media engagement line is making public policy and public administration a spectator sport. A tendency to grab headlines has been there in certain quarters of bureaucracy, but to be fair to India’s civil servants, it has yet not taken endemic proportions. From the perspective of democratic citizenship, the greater concern has been the inaccessibility of bureaucracy to public interaction, and not the excess of it. But alarmists are not off-mark too. The lines have been guarded, but vigil is required to avoid breaches. A foot-in-the-mouth disease inflicted bureaucracy is not a thought we would savour for governance discourse, except for journos looking for some juicy stuff. To their credit, our civil servants (including Vinod Rai) have mostly disappointed such headline-hunters.

To an extent, the Indian bureaucracy is steeped in the Weberian mould of “rational-legal” authority. Charisma and personality cult do not form the basis of the authority and appeal of this steel frame. However, within the limits of its “low key” public profile, civil servants need to watch out for falling into hardlines of “bureaucratic distance”, lest it amounts to inaccessibility and adds to the mysterious ways of Babudom. A governance-oriented public engagement with media could be made a part of their official mandate and their low key public presence. A few meaningful bites from the August Sens of our times would do no harm to Mammaries of Welfare State. Vinod Rai has been discreet in doing that.