TSR Subramanian: A Bureaucrat’s Bureaucrat

One can imagine how the current stand-off and alleged assault on the the topmost bureaucrat of the Delhi government would have made Thirumanilaiyur Sitapati Ramana Subramanian (1938-2018) regret his decision to share the dais with Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on the occasion of Civil Services Day a few years ago.

One of the most sought-after post-retirement figures in the country’s apex civil services, he had become the face of the dignity, pride and role of public administrators in Indian polity.

TSR Subramanian, a 1961- batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, went on to serve as Union Cabinet Secretary to three different governments at the Centre between August 1, 1996 and March 31, 1998.

After a string of key positions in state and central governments, the unsettled phase of coalition politics in the country meant that he steered the cabinet secretariat during the tenures of three Prime Ministers: HD Deve Gowda, Indra Kumar Gujral and the early phase of AB Vajpayee.

Such insider view from the top and coordinating the bureaucratic functioning in the country in different regimes ensured hectic post-retirement engagements. Apart from his initiative in filing a landmark Public Interest Litigation for protecting functional independence of civil services officers, the last four years had seen him heading two important committees appointed by the central government.

One may recall significant recommendations made by the committee on environment governance that Subramanian headed and which submitted its report in November 2014.

The report was clinically critical in studying the structure of environment protection institutions and norms in the country and stringent in its recommendations. Among other things, it recommended that the approving authority for projects shouldn’t be the environment ministry but a new body that could be envisaged as National Environment Management Authority (NEMA).

Seeking a more integrated supervision of environment protection measures, the committee also suggested that state pollution control boards (SPCBs) should function as state-level wings of NEMA and should be made answerable to the Union government.

More recently in October 2016, a Subramanian-headed committee on education made some significant observations about the education sector as it proposed key reforms. While acknowledging the positive role of Right to Education Act (RTE) in expanding access to education, the committee observed that there was a “25 per cent drop in standards of education” after it came into being.

Raising an alarm over the neglect of qualitative aspects, the Subramanian committee suggested a slew of measures: creation of Indian Education Service cadre, compulsory licensing of government school teachers and ambitious target of six per cent of GDP allocation to education in Budget outlay.

What, however, made him a formidable advocate of the rights of civil servants was his initiative of teaming up with a group of former bureaucrats to file a PIL in the Supreme Court. The PIL sought a system to protect the bureaucracy (especially All-India Services officers) from undue political interference.

In 2013, the apex court delivered an important verdict on the PIL. The court directed the central and state governments to create a Civil Services Board. The court mandated the new body to decide on issues arising out of transfers of Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and IFS (Indian Forest Service) officers. The verdict also favoured a fixed tenure for officers in key positions.

Along with that, the court’s emphasis on written instructions and insulating civil servants from obligations of following verbal orders was widely welcomed by civil servants. That contributed to the stature Subramanian commanded within the IAS fraternity. It’s not surprising that the IAS paid glowing tribute to one of its most distinguished officers.

His fight for rights of civil servants, however, didn’t mean that he wasn’t aware of the pivotal position of elected government and representatives in a democratic society. He was, in fact, very sensitive to the precedence of elected government. However, he stressed on importance of coordination between the political executive and civil servants in framing and implementation of policies and programmes.

In one of his last articles published in Governance Now, Subramanian wrote:

“It is natural that in a democracy, the elected representatives would play a dominant role in both governance and administration. It took two or three decades for the politician to understand his own ‘eminent’ position in the governance hierarchy.”

“Despite this, the role of the senior civil servant has not diminished; if anything it has assumed greater significance. He is not just the prime implementer of government decisions; in practice the senior civil servants in the state secretariats and at the Centre, are equal if not more important partners in the decision-making process. Indeed the two faces of the governance coin are represented by the minister and the civil servant. Thus, in a sense, the role of civil servant has become more critical in the governance of the country,” he argued.

However, batting for full-time career bureaucrats made him a bit inclined towards protecting their turf from ideas like lateral entry of private sector professionals in specific roles in the government. He had expressed his objections to such ideas in a programme aired on Rajya Sabha TV last year.

As a sign of entrenched conservatism within bureaucracy, his insularity on the issue didn’t take into account the costs of losing talent from the private sector as well expertise from academic institutions.

Warts and all, public policy and governance were his passions. A Mathematics post-graduate, he moved to London to study at Imperial College of Science and Technology before joining IAS in 1961. However, the urge to study the academic perspectives on governance saw him studying Public Administration at Harvard University as a serving IAS officer.

All his three books dealt with his experiences, insights and vision as an administrator; Journeys through Babudom and Netaland: Governance in India (2004), Government in India: An Inside View (2009) and India at Turning Point: The Road to Good Governance (2014).

Subramanian had been telling civil services aspirants and officers that the attraction of power and privilege were wrong reasons to join the bureaucracy. He was of the belief that civil servants in India must make themselves subservient to needs of serving people.

For a man steeped in lofty values of civil services, he would have preferred passing away quietly, unnoticed. That anonymity, one of the cherished values in bureaucracy, eluded him in his death. The grief his demise has evoked in his former colleagues and new generation of civil servants confirms what one always thought about him — he was a bureaucrat’s bureaucrat.