Despite the Right to Information Act being in existence for almost 15 years now, the process of decision making within the Indian government is still shrouded in mystery. Very few people — apart from bureaucrats and ministers — know how policies are framed, how internal inter-ministerial conflicts are resolved, and who, if at all any, is held accountable for bad decisions. The Indian public’s perception is that civil servants are the real rulers, and they are failing the country in not stemming the administrative rot. Many civil servants ,however, hold an opposing viewpoint; that it is the political culture that largely determines the nature of the civil service and the ends to which it would be put. From this perspective, it is the politician who needs to be blamed for the nation’s problems and miseries. BK Chaturvedi, who held the position of Cabinet Secretary from 2004 to 2007 and then continued as a member of the erstwhile planning commission till 2014 was considered to be very close to the-then Prime Minister.His latest book, ‘Challenges of Governance’, holds a somewhat middle-of-the-road view with regards accountability of administration. It throws light on the contentious issues during the UPA regimes, which would help an ordinary citizen to fathom how critical situations were addressed during those years and puts forth the narrative of how the per¡ception of corruption was fueled by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and newspaper reports. BK, as he is known to his friends, had also been Chairman of the State Trading Corporation (STC) and secretary in several ministries including Human Resource Development, Finance, and Petroleum and Natural Gas. Over the course of his career, he has built up a strong reputation for being a very upright, bold, and no-nonsense officer who never made compromises on issues of integrity and public interest. His book, therefore, comes with several interesting anecdotes that help readers understand the culture of personal interests over citizen welfare.‘Challenges of Governance’.Rupa Publications India , May 2019.As chairman of STC, BK fell out with his minister, who at the time wanted to favour a particular private party for a procurement order. Rather compromise with the minister, he requested the cabinet secretary for a change, and was soon shifted out of STC to the finance ministry. Later, as the cabinet secretary, he perhaps would have been interested in changing the dynamics of the secretary-minster relationship. But as much as he would have liked to allot secretaries to ministries based on merit and expertise, he was pressured by the Prime Minister to accommodate the choices of the concerned ministers. This meant that corrupt ministers were free to select pliable IAS officers as their secretaries who would either ignore ministerial wrong-doing or even assist the mantri in his deals. BK concludes in his book: “Over the years, I have seen a strong desire in political executives to select officers they think will do their bidding. This focus on personnel rather than programmes does not improve governance. Sadly, there seems to have been no change in this approach.” Despite problems that are inherent in a weak coalition government, BK was able to initiate several reforms. He overruled the objections of the Planning Commission by considerably enhancing the budget for rural electrification, which increased the number of electrified households from 55 to 85% between 2006-14. More power generation however sharply increased demand for coal which had other implications, described later in this piece. He also removed government control over the pricing of petroleum products and let it be decided by the oil producing companies — although the success of this measure is debatable. He persuaded the prime minister to celebrate April 21, Sardar Patel’s birthday, as Civil Service Day to reward outstanding civil servants and encourage professionalism in the state IAS cadre.He pushed for amending the All India Service Rules to provide for security of tenure to IAS officers working in the states, which would curb the tendency of quick transfers at the whims and fancies of political executives. India’s state governments, however, have not implemented this policy of providing stable tenure to their officers. In hindsight, it appears that BK should have pushed for a minimum tenure of two years for the chief secretaries in the states, just as important secretaries in GOI enjoy this stability. He was also keen to reduce the maximum age for recruitment to the IAS to 24 years and retire the deadwood in the service after 20 years. However there was strong opposition to these suggestions, which resulted in the appointment of a new Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) under the chairmanship of Congress leader Veerappa Moily. The Commission produced 15 volumes of report, but translated little reforms on the ground!As a Planning Commission member, BK chaired a committee on centrally sponsored schemes, and was able to reduce their number to about 60 from more than 170. He instituted a system of third-party verification of projects to check leakage of funds, especially in north-eastern states. This revealed that often schools had been certified by the state governments as completed whereas only one wall had been built, or roads had been only half constructed, but declared as complete. One hopes that the new Niti Aayog is continuing with such verification of state and central government progress.The most interesting and revealing part of the book, however, is BK’s scathing criticism of the CAG Vinod Rai’s finding in 2012 that the government lost Rs 1.86 lakh crore due to the allocation of coal blocks to private parties. At the time, the national auditor’s calculations had damaged the government’s reputation and had further intensified the impression that there was large-scale corruption at the Centre. BK argues that CAG’s findings assumed what the government policy should have been and then he computed gains to the private parties. Thus the CAG was trying to enter the domain of policy making, which is not its remit. The auditor failed to realize that when captive coal allocation was permitted by the legislature in 1993, there was no computation of how much profit the captive-mine allottees could derive. The objective of the legislation was to expand economic activity and increase coal production, and not look at how it affected government revenues. The issue however received massive media reaction and public outrage, leading to a CBI enquiry as well as a change in the procedure to allot on the basis of open bidding. Later all the allocations were cancelled. The author suggests a moral code for civil servants and politicians to promote a clean and accountable administration. The officers who help politicians make money need to be identified and punished. This problem is more serious at the state level. BK suggests that violations of the moral code by state cadre IAS officers should be overseen by the chief secretary. This would however be feasible only if he, like the Cabinet Secretary in GOI, has a stable tenure of at least two years. Most chief ministers are not going to support such stability for their chief secretary, as they would prefer a pliable officer to a professional one. One can hope that the present muscular Modi government initiates this reform by making necessary changes in the IAS cadre rules.Naresh Chandra Saxena is a former member of the Planning Commission.