New Delhi: A total of 1,499 external consultants are currently being hired by 44 various departments of the Government of India and the annual cost of which is Rs 302 crore, The Indian Express reported citing a reply to a Right to Information (RTI) query.This, however, does not include 1,037 Young Professionals, 539 independent consultants, 354 domain experts, 1,481 retired government officers, and 20,376 other low-paid staff hired on contract by 76 departments employed either directly or through outsourcing agencies. However, there is no information available as to the expenditure the government incurs by paying this second set of professionals.The above information was collated by the Department of Expenditure under the Union Ministry of Finance based on the information received from 76 departments about individuals/firms working with them on a contractual basis. These include external agencies, Young Professionals, independent consultants, domain experts, personnel taken through outsourcing agencies, executives from Public Sector Units, state-owned banks and regulatory bodies on loan, retired government employees, and those hired for housekeeping, multi-tasking, and data entry functions.The top six departments with the highest number of consultants from external agencies are Health and Family Welfare (203), Rural Development (166), Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (149), Ministry of Housing and Urban Administration (147), Women and Child Development (112) and Road Transport and Highway (99). All in all, they account for 876, or 58%, of the total 1,499. Barring Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, which has not provided information, the annual expenditure of these departments/ ministries on consultants from external agencies is Rs 130 crore (43% of the total Rs 302 crore).As regards the Young Professionals, NITI Aayog employs most of them at 95 individuals at present. Among independent consultants hired on contract, the top three are Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (86), NITI (52), and Road Transport and Highways (41). As for domain experts on contract, Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (92), followed by Civil Aviation (70) and Rural Development (45). Each of these domain experts and independent consultants is paid anywhere between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 4 lakh a month.With the government abolishing Group D (peons, data entry, housekeeping, etc) recruitment, the personnel for such jobs is hired through outsourcing agencies, mostly through the government-run Government e-Marketplace (GEM) portal.A notable point here is that the Big Four accounting and consulting giants – Ernst & Young, PwC, Deloitte, and KPMG – secured projects worth nearly Rs 450 crore from the Union government between 2017 and 2022. In the given period, together they bagged at least 305 consulting assignments worth nearly Rs 500 crore from various government ministries and departments, according to a previous report by the IE.Senior bureaucrats have long decried the hiring of external consultants for government work. Writing in The New Indian Express, former Cabinet secretary K.M. Chandrashekar wrote, “The tendency towards outsourcing regular government work to consultants will ultimately adversely affect the quality of administration.”In the same article titled ‘Consultancy Raj not a cure for all government ills’, Chandrashekar notes several worldwide consultancy errors, calling “accountability the biggest casualty” in relying on external consultants.“The problem with public administration in India is not a lack of knowledge or the unavailability of qualified, well-trained officers. Many Indian civil servants have achieved tremendous results in particular areas, where they have built enduring systems and institutions, and have qualifications as good as the best in corporate India. The challenge, really, is to build an overarching results-based system that takes into account the diversity of government work and is flexible enough to change according to need. This requires the collective effort of all ministries, departments and institutions. Consultancies can provide no shortcuts to paradise—the government has to bite the bullet and take responsibility for itself,” he sums up.