L Shanthakumari Sunder - Values and Influence of Religion in Public Administration

T his book is the result of a seven year study that I undertook for my PhD dissertation. It discusses the influence of religion, mainly that of Christianity and Hinduism, on the formation of values in the Indian Civil Service (ICS) and its successor, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS or the Service). The objective of this study is to unearth the reasons for the rapid decline of the values in the IAS, especially after the 1980s. It primarily deals with the problem of administrative corruption in the Service, the premier civil service of the country and also in the Indian society, of which the IAS is a part. However, this book is not about corruption, rather about why there is such rampant corruption in India, especially in the government services, and increasingly so in the IAS. The study has been done with the IAS officers belonging to the cadre of Karnataka as the field of study.

Corruption in India, to say the least, is endemic and systemic. Every day newspapers carry accounts of corrupt deals that are unearthed in the course of casual investigationnot just in the lower echelons of the government but also at high levels. A study by Transparency International (TI) named India Corruption Study, assessed the amount paid by the citizens as bribes in India to be 21,068 crores annually. Such reports bring in a flurry of editorials and opinions from retired bureaucrats, leading politicians and other eminent persons for a day or two in leading newspapers, and thereafter are forgotten, until an-other report brings such a dismal story to light.

India invariably finds itself at the top of the list of countries most corrupt, as brought out by TI in its annual surveys. TI defines corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain, and measures the degree of corruption perceived among the public officials and politicians of a country. In a score ranging from ten (squeaky-clean) to zero (highly cor-rupt), in its perception index, India's score is 3.3 for the year 2006 and is rated 74th in the list of 163 countries studied and listed. During 2009, India was at the 84th rank with 3.4 on the scale, out of 180 countries. Scams in the various walks of Indian public life are galore, but investigations usually never end in punishment. As already pointed out, this thesis attempts to unearth what could be the root cause for the endemic presence of corruption in the administration in India. The thesis goes beyond the mere what of corruption and corrupt practices, to fathom the why of such prevalent attitudes in Indian society, especially the Service. The study is to find out the roots of the problem, the causes which might arise from culture and finally what goes to make up culture, namelyreligion, traditions, and history. The probe is from a religious point of view, looking at the influences of religion, in this case the majority religion, Hinduism. As the IAS had inherited its value systems from the (ICS), which operated during the British colonial period, the influence of Christianity on the ICS is studied, which in due course passed on its traditions to the IAS.

Ethics is defined as a subject consisting of the fundamental issues of practical decision making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be judged right or wrong. It becomes highly relevant when applied to administration and the administrative decisions taken by the administrators in the governance of a countrywhich is public service at large.