OPINION | The Unaccountable Pillars: India’s real reform begins within

India has had no shortage of blueprints for administrative reform.

India is no longer a nation in search of its potential. Yet, beneath our democratic confidence lies that omnipresent colonial scaffolding of attitude that refuses to fade. The relationship between the powers and the ruled continues to echo the hierarchies of the Raj. This, ultimately, is the heart of our unfinished reform story: Accountability and trust remain India’s most under-realised reforms.

Ironically, many who call for bureaucratic reform are themselves its finest beneficiaries — veterans of the system, and labels post-retirement reflection as reformist zeal. They critique the machinery only after having coasted comfortably within it. But if every insider knows the system’s failures and yet none are fixed, the problem is no longer of design — it is of intent.

Pillars, Politics, and Populism

Corporate India, in its own way, has the finest sense of humour. A seasoned industrialist once said, as a matter-of-fact, that in any company, titles are mere decoration — the only hierarchy that truly functions is Malik and Naukar: the promoter is the Malik, and everyone else, regardless of designation, is the Naukar. One could say much the same of our pillars of democracy — each proclaiming autonomy, yet ultimately serving power, not the people.

We have hyped about the “balance of four pillars” of democracy - executive, legislature, judiciary and media. But these pillars are rarely examined for their load-bearing strength, and their response to the citizens. Citizens are made to run between them, each deflecting responsibility to the other. The irony of these pillars is that each now appears less as a safeguard and more as a stakeholder — connected, complicit, and transactional — benefiting from or weaponising the other, in a society that follows the grim laws of survival-economics: a price to pay to stay relevant.

For example, electoral politics is often held up as a mechanism of performance assessment. That assumption deserves to be challenged. Elections are no audit of policy outcomes or fiscal prudence; they have become contests of sentiment and survival, short-termism and street-smartness, not of virtues of morality or ethics necessarily. Political parties often escape consequence by indulging in fiscally irresponsible populism, as we have seen sufficiently across many states.

The Unaccountable Pillar

The political class may face an electoral test every five years, but the administrative arms face none at all. Bureaucratic performance appraisal remains opaque, old-boys network intact and closes ranks, and work metrics largely ceremonial. Right from the grassroots, entitlement defines overall officialdom. Rent-seeking persists as culture, and yet we pride that we don’t have corruption at all.

India has had no shortage of blueprints for administrative reform. The Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), chaired by Veerappa Moily, submitted fifteen reports between 2005 and 2009, spanning ethics, public order, e-governance, financial administration, and local governance. The Hota Committee on Civil Service Reforms (2004), led by P.C. Hota, recommended far-reaching changes in civil service accountability, lateral entry, and performance management. Earlier, the Satish Chandra Committee (1989), chaired by Satish Chandra, then a member of the Planning Commission, reviewed recruitment and training systems in the civil services.

Yet, little of this has translated into structural change. Implementation fatigue, bureaucratic resistance, and political disinterest have turned into files gathering dust.

Need for Administrative Law Reform

Despite the political leadership articulating a confident and cohesive vision for Viksit Bharat - one that will undoubtedly become a central electoral plank for next many years - no national aspiration can convert into lived reality without the machinery that must execute it.

After all, Vision does not implement itself in a democracy; bureaucracy does. India can build highways, data networks, and global ambitions, but without a 21st-century administrative architecture, these remain aspirations suspended above a 19th-century operational base. And this is not limited to the executive alone. Every administrative arm of democracy - the judiciary, tribunals, regulatory bodies, investigative agencies - must be recalibrated for relevance, timeliness, and public accountability. A developmental state cannot be built on procedural lethargy, discretionary opacity, and institutional fragmentation. If Viksit Bharat is our collective destination, administrative law reform is the vehicle that must get us there.

If we are to build a Viksit Bharat, we must begin with administrative law reform. The citizen, after all, is the ultimate shareholder of the Republic.

Reforming India’s Bureaucratic Architecture

There is precedent for meritocratic administration done right at scale. China’s bureaucracy, with all its political nuance we might attribute as flaws, retains a deep historical commitment to merit and measurable performance. This is a legacy of the Imperial Examination System (科举, keju) that predates the 13th century. Formally established during the Sui dynasty (581–618 CE) and institutionalised under the Tang (618–907 CE), it evolved through the Song (960–1279) and Ming (1368–1644) dynasties to become the cornerstone of Chinese statecraft.

The British designed India’s bureaucracy not for accountability but for control — a legacy that continues to shape the psychology of administration more than its practice. Independent India, in turn, blended it with politicisation and patronage.

We may differ on whether China’s model offers lessons for India, but we cannot ignore the enduring value of meritocracy itself. In our midst, are the lessons from Arthashastra. Closer home, Singapore, a fraction of India’s size, has built a bureaucracy that is both efficient and incorruptible.

Without transforming how the State itself measures, rewards and disciplines its own machinery, no amount of capacity building will yield meaningful change. The State must learn to see citizens not as subjects, but as partners. That shift—psychological before procedural—will be the essence of governance transformation. 

Reclaiming what should be responsible governance

A credible reform blueprint would begin with three fundamentals.

First, legislative backing for administrative accountability, with clear laws defining service delivery guarantees, grievance redress timelines, and penalties for non-performance.

Second, institutionalised transparency, mandating quarterly disclosure of performance data for all departments and districts, and annual performance tracker of officials.

Third, citizen participation in performance audit, using digital platforms to crowd-source feedback for every interaction, and verify service quality.

A Viksit Bharat cannot be built merely through GDP growth or infrastructure expansion - it requires a transition to a citizen-state partnership. Administrative law reforms will demand courage from the political class. But the alternative -  perpetual mediocrity masked by electoral spectacle is far costlier. For rest of the nation.

(Srinath Sridharan is Author, Policy Researcher & Corporate Advisor, Twitter: @ssmumbai.)

Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.