The culture of arbitrariness seems to be gradually sneaking into the functioning of the public institutions of India. The recent BCI’s direction to State Bar councils to ban the NALSAR law students from being enrolled as lawyers and quick withdrawal of the order in the face of opposition in social media raises the question mark on the functioning and decision-making process of public institutions in India. If BCI’s decision was based on rules facts of the case, there was no need to withdraw it or if it was based on some external considerations, not related to the merit of the case, it needs to be corrected. Social media has linked this decision of BCI to ban NALSAR students to the opposition of these students to invited Chief Justice of India as a Chief Guest in a function organized by NALSAR administration. The students are reacting to CJI refusal to hear oral reference regarding police lathi charge during CJI protest in Jantar Mantar in July, 2026. This and similar other episodes raise the questions about the functioning of public institutions in India.
This is not just one case. The general trend is that the public institutions of India like legislature, executive, various commissions, corporations and agencies of government are gradually imbibing the culture of revenge and intolerance. The rule-based functioning the public institutions is replaced by the personalized functioning. As recent reports indicate, the use of public agencies like CBI or ED to settle scores with adversaries, discrimination in grants and implementation of public policies, using criticism of the government as pretext to file defamation and other cases and many other similar examples are the indication of the personalized functioning of public agencies in India. Some amount of centralization is required for coordination and coherence in the functioning of the public institutions, but over-centralization breeds personalized exercise of power and lack of transparency. Personalized functioning escapes the rule of law, sans accountability and rectification, promotes secrecy and culture of impunity, and always indulges in self -justification. In fact, the public trust deficit and the personalized functioning of the institutions form a vicious circle. In the long run, this personalized functioning and centralization in political and administrative institutions is self-inflicting as it would erode the public trust in institutions. It would further undermine not only the public interest and rule of law but also the very roots of the democracy.
The success of democracy does not depend only on the fact that we cast our vote after every five years and elect our leaders, but it equally depends upon the fact as how our public institutions perform in between those five years. The example of success of democracy in many countries is not because of just voting by citizens but rests on the existence of strong public institutions. Weak public institutions escaping the culture of accountability and transparency cannot sustain a viable democratic process. Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Burden of Democracy. 2003), a noted scholar has demonstrated how crisis in accountability, among other things, leads to crisis in democracy. Some specific studies on reforms of public institutions in India (Rethinking Public Institutions in India, 2019, edited by Devesh Kumar and Pratap Bhanu Mehta) underlined the need for the reforms of the public institutions in India like the civil service, the courts, the police, parliament, and regulatory institutions to reconfigure to better adapt to changing circumstances. The focus was on efficiency and adjustment with changing conditions. However, now we need to move beyond efficiency to investigate and reform the very culture, which underpins the functioning of the Indian public institutions. The aberrations in administrative culture are long lasting
The functioning of the public institutions is closely related with the administrative and political culture of the country. Political culture consists of various values and norms which guide the political and administrative behavior of public authorities and leaders. If we review the growth of political culture in India, the rule of Indira Gandhi marks a sharp difference where collective decision making was replaced by the personalized concentration of power. The Chief Ministers of states were elected not at the capital of states but in the power corridor of Delhi. As there was a call for ‘Committed Bureaucracy’ the higher-level appointment tested loyalty than merit. The idea of Committed Bureaucracy raises the question of commitment to what- to the ideals of the constitution, to the policies and programs of the government or to the ideology and interests of the ruling party. While we keep on debating this, some elements of bureaucracy may slip to the commitment to the self-interest. We have criticized this trend to the full measure, but have we tried to reverse this trend ? The answer is no. The criticism of the faults of our predecessors cannot be the justification for our own fault. The creeping culture of personalized functioning, intolerance to criticism, centralization of power, lack of accountability and transparency, pervasive impunity and of course urgency to take revenge needs to be arrested. The political culture is a part of larger social culture. Hence, we all have stake and responsibility to arrest this decline in political and administrative culture, but those who are at the helm of affairs of these institutions have greater responsibility and scope arrest this decline.
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