Introduction
You must have come across the term bureaucracy quite often when reading political news or even heard it discussed commonly among political enthusiasts. Apart from that each one of us has also learned about bureaucracy in our school or college days. But what exactly does this term imply? And why is it so important to understand when talking about the politics and government of a country? This is exactly what we are going to discuss by having a brief look at the basics of this term and its importance.
What is Bureaucracy?
The term Bureaucracy basically refers to a system of government in which most of the important decisions are taken by the state officials rather than by elected representatives. In simple terms you can say that Bureaucracy refers to a body of government officials who are not elected but form an administrative policy making group. In old times, bureaucracy was referred to a government administration which was formed by non-elected officials and run by departments that are employed by them.
In today’s times, bureaucracy refers to an administration that governs any large institution in the private as well as public sector. Bureaucracy is a way of administratively bringing people who need to work together under one organisation. In the modern world, almost all organisations including universities and governments in both the public and private sector rely on bureaucracies for proper functioning. In a lot of countries, a company’s centralised, hierarchical structure as well as public administration can be seen as examples of bureaucracy.
There are a wide variety of tasks that Government bureaucrats need to perform which includes teaching and monitoring the employed officials to carry out the administration of the concerned organisation. The main job of bureaucrats is to implement a government policy, take laws and decisions made by the government officials and bring them into action. Some bureaucrats also write rules and regulations to implement a government policy while there are some who directly administer policies to people. These policies include distributing small business loans, or similar other policies.
The term bureaucracy in literal terms means, rule by desk of offices, which explains in a few words how bureaucracies act in an organisation. It is sometimes believed that bureaucracies are inefficient or wasteful, but having a bureaucracy helps to make sure that a large number of people can come together and work in compatible ways by clearly defining each person’s role in a hierarchy. This may be beneficial for the better functioning of the organisation and better implementation of policies when talking about the bureaucracies in the Government. This task of running the government and providing services through implementation of various government policies is termed as public administration.
With the overall above explanation you can easily say that the term bureaucracy refers both to the body of non-elected government officials and to an administrative policy making group.
Bureaucracy in India
Although bureaucracy was first established by Britain in the late nineteenth century, it has since become an integral part of every industrialized as well as emerging nation. The bureaucratic system is an integral part of any modern administration. It was therefore decided by the leaders of free India to continue the bureaucratic system, which was laid down by the British government.
Bureaucracy in India has four main characteristics— a clear hierarchy, division of labour, specialisation, and a former set of rules or standard operating procedures. The top of the executive has ministers who account to the legislature. These ministers are named temporary executives because their appointment is related to the election. There are also a large number of government officials, whose term of service is fixed along with these temporary executives.
What is the role of Bureaucracy?
The main and the most crucial role of the bureaucracy is the implementation of the policies that have been laid down by the government. The legislation provides the basic outline and policy frames for the council of ministers. Then the implementation of the policy is carried out by the bureaucracy. This burden which has been imposed upon the bureaucracy is both new as well as crucial. Along with this, the old roles of income collection and law and order management remain as before. The further accelerating process is both modern and comparatively significant than the old roles and functions.
As India is a developing country, the bureaucracy in India has an important and robust task of turning a developing state into a functioning one. In developed countries the bureaucracy does not have to play this role. As developing a nation within a short period of time and with limited resources is no joke, the bureaucracy in India has a robust task at hand and carries the huge responsibility of development.
Apart from the above major role that bureaucracy plays in development of the nation, there are some more important roles carried out by the Indian Bureaucracy. These are as follows:
Running the administration As we have already discussed above, one of the important roles of bureaucracy is ensuring that the administration is running smoothly and as per the rules and regulations that have been implemented by the government, without any disturbances.
Advisors to political executives Bureaucracy advises the political executives in making decisions for the betterment of the government., which facilitates the smooth running of the government. As political executives have no knowledge of the functions of the government, these bureaucrats guide them through their decisions.
Law making The bureaucracy plays an indirect role in the law making as the bills that are submitted to the legislation for making a law are drafted by them. The ministers contact the civil servants for all the necessary information that they need to give to the legislation for passing of the bill.
Policy formulation For the policies that are made to come into action, they need to be included in specific situations. This is a function of the political executives. However, as we saw above, the civil servants or bureaucrats play a major role in guiding these political executives in their role, the bureaucracy plays a major role in the whole process of policy formulation.
Record-keeping The bureaucrats maintain and keep government records by collecting and categorising the data of government activities.
