DM position is outdated. It's a personality cult, not leadership

The Print

30-05-2025

As far as I am concerned, I am immensely proud to have once been an IAS officer. There is no aspersion cast on the competency of any individual who joins the service; anybody selected through a three-tier process, which narrows down a field of nearly a million aspirants to a triple-distilled cohort of 150 individuals, is bound to be competent and can be justifiably proud of being a member of this elite group. However, that pride does not translate into blind loyalty to the IAS tribe or to the unequivocal acceptance of the mythology and group-speak of the service. Criticism of the IAS's conservative clinging to outdated institutions does not denote a lack of pride; rather, It draws attention to the crying need for introspection, without bias or slant.
This observation of mine, recorded by ThePrint's Sanya Dhingra in a report published this week, did not sit well with some of my former colleagues. One of them asked me why I was 'demolishing' the service and contrasted my approach with that of the armed forces, where any criticism is met with a 'warrior-like front' and a show of 'pride' in the service.
The concentration of administrative powers in the district magistrate is an impediment to development. The IAS circle has carefully cultivated the myth of the collector's infallibility and has pushed a narrative that citizens must be kept under check, lest they step out of line.
A comparison between the civil service and the armed forces is inappropriate. A civil service is not a uniformed service. Those who join the armed forces must be indoctrinated to do something unnatural: to kill and to die. They have to be trained to suppress the natural instinct of rational human beings, which is to live and let live, and to preserve themselves. Such training aims to suspend the natural tendency not to kill and to preserve one's own life, during the dire circumstances of war, as a professional imperative.
In contrast, the civil servants are not expected to kill or to die. In most circumstances, we are not dealing with an enemy; we are dealing with fellow citizens. We are expected to serve the people by following the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India and the laws and rules of the land, which flow from it. Our notions, biases, and group interests ought not to come in the way of that primary task.
The bald fact of the matter is that the position of the district collector (also called district magistrate or deputy commissioner), created by the British to rule over a potentially irresponsible and mutinous people—the subjects of a foreign imperialist power—continues even today, with a huge concentration of powers in it. India underwent fundamental economic reforms and liberalisation 30 years ago, alongside sweeping constitutional amendments to give local elected governments constitutional status and a functional space.
However, while market reforms have demolished many previously held outdated notions, the antiquated idea of district administration being handled by an overworked single officer has not been shed. This mindset has become a millstone around the neck of India. The district collector is not a facilitator of development; he or she is a bottleneck. Such a concentration of powers concerning both regulation and service provision in one position is institutionally irrational and administratively inefficient.
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A 1980s Karnataka 'model' stands ignored
The 15th report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission did a sample count of the number of committees headed by the district collector in Andhra Pradesh and Assam; the numbers were 50 and 43, respectively. What is more, the commission observed that the list was incomplete and that there may be many more committees of which the collectors themselves may not even be aware.
The situation today is probably worse than it was when the ARC report was written 15 years ago. Why does it not strike the IAS that this level of concentration of power is absurd? Do they think they can do justice to all these responsibilities? It is humanly impossible for a district collector to give quality time to all of his or her tasks. Protestations to the contrary apart, and cherry-picked examples notwithstanding, in reality the country suffers because the development of the district is left not to reason but to whimsy. An overloaded officer is left to decide, as he or she sees fit, what the priority area will be for exercising their mind.
One reason why the notion that the single position of the district collector is necessary to act as the fulcrum of district development persists is that there are only a few counterfactual examples. In Karnataka, from 1987 to 1992, Chief Minister Ramakrishna Hegde and rural development minister Abdul Nazir Sab directly confronted the IAS's mental block against diminishing the powers of the district collector in their endeavour to establish empowered Zilla Parishads. They made the position of the deputy commissioner junior to that of the chief secretary of the Zilla Parishad, and the former was divested of responsibilities for local development.
In spite of dire warnings from the IAS that citizens would be confused and mayhem would ensue from this rejigging of district administration, nothing of the sort happened. On the contrary, people quickly understood the roles assigned to the two officers. The IAS officer senior to the district collector placed as chief secretary of the Zilla Parishad, was answerable to the elected body and worked under the control and supervision of the president of the Zilla Parishad. The creation of dispersed local infrastructure in many sectors accelerated, as local representatives were consulted and contributed to planning and implementation. Local discretion, no longer impeded by state ministers, MLAs, and deputy commissioners, enabled better tailoring of development initiatives to people's needs.
Sure enough, this was not liked at all by MLAs, higher-level politicians, and the IAS at large. State-level departments felt disempowered because decisions that had to come to Bangalore were now being taken at the district level. At the earliest opportunity in 1992, when the terms of the elected Zilla Parishads came to a close, the district collector took over as administrator of the Zilla Parishads. Senior officers were once again posted as DMs, and the chief secretary posts of the Zilla Parishads were abolished, replaced by downgraded posts of CEOs. In the eyes of the IAS, the natural order was restored. The example of Karnataka from 1987 to 1992 is now ignored by reformers within the IAS, who intend to reform everything else except their own hallowed institutions.
Antipathy to empowered local governments
Many IAS officers, articulate and suave as they are, attempt to deflect or diminish their role in fostering the long-standing antipathy to empowered local governments. 'It's not we who are standing in the way of strengthening local governments; higher-level politicians and MLAs are to be blamed, as they stand to lose power,' they say.
Let us not be so naïve as to believe that.
Throughout one's service, one sees that the majority of IAS officers articulate policies and write up the fine print of centralisation. True, higher-level politicians do not want to devolve power to local governments. But the operational process of such subversion is crafted by IAS wordsmiths. It is they who repeatedly utter the cliché of the 'lack of capacity' of local governments and create parallel structures such as separate societies, mission bodies, companies, and the like—each giving some supervisory role to the district collector and all aimed at bypassing the constitutional intent of devolving local functions to local governments. Ever wonder why Smart City Projects are implemented at the municipal or metropolitan level, not by the elected municipalities, but by a private limited company headed by an IAS officer who is not locally accountable through the municipal body for his actions? That policy is written up by an IAS officer.
It is fascinating to observe how deep this suspicion of local power and initiative runs, and how repetitive the weak arguments that IAS officers use to delay or sabotage meaningful devolution of power. Even those with the highest integrity have a blind spot when it comes to sincerely supporting local governments. They argue that decentralisation of power will only result in local elite capture or excessive corruption. This argument is ironic, as it ignores the fact that the IAS itself constitutes a powerful elite, which often looks the other way when higher political levels engage in grave acts of corruption.
Another overlooked phenomenon is the political control exercised over the post of the district collector by higher-level politicians. On the one hand, the IAS supports the immense concentration of power in the hands of the district collector. On the other hand, this same post hardly acts independently of the minister or the MLAs.
The question to ponder is: if the district collector or any other high-ranking district official is to be subordinated to a political person, why not be subordinated to the Zilla Parishad president or the mayor of the municipal corporation concerned, who is elected from the district to head constitutionally mandated local governments? In what way is that subordination unacceptable when subordination to the minister or MLAs is accepted without question?
Sadly, all that I say will continue to be a voice in the wilderness. The paradigm of muscular, personality-oriented leadership is now here to stay, at least in the short term. This leadership style is replicated at every level of government, and the outdated position of the district collector lends itself well to such personality-cult-based leadership. There is no political push for collegiate and participative governance; it doesn't create the grand spectacle of individual leaders striding forward with obedient subjects following them. What needs to be done—establishing truly functional local governments with constitutionally devolved powers—is clear as daylight to everybody. However, in the absence of any real political push for it, all government actions at the district level will remain constrained by the need to be supervised by the district collector. The country will stand to lose, in wasted time.
TR Raghunandan is a former IAS officer. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)