I live in the capital which is really the home ground of the bureaucracy. So we face the visible bureaucrat more than others, though, I am told it is a major issue everywhere. Let me illustrate the nature of the problem through a simple example. Not long ago, I shared the platform at a seminar on the public sector. Apart from a senior businessman and myself who made speeches, there was an excellent presentation by Dr Rakesh Mohan who in my view is an authority on the public sector. He proved how PSUs are as a whole were value destroyers though there were many exceptions.

There was also a speech by a senior bureaucrat who was arguing that a PSU like Coal India was doing a great service to the nation as it had an excellent school for the children of that area. My back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that with the money lost in running Coal India, the country could run not one, but several thousand excellent schools. Now I come to the sad part. The next day, all the visibility was given to this gentleman'sspeech with the others being reduced to one liners. The reading public lost the opportunity to understand the arguments of others. I am sure each one of us would have gone to a seminar where the press would cover the keynote address of the bureaucrat and walk out when the technical sessions - the real reason for the seminar - start.

Clearly, we cannot blame the bureaucracy if their speeches get more attention and I am not doing that. I am just questioning the mindset of the people in this country which makes them give pride of place to bureaucrats and not experts in every programme; and the mindset of the media which, with a few exceptions, would invariably prefer covering generalists to professionals. Whether it be telling school kids how to study, women how to combine work with the home, it is not the retired school principal or the hard working woman entrepreneur who gets the attention but the secretary who cuts the ribbon and makes a speech on the subject on which he is no expert. (I have personally attended programmes where these have happened!).

Seshanitis is the disease which ensures.

One of my bureaucrat friends with whom I was discussing this with said that this was a relic of the British and Moghul days when a small group of aliens ran the country from the Delhi Durbar. Common people like you and me needed to get close to the Durbar and what better way than inviting their key people informally. He may well be right but if it is so, the argument is no longer valid. We are a vibrant democracy with brilliant people in every walk of life striving for self expression and we should pick the right horses for the right courses to have the best race.

I am writing this piece because by making the bureaucracy so visible, we are actually putting the system into disrepute. For in the very nature of things, bureaucrats are meant not to make policy but to administer it quietly and efficiently. By forcing them to take a public profile we are confusing the roles enshrined in our system. To illustrate, these days I keep hearing bureaucrats waxing bold about the advantages of opening up the insurance, etc. Let us assume we have a new government which does not agree with that at all and follows the opposite policy. What will the same bureaucrat do? Will he go to the media and make statements totally contradictory to what he said a few weeks before? Which is why in more sophisticated democracies like the US or the UK you will hardly ever find bureaucrats on TV shows and newspapers as you do here.

In our system, the civil servants do not retire with the government. In fact they do not seem to retire at all if one looks at the authorities and commissions sprouting up in Delhi every day, each headed by a retired bureaucrat. So it is essential that we do not make them speak on policy. If we need somebody to talk about opening up television, call the minister who is supposed to make, explain and defend his policy. If he is too busy electioneering, call Shyam Benegal whose career is going to be affected by it. If we want to talk about the fiscal deficit, call the chief of NCAER.

But not the bureaucrat who till yesterday was looking after law and order in Assam. He may advocate reducing the fiscal deficit today and favour increasing it tomorrow if the government changes.

The author is a Delhi-based investment banker and a former head of Citibank's merchant banking operations in India. His e-mail address is pnvijay@vsnl.com