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| Photo Division, Government of India | March 29, 1954 |
Speech of Jawaharlal Nehru at the inauguration of the Indian Institute of Public Administration, New Delhi, March 29, 1954.
The first problem that one has to face on such an occasion as this is what
language to speak in. Coming fresh from Parliament today, where there was
some impatient talk on the language issue, this was fresh in my mind. But then
I found an initial difficulty in speaking in Hindi. I do not know how I can say
in Hindi “The Institute of Public Administration”. I have no doubt that there is
a very good word, but I do not know it.
Our Chairman, Shri V.T. Krishnamachari, has given us a lead in this matter
as to how we should look upon this Institute. Many of you have already
joined this Institute, or are on the point of joining it. A number of you have
been intimately connected with the administration in its various aspects and are
naturally interested in it; I am also interested of course, though my connection
with administration has been relatively limited. Even though, as Shri
Krishnamachari said, I may be the head of the administration, the head is so
far removed from other parts of the body, that I can hardly see the tail!
When the administration becomes more and more elaborate then arises the
problem of the administrator. Inevitably as the state becomes more complicated,
the apparatus of the state becomes more complex, and the more complex it
becomes the more difficult it is properly to know its various departments. For
my part, as I say. apart from these few years when I have been connected as
Prime Minister with administration, my contacts were of a different kind.
Now I am not quite sure if it is advantageous or not to come into contact
with the administration at the top without any personal knowledge of the other
rungs of the ladder. I suppose it has some advantages also, although it has its
own obvious disadvantages. The advantage is that perhaps one might escape
that feeling of functioning in a particular routine which inevitably must come
if one functions for a large number of years. The result is any person like me
is constantly coming up against these two urges which come into conflict with
each other — the urge of the disciplined administrator, and the urge of a person
who is administered and who wants things done for himself or for the group or
for the country.
One virtue I possess in common with others, and that is. having come into
contact for a large number of years with most of the human beings in this
country, both individually and in groups and in multitudes, one develops a
certain sense — the sixth sense or call it what you will — in regard to what they
might be feeling and what they might be wanting. In other words, it is the
feeling, if I may say so, with diffidence of a physician having his hands on the
pulse of the multitude. The pulse acts faster or slow, but it tells you little about
the emotional reaction of that individual. Anyhow that is helpful to me, and it
is also a hindrance trying to make oneself receptive to that feeling among others.
It is helpful if one feels emotionally aware of it, though one might not be fully
able to describe it. At the same time one might be led away into a slightly
wrong direction by this emotional reaction. On the other hand, if you have not
got that emotional reaction, that does not mean that you have not got it at all.
It does not matter how terribly competent you are in the routine, because
administration like most things is, in the final analysis, a human problem — to
deal with human beings, not with some statistical data. Statistical data help in
understanding. But there is no danger that the administrator at the top — not so
much at the bottom, because he comes into contact with human beings — may
come to regard human beings as mere abstractions. There is that danger at
times to both, types of societies, whether it is what might be called capitalist
society or communist society. The communist talks a tremendous deal about
the masses, the toiling masses. The toiling masses become some abstraction
apart from the human beings in them. He may decide something on pure theory,
which may lead to tremendous sufferings to those toiling masses.
The administrator may think in the abstract of the people he deals with,
come to conclusions which are justifiable apparently, but which miss the human
element. After all, whatever department of life you deal with, or whatever
department of Government you deal with, it is ultimately a problem of human
beings and the moment we forget that, we are driven away from reality. That is
why in order not to drift away too far I take the opportunity of going out ot
Delhi from time to time to satisfy a craving to see people other than those I
see in offices, at least to talk to some of them and thereby maintain some
contact w ith them; in short, to develop an emotional awareness of this collection
of human beings, 360 million human beings in India. I am. however, surprised
at this multitude, their enormous variety, their difference and their unity and all
that.
The Institute of Public Administration has to function in the context of a
society or country which is dealing with a multitude of problems and ever
changing problems. The whole conception is that we are living, as we have
always been living, in changing times. It may be that they change more rapidly
now than they had in the past. Therefore, it is always necessary to keep up
with these changing conditions of human beings, whether in the world or in
this country. That is quite essential. There are many things that the government
does. Now when we do a thing, it looks odd why we did not do it long ago,
e.g., in the manner laid down in this prospectus of the Institute. I read the
prospectus and it crept into my mind how far in doing all these things, with a
measure of thoroughness we might not miss the human element. Of course,
you cannot provide for that in the prospectus. But there is a danger that our
experts, our professors, our economists and others, who are exceedingly good
at the particular subject in which they are experts, sometimes become rather
inexpert in understanding even a single human being, much less a crowd. It is
just like a botanist good at his science but having no pleasure in flowers. So,
how to bring about this human touch in understanding the problems of
administration? You know I have been connected with the External Affairs
Ministry, and we choose with some care, after examination, a number of young
people for Foreign Services, train them for a year and a half, and send them to
foreign countries. They are a good bunch as a whole, but it has been striking
me for some time, how* little they know of their own country — these people
who go far away. Of course they know their family or their town or their
village. The European history or some period of European history, may be
good for specialised study but there is precious little of the history of Asia.
Progressively we shall have to deal with the countries of Europe or America.
But the balance has shifted now.
Again I am giving you an example from my personal knowledge. We started
the Foreign Service six years ago, and through sheer habit we attached greater
importance to the well-known countries of Europe and America. Of course
they were important, some of them very important, like the United States,
England and Russia — they are the important powers today by any standard.
Nevertheless, from the point of view of our foreign missions these countries of
Europe cannot be more important than some countries of Asia. Gradually we
came to the conclusion that we have to judge things not from some distant
outlook, looking at the world as it is, but from our geographical position as
well as our own particular interest. A neighbour of ours which is, not, let us
say, one of the greater powers, may be more important to us than one of the
great powers. The relative importance of our missions gradually began to change
in our minds, and Asian countries became more and more important from that
point of view because we have to deal with them and their problems are our
problems. Actually great countries of the world like America, Russia and England
are all important. But our neighbours are more important to us than outside
countries. So you see a certain shift.
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| Photo Division, Government of India | March 29, 1954 |
Now so far as I know our educational courses have not kept pace with the
shift of opinion, and we still study more and more the history of distant countries
than of our own neighbours. I think that we should understand and study much
more the countries of Asia now. We must, of course, study Europe, obviously.
because Europe has played, is still playing, and will play an important part
undoubtedly. But again the balance will shift somewhat. I gave you one particular
example of this.
Shn Krishnamachari told you very rightly how in two respects more
especially we have changed completely. At first, orders were issued from
Whitehall for governing India in all important matters. That has all changed.
We have got a fairly well established democratic system. Obviously that does
not fit in with the outlook of the system of administration some years back.
Then there is the second question. We are aiming at the welfare state and
rapid development. That does not fit in with the type of rather static mentality
which the governing class or governing apparatus had, many years ago. We
have to change, and we have to change our methods of thinking.
Behind all this lies something of which I feel that although we talk about
it a lot, we are not, most of us, really emotionally aware. That is the fact that
we are living not only in the atomic age, but under the shadow of the hydrogen
bomb. Now that is a terrific fact of which even the newspapers are not
emotionally aware. You see what has been happening in the last fortnight. There
was this hydrogen bomb which exploded at Bikini 4 I do not know what Bikini
is like but I am sure it is somewhere in the Pacific, a little island. Gradually in
driblets we are getting some information about it. The information is to the
effect that this explosion of the bomb took by surprise even those who watched
and exploded it. No one knows how many people suffered, because apart trom
the suffering caused by the impact, it is a kind of creeping thing which may
affect a week, a fortnight or a month later, which may make you blind ultimately,
w'hich may upset all kinds of internal organs, which may affect the waters of
the ocean and life in it. In other words, we do not know many details; these
are just coming to us.
Some Japanese fishermen and others have suffered. They are afraid to eat
fish. The Japanese have now a great problem. They have to give up eating fish
because of the radioactive substance which might injure them. Now what does
this mean?
It is a visible indication that man is using powers today, which are going
out of his control completely. That has been said in a rhetorical way but now it
is a fact that human beings are unleashing forces which are completely beyond
their control after they are unleashed. I am reminded of a story which many of
you might have known. It is the story of a jinn coming out of the bottle, and
then getting out of control.
I mention all this because it has an intimate relationship to all our problems
which are overwhelming. We may talk about war and peace; we may talk about
this bloc or that bloc; we may talk about being neutral or outside the scope of
war but the overwhelming fact is common to everybody, which everybody should
realise, whether he belongs to this bloc or that bloc or to no bloc at all. Now,
you may have heard about this hydrogen bomb that there are certain reactions
in a number of countries, notably in Japan which has suffered from it. But
even in other countries, in England, in Australia, and a number of other countries,
there is a strong reaction suggesting that there should be no more experiment
with this hydrogen bomb, no more unleashing of these forces which we do not
know how to control. The ash that might come up from them might go thousands
of miles, and create reactions and problems to human beings there.
I believe the next experiment is going to be a bigger show. Even the makers
of it do not know' the effects of it. Again, there are the statistics; the hydrogen
bomb is a hundred times stronger than the previous atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima. The present hydrogen bomb is thousand times stronger. There is
bound to be some outcry from some wise and thinking people to stop it. They
say vehemently; “stop this experiment”. Up till now, we were afraid of a great
war which would inevitably involve the use of atomic or hydrogen bombs but
now even before the war, forces are being unleashed by way of experiments,
which may do havoc and which may not be controlled at all. I must say that
I entirely sympathise, perhaps many of you also will too. in this demand or
request which has been made in England and in several other countries, that
this type of experimenting should stop. I hope that people and those in authority
will give attention to it. That is going to be a terrible weapon in their hands;
whether it is going to be used in future I do not know. But this experimenting
with it is becoming a very dangerous use of it.
I drifted from the subject of your Institute of Public Administration to the
atomic and hydrogen bomb. I wanted you to appreciate that there is an intimate
relationship between the two. The link is the human being whose betterment,
whose welfare the administration seeks to achieve. Again many of you here are
what are called Service men, that is those who have joined a particular Service
here in this country, have spent a greater part of your career in it and gained
experience and all that. It is right that Service people should have various things
attached to services like security, this, that and other. That is right. Nevertheless,
in the old days the administration from top to bottom was a Service
administration. Therefore, the outlook of the administration was a Service
outlook. The most complicated rules were made for the protection of Services.
But somehow it seems .to me that it was forgotten that the services were meant
to achieve something and not merely to exist as Services. That is to say, while
the Services will have to be protected, the test is human weltare. The test is to
be, in other words, the welfare of the masses of the people who think that we
are their ministers.
I think it is necessary to emphasise this because I do not think that the old
idea has completely ceased to exist. It has changed of course and I should like
to pay a tribute to our Services, because they have acted remarkably under new
conditions. I am not complaining of them, but rather complaining of a mental
approach to these problems which we have inherited and which we cannot
easily get rid of.
I speak, as you notice, not as a person very expert in administration, but a
person naturally interested in it very much, and seeing some aspects of
administration which in the limited sense of the word are not administration at
all, and yet which are very important, I think, because administration is meant
to achieve something, and not to exist in some kind of an ivory tower following
certain rules of procedure and Narcissus-like, looking at itself with complete
satisfaction. The test after all is the human beings, just as if I had to address a
municipality, I would venture to remind them that the test is not the few palaces
ol the rich but the slums of the poor. So I hope that this Institute of Public
Administration will no doubt look into many important problems which confront
us and which have to be dealt with not in a casual lackadaisical manner but
scientifically, expertly, with knowledge and all that. But it is always to be
remembered that it is the human society and the human beings that should gain
the results that you achieve for the betterment of human beings.
I have to say that I inaugurate this Institute. I say so and I wish it success.
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