Indian Administration II: Legislative, Executive and Judicial Accountability; Lokpal, Lokayukta, the Central Vigilance Commission and Regulatory Authorities; Politician–Civil Servant Relations, the Generalist–Specialist Debate and Combating Corruption; the Civil Services and their Reform

The model is the Scandinavian Ombudsman, first established in Sweden in 1809: an independent officer of the legislature who investigates citizens' complaints of maladministration. In India the First Administrative Reforms Commission (1966–70), in its interim report on the Problems of Redress of Citizens' Grievances (1966), recommended a Lokpal at the Union level and Lokayuktas in the states. Lokpal bills were introduced repeatedly from 1968, but the law came only after the anti-corruption movement of 2011: the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013 (in force from January 2014). The first Lokpal, Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose, was appointed in 2019.

• Composition: a Chairperson and up to eight members, at least half of them judicial members, and at least half drawn from the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, minorities and women.
• Selection committee: the Prime Minister, the Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, the Chief Justice of India or a judge nominated by him, and an eminent jurist.
• Jurisdiction: the Prime Minister (with exclusions for international relations, security, public order, atomic energy and space, and with in-camera procedure), ministers, members of Parliament and officials of all groups, for offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
• Lokayuktas: the Act required each state to set up a Lokayukta within a year. Maharashtra had been first, with its Lokayukta and Upa-Lokayukta Act of 1971.

The Central Vigilance Commission was set up by executive resolution in 1964 on the recommendation of the Santhanam Committee on the Prevention of Corruption (1962–64). After the Supreme Court's judgment in Vineet Narain v. Union of India (1997) it was given statutory status by the Central Vigilance Commission Act, 2003. It consists of a Central Vigilance Commissioner and up to two Vigilance Commissioners, appointed on the recommendation of a committee of the Prime Minister, the Home Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha; it supervises vigilance administration in central ministries and public sector bodies and superintends the Delhi Special Police Establishment (the CBI) in corruption cases. It is advisory: it recommends action but cannot itself punish.

Independent regulatory authorities are a newer mechanism of accountability — for markets rather than for officials. After liberalisation India created sector regulators with quasi-legislative (rule-making), quasi-executive (licensing, inspection) and quasi-judicial (adjudication) powers: the Securities and Exchange Board of India (statutory since 1992), the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (1997), the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (1999), the electricity regulatory commissions, and the Competition Commission of India (Act of 2002). Their rationale is credible commitment and technical expertise insulated from day-to-day politics; the concerns are accountability to Parliament, capture by the regulated industry, and overlapping jurisdictions.

Politician–civil servant relations are the working edge of the politics–administration question. Aberbach, Putnam and Rockman, in Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies (1981), described four "images": Image I, politicians make policy and civil servants implement it; Image II, both make policy, but civil servants bring facts and knowledge while politicians bring interests and values; Image III, both are engaged in politics, but politicians articulate broad interests and energise the system while bureaucrats mediate narrow interests and seek equilibrium; and Image IV, the "pure hybrid", in which the roles converge. In India the relationship has swung between the minister–secretary partnership of the early decades and a later pattern of politicisation — frequent transfers as a tool of control, loss of tenure, and pressure on officers — which the Supreme Court addressed in T. S. R. Subramanian v. Union of India (2013) by calling for minimum tenure, civil services boards for transfers, and written instructions from political superiors.

The generalist–specialist debate asks who should hold the senior posts: generalist administrators, recruited young by a broad examination and rotated across fields (the IAS model, inherited from the British "cult of the amateur"), or specialists with professional expertise — engineers, doctors, economists, scientists. The UK's Fulton Committee (1968) attacked the "cult of the generalist" and recommended a unified grading structure and more specialist and managerial training. The generalist case is breadth of view, coordination across departments, field experience and political sensitivity; the specialist case is technical competence in an increasingly technical state, and the frustration of specialist services whose members report to generalists. India's responses have included the Indian Economic and Statistical Services, the Indian Forest Service (1966), specialisation within the IAS through domain assignment, and lateral entry.

Combating corruption combines law, institutions and administrative design. The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 was amended in 2018 to make bribe-giving a specific offence, to protect honest officials by requiring prior approval before investigating decisions taken in official functions, and to set timelines for trials. The Whistle Blowers Protection Act, 2014 protects those who expose corruption. The Second Administrative Reforms Commission's fourth report, Ethics in Governance (2007), recommended measures from codes of ethics to the confiscation of illegally acquired property. Administrative remedies — e-procurement, direct benefit transfer, online services that remove the discretionary interface — attack the opportunity for petty corruption, which Robert Klitgaard summarised as C = M + D − A: corruption equals monopoly plus discretion minus accountability.

The Union Public Service Commission (Articles 315–323) conducts examinations for appointment to the All India and Central Services, advises on methods of recruitment, promotions, transfers and disciplinary matters (Article 320), and presents an annual report (Article 323). Its chairman and members are appointed by the President for six years or until the age of sixty-five and can be removed only on grounds and by the procedure in Article 317. State Public Service Commissions do the same for the states, with members serving until sixty-two. Below them are other recruiting bodies: the Staff Selection Commission, set up in 1975 as the Subordinate Services Commission and renamed in 1977, which recruits to Group B (non-gazetted) and Group C posts in central ministries; the Railway Recruitment Boards; and state subordinate services boards. Recruitment agencies are advisory and independent — the Constitution protects their independence but leaves the final appointment with the executive.

Capacity building has moved from one-time induction to continuous, competency-based learning: the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration and the national academies of the other services, state administrative training institutes, mid-career training programmes, and since 2020 Mission Karmayogi with its Capacity Building Commission and online iGOT platform. Civil service reform has been studied by many committees: the Kothari Committee (1976), which designed the three-stage examination (preliminary, main and interview) adopted from 1979; the Satish Chandra Committee (1989), which recommended adding an essay paper; the Alagh Committee (2001) and Hota Committee (2004); and the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, whose tenth report, Refurbishing of Personnel Administration (2008), proposed domain competencies, performance management, mid-career reviews and a civil services law.