| Summary, etc. |
Bureaucracy is defined as a body of non-elective government officials. Bureaucracy has a chequered history. It all started when the state, because of its increasing operation, found it necessary to convert some of the personal royal staff into the staff for public service. To begin with, public service was a temporary measure and clerics who had celibate status and therefore were dependable, were appointed. This could be possible because of the development of university system, growth of money economy, legal system and representative government. But even as late as the beginning of the twentieth century, permission to marry was to be sought. This is all western history. We have simply borrowed the system. Today, bureaucracy is a much maligned and condemned word. Officialism, red-tapism and proliferation are so accepted characteristics that they have entered the dictionaries. Other characteristics are said to be specialization of functions, adherence to fixed rules and a hierarchy of authority. Some people would add the traits of discretion, secrecy and conservatism. It is said to be inimical to people's development. Marx is reported to have held the view that this separate class of administrative officers and clerks in whose hands chief power is concentrated, stands in opposition to all other classes. Milton Friedman in 1994, told that the Americans have a government of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats. Of course, he includes among the bureaucrats the legislators who, he thinks, of late become bureaucrats |
