Why Aren’t IAS Officers Held Accountable for Failed Projects?

In India, when a public project succeeds, an officer’s name is prominently displayed. There are press conferences, social-media posts, glowing profiles, awards, appreciation letters and carefully photographed inauguration ceremonies. The officer is described as the “brain behind the transformation,” the “architect of change” or the “driving force” behind the project.

But when the same project fails, suddenly nobody has a name.

The officer becomes merely one member of a committee. The consultant prepared the design. The engineer supervised the work. The contractor executed it. The department released the money. The weather was unusually severe. The population increased unexpectedly. The infrastructure was inherited. The problem was historical.

Success has a father. Failure has an entire government department.

This is the great bureaucratic magic trick of India: an officer can personally own every ribbon when a project is inaugurated but become institutionally invisible when the ribboned project begins to collapse.

The question, therefore, is not whether IAS officers can legally be held accountable. They certainly can.

The All India Services (Discipline and Appeal) Rules expressly provide for penalties including censure, withholding of promotion, withholding of increments and even recovery from salary of losses caused to the government through negligence or breach of orders. Major penalties can include reduction in rank, compulsory retirement, removal and dismissal. The legal toolbox already exists.

The problem is that the toolbox is usually opened only when there is an allegation of corruption, a vigilance case, a criminal investigation or an embarrassing scandal that can no longer be buried under official vocabulary.

Plain administrative failure rarely produces consequences.

A road may disintegrate soon after construction. A drainage project may leave a city waterlogged. A hospital may remain incomplete for years. A bridge may become unusable. A development scheme may consume crores without producing its promised result. Yet the officer who headed, monitored or publicly championed the project may simply be transferred to another department.

The project remains behind as a monument to failure.

The officer moves ahead with a clean career.

Why?

Because India evaluates whether money was sanctioned, whether tenders were issued, whether meetings were held and whether utilisation certificates were submitted. It is far less efficient at asking the most important question: Did the project actually work?

Even when the Comptroller and Auditor General conducts a performance audit, its objective is to examine economy, efficiency and effectiveness. Such audits can expose poor planning, weak execution and wasteful expenditure, but an audit observation does not automatically become an adverse entry in the service record of the officer responsible. The government must separately identify responsibility and initiate action.

That separate process is precisely where accountability frequently disappears.

A committee is appointed. Files are requested. Replies are sought. Responsibility is distributed among several offices. The officer who initiated the project has already been transferred. The officer who completed it says the design was inherited. The engineer says administrative approval came from above. The administrator says technical certification came from the engineer. The contractor blames the consultant. The consultant cites changed conditions.

By the end, the project has failed – but everyone has followed procedure. This is not administration. It is organised diffusion of responsibility.

IAS officers are evaluated through Performance Appraisal Reports. The government itself describes the appraisal report as an important document providing vital inputs for an officer’s further development, while promotion guidelines also require assessment of service records and vigilance clearance.

But where, in this appraisal system, is the compulsory account of failed projects?

Where is the column asking: What major projects did the officer supervise? What outcomes were promised? What was delivered? How much public money was spent? Did the infrastructure survive its first real test? Were technical warnings ignored? Did the officer claim public credit for the project? Did the project continue functioning after the officer’s transfer?

Without these questions, appraisal becomes an assessment of paperwork, presentation and hierarchical approval – not necessarily of public outcomes.

This does not mean that every IAS officer should be punished whenever anything goes wrong. Officers should not become convenient scapegoats for defective engineering, political interference, impossible deadlines, natural disasters or failures originating before their tenure. Accountability must be based on defined responsibility.

If an officer had no technical or financial authority over a project, that must be acknowledged. But if an officer headed the implementing agency, chaired monitoring meetings, approved milestones, released payments, ignored complaints, certified completion or publicly claimed ownership, that officer’s role cannot vanish when defects emerge.

The principle must be uncompromising: An officer cannot claim leadership in success and clerical helplessness in failure.

Every major public project should carry a publicly available responsibility register naming the officers, engineers, consultants and contractors responsible for its design, approval, execution, inspection and certification.

Projects should undergo independent performance testing – not merely financial auditing – after one, three and five years. A drainage system must be tested during rain. A road must be assessed after winters and heavy traffic. A hospital must be judged by services delivered, not by photographs of its building. A Smart City must be evaluated when the city faces an actual urban emergency, not when decorative lights are switched on.

Where negligence or unjustified certification is established, the finding should enter the officer’s appraisal record. It should affect sensitive postings, empanelment and promotion. The existing rules already permit censure, withholding promotion and recovery of financial loss caused through negligence. The missing ingredient is not legal power; it is administrative will.

The argument that such accountability would make officers afraid to take decisions is weak. Doctors, engineers, pilots, chartered accountants and company directors all make difficult decisions while remaining answerable for professional negligence. Why should administrative authority uniquely demand power without measurable responsibility?

Fear of honest failure should not be created. Fear of careless approval, false certification and consequence-free incompetence certainly should be.

India does not need a witch-hunt against civil servants. It needs to end the worship of civil servants as infallible beings who are qualified to supervise everything but responsible for nothing.

A transfer is not accountability. A new posting is not a clean chit. And the passage of time cannot be allowed to convert administrative failure into institutional amnesia.

When a project succeeds, the officer’s name enters the résumé. When it fails, the failure must enter the service record – provided responsibility is fairly established.

Anything less creates a bureaucracy in which public projects may collapse, public money may disappear into repairs, and citizens may continue suffering, while the officer’s career proceeds smoothly from one prestigious assignment to another.

That is the bitter truth: In India, failed projects enter audit reports; successful officers enter promotion lists.

Kashmir’s Long List of Failures – But Where Are the Failed Officers?

The Pattern

Across projects:

• Money is spent
• Deadlines are missed
• Outcomes are partial or absent
• Audits cite planning failures
• Contractors are penalised
• But senior administrative careers continue uninterrupted

The Core Question

Contractors are replaced. Engineers are issued notices. Consultants are blamed.

But:

• Who is held accountable for planning failures?
• Who is marked for non-delivery of outcomes?
• Who carries failure into their service record or promotion file?

The Structural Problem

Kashmir’s governance shows a consistent asymmetry:

• Success is personalised (officer credited, photographed, promoted)
• Failure is institutionalised (system blamed, responsibility diffused)

The Conclusion

No officer should be punished for genuine constraints or uncontrollable events. But no major project failure should disappear into anonymity either.

Every project must answer:

• Who designed it?
• Who approved it?
• Who supervised it?
• Who certified completion claims?
• Who released funds despite delays?

Kashmir cannot remain a landscape of failed projects and uninterrupted bureaucratic careers.

If success builds a résumé, failure must also enter the record.