Aug 28, 2026 16:01 pm IST

Why India's Bureaucrats Have Learnt That Doing 'Nothing' Is Safer

India's bureaucracy has perfected a peculiar survival strategy: make a decision, you may be punished; make none, and you are usually safe.

Shashi Tharoor Shashi Tharoor MP, Columnist

Shashi Tharoor MP, Columnist

For decades, the analytical discourse surrounding the institutional labyrinth of the Indian state has been confined to a somewhat sterile duality. We are routinely informed that our administrative failures are the byproduct of either the venality of the corrupt or the vacuity of the incompetent. While these elements undeniably persist within the sprawling architecture of our governance, they fail to account for a far more pervasive, yet curiously invisible, quagmire: the vast, silent arena of administrative inaction.

In his new book Decision Velocity: Rational Abdication, the Fear Tax, and the Road to Viksit Bharat, retired IPS officer OP Singh, a man who has traversed the arduous landscapes of field policing and the intricate corridors of the Haryana State Secretariat with equal distinction, proposes a startlingly original third lens with which to view our administrative shortcomings. He identifies a phenomenon that is as pervasive as it is pernicious: a " fear tax" not levied by any formal exchequer, but extracted from the lifeblood of the citizen, in the form of unconscionable delay.

Singh's "Fear Tax" is the price society pays when decision-makers conclude that the safest course is not to decide at all. It is the outcome of a sclerotic system where, for the desk-bound officer, the risk of a decisive........

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