State Directorate

1.1 Introduction
India after attaining independence adopted the system of administration prevailing the
pre independence era. One of these patterns is the ‘Split System’ which means
separation of policy organizations and the executive agencies. Patterned on that
‘Directorates’ are executive agencies of the Government to carry out the policies
formulated by the state secretariat. The State Secretariat is a staff agency and assigned
with the substantive work of policy formulation while the administrative entities in the
Directorate are line agencies, responsible for implementing the policies and
providing technical advice to the Secretariat for policy formulation, and to supervise
the execution of policies and programmes of field agencies. The effectiveness of
state administration depends upon the cooperation and coordination between the
Secretariat and the Directorate.
The head of secretariat department is designated as secretary, who is normally
Generalist IAS officer while the head of executive agency is known as Director and
not necessarily a Generalist one, rather in some cases, always an Expert or Specialist
one. The nomenclature used here is not universally followed as in some cases the head
of the Department is named depending upon the functions performed as for example,
the Head of Forest Department is known as Chief Conservator of Forests, Head of
Police Department is known as Director General of Police, of the Prison
Department as Inspector General of Jails, Head of Irrigation Department as Chief
Engineer and of the Cooperative Department, the Registrar of Cooperative Societies.
Thus, the head of the executive department is usually a specialist officer but IAS
office is also appointed as the head of the department, for example the post of
Director in many departments such as Education, Social Welfare, Transport, Town
Planning, Panchyati Raj and Rural Development are usually manned by IAS Officers.
It has also been the reason of controversy between Generalists and Specialist officers
as the later have been persistently demanding that post of head of department of filled
by specialist officers only.
1.2 Organisational set-up of Directorate
The offices of the executive departments are located outside the State Secretariat
complexes and these are distinct organisational entities. The number and size of
executive departments depend upon the size of the State and the subject administered
by the department. The big States having large population have large number of
departments and also of bigger sized one.
The head of the Department depending upon the size and other conditions is variously
known as Director, or Joint Director, or Deputy Director or the Mission Head. The

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Director may also be assisted by the Additional Director or Directors depending upon
the volume of responsibilities.
The Directorate is assigned with the task executing the policies and programs framed
by the Secretariat in an efficient and effective manner. Therefore, in order to achieve
the objective or the goal, the Directorate is expected to be functional at state level
alone like the Secretariat system but also operates at regional, district and sub-district
levels. The Regional Directorates have been established in between State and District
levels to coordinate the policies and programs of the districts by providing a link
between these administrative levels and to resolve the conflicts among the district
level officials
The Directorate is entrusted with the responsibility to undertake necessary efforts to
establish necessary coordination and supervision of execution of policies and
programs at all levels of administration. For example, the Directorate of municipal
bodies is headed by the Director who is usually an IAS officer. The State Government
can also appoint Additional Director and other officials to assist him. Among the other
officials includes such as accountant to look after financial system, legal officer,
Deputy Director, Assistant Director and Executive officers, etc.
1.3 Organisation of the State Administration
State Government - State
Chief Secretary – State Secretariat
Director - Directorate
Divisional Commissioner – Regional level or Bunch of Districts
District Collector - District
Sub Divisional office – Sub-Division
Tehsildar – Tehsil (revenue administration)
Naib Tehsildar – Sub-Tehsil
Quanungo – Division of Sub-Tehsil area
Patwari- Village level
1.4 Need for the Directorate
Following are the reasons which may be the reasons for the growth of the State
Directorate:
1. Directorate and its regional offices are easily accessible to citizens in
comparison to the Secretariat.
2. There is growing tendency of specialisation in administration in view of
increased complexity and role of technology in administration.

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 3. Most of officials working in directorates are Specialists and they perform
technical functions.
4. Need for separation of policy formulation from policy execution have been
universally accepted. Directorates have been established to implement the
policies and programmes.
5. Technical nature of certain functions demands distinct organisational entity
that can best perform these functions. Education, Health & Finance are
functions which cannot be performed from the Secretariat level alone.

1.5 Functions of the Directorate

Directorate perform the following functions

1. It prepares the budget of the Department.
2. It proposes the departmental activities at the beginning of financial year.
3. It organises the training programmes for departmental officials for learning the
techniques of work of administration.
4. It provides technical advice to minister.
5. The supervision and inspection of execution of work is best undertaken by
officials at directorate level.
6. The directorate also performs the functions relating to personnel
administration making appointments, postings, conformations, transfer and
promotions of subordinate officials within prescribed limit and rules.
7. It carries out research and experiment in departmental work in order to
promote efficiency in administration.
8. This level of administration contributes in improving required capacities of the
official by exposing them to outside world and the knowledge in their
concerned field by providing opportunities for attending workshops,
conferences etc.
9. The Directorate also exercises disciplinary control over subordinate officials
10. Tendering advice to Public Service Commission concerning promotions is also
one of its important responsibilities.

1.6 Relationship between the Secretariat and the Directorate

The Secretariat Department is different from the executive department and related to
each other in certain pattern of relationship. The pattern of relationship is described
under three approaches, which are, the status-quo approach, the bridging the gulf
approach and the de-amalgamation approach.
The status-quo approach emphasizes that the role of the Secretariat and the Directorate
are well defined or have distinct functional domain. It is on the pattern of the
distinction between staff and line agencies, which means, Secretariat performs the role
of staff and the Directorate look means to undertake the role of line agency. It also

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advocates policy-administration dichotomy. The advantages and disadvantages of this
pattern are debatable.
The bridging the gulf approach suggests (i) to confer an ex-officio secretariat status to
the heads of the Executive Department or (ii) to establish a system under which a
Secretary concurrently holds the office of head of the Executive Department or (iii) to
merge or amalgamate Executive Department under a corresponding Secretariat
Department or a variant of it.
The de-amalgamation approach has arisen consequent to the implementation of
amalgamation approach as that brought both positive and negative impact in the
working of State administration. The approach involves separation of unified system
and return to traditional spilt system of policy administration dichotomy. The process
emphasizes the need to confine the head of the Executive department to field work
alone and separation of cadres of Secretariat and Directorate.
The discussion on the role of the Secretariat and the Directorate lead to conclude that
the Secretariat aids, assists and advises the political executive in taking policy
decisions and the Executive Department or Director implement policy decisions of
political executive.
It is also worth to state that a Secretariat Department deals with more than one
department and may be up to seven depending upon political and administrative
conditions and the Secretariat Department like Department of Law, Department of
Finance etc do not have any attached executive department as their role is purely either
advisory or keeping administrative control over certain public agency or agencies.
The Secretariat Department is normally headed by Generalist officer (IAS) but it may
not be always true regarding Executive Department. Even if a specialist is heading an
Executive Department, its head functions under the supervision of a Generalist officer.
Agriculture, Home, Education, Health, Industry, Social Welfare may be cited as
example under this category of arrangement.
The Secretariat is concerned with policy formulation and Directorate is concerned with
policy execution. But, the two processes are not discrete rather the continuous with
each other. It is true that conceptually, these two may be considered distinct ones but in
practice it is highly difficult to draw a boundary line between them. In other words, at
practical plane these two processes are inextricably interlinked and cannot be separated
from each other.
The Second Administrative Reforms Commission observed that “policy formulation
functions need to be distinguished from those relating to policy implementation”. The
Commission noted that “the need to provide the Ministers with high quality policy
advice requires that Secretaries to Government and their supporting staff in the
Secretariat with policy advisory responsibilities do not get diverted by the demands of

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managing routine administrative and operational responsibilities. This would call for a
broad separation of policy formulation and implementation responsibilities”.
The Commission is of the view that certain principles need to be followed to stipulate
that Ministries should concentrate on the following:
 Policy making and strategic decisions
 Budgeting
 Monitoring of implementation
 Appointment of key personnel
 Coordination
 Evaluation
It also emphasized that “Attached and subordinate offices would serve as the
executive agencies of the Ministries (Directorate in case of State) and concentrate
on the implementation of government policies and programmes The Political Head
of the Department is Minister who is accountable to legislature for policy and
performance of his department. The administrative head of a department is the
Secretary who assists the Minister in policy formulation and administration. The
third component is head of the Executive department who is responsible for
implementing the policies and programmes of the Government.
The existing system of relationship between State Secretariat and Executive
Departments is criticised on flowing grounds:
1. The Secretariat organisation encroaches in the function of the executive
department. It has considerably weakened the authority of Executive
department
2. There is inadequate delegation of work and the authority and control
exercised by the the Secretariat results in unnecessary delay in execution of
policies and programmes by the Departments as they are compelled to seek
constant approvals and consultation.
3. As the Generalist officers are appointed as Secretary and he/she is authorised
to examine the proposals and scheme prepared by Specialists officers of the
attached offices. Being layman, the Generalist officer cannot understand the
technical aspect of the schemes / proposals consequently, he is unable to
contribute anything substantive to such proposals /schemes.
4. Unnecessary scrutiny of the proposals submitted by the departments by the
Secretariat result in unnecessary duplication and delay. The proposals in the
Secretariat are submitted after detailed scrutiny in the attached Offices.
The Second Administrative Reforms Commission in its 15th Report made following
recommendations for ensuring smooth relationship between two uppermost echelons
of the State Government.

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 1. The State Governments should scrutinize the functions/activities of each
department to conform whether these activities/functions are critical to the mission
of the department and can only be carried out by government agencies.
2. Only those functions/activities that have to be carried out by the government t
based on the principle (stated above) should be carried out directly by the
departments. Other functions/activities should be carried out by Executive
Agencies of the department.
3. Each Executive Agency, whether a new body or an existing departmental
undertaking/ agency/ board/ special purpose body, etc. that is converted into an
Executive Agency, must be semi-autonomous and professionally managed under a
mandate. Such executive agencies could be structured as a department, board,
commission, company, society, etc.
4. There is need for a right balance between autonomy and accountability while
designing the institutional framework of executive agencies. This could be
achieved through well designed performance agreements, Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU), contracts, etc. However, preparing and enforcing such
performance contracts require considerable upgradation of capacity in the
concerned governmental departments.
5. Agencies dealing with subjects where major functions and activities have devolved
on local governments would need to concentrate on monitoring and supervision,
ensuring of standards and. Quality, providing guidance to local governments on
technical matters , training of personnel, giving feedback to the government on
implementation and performance and advising on changes that are needed in plans
and programmes.
Summing up