How many ministers?

 According to our law the number of Ministers should be limited to 30; except that in the case of a National Government it could go up to 45

The delay in the appointment of the Cabinet of Ministers seems to indicate that the Prime Minister and the President are finding it difficult to select the ministers from among the aspirants. According to our law the number of Ministers should be limited to 30; except that in the case of a National Government it could go up to 45. 

The problem in having too many ministers (apart from the higher costs it imposes on the public) is that there can be a problem for the administration if there are too many ministers. So how many ministers should there be? 

We follow the system of Cabinet government as prevails in the United Kingdom. There a minister was originally expected to be the head of a ministry which included several departments and agencies which are closely related in the functions they perform. In the UK there is no separation between a department and a ministry. 

Around 1960 the then Secretary to the Treasury Shirley Amerasinghe issued a circular to draw attention to this fact because separate ministry offices were being built up creating additional posts of assistant secretaries. He pointed out that every head of department which is part of the ministry is an assistant secretary as in UK and said there should be no separation of the work of the ministry offices from the departments. 

But Parkinson’s Law operated and so many ministry offices were created and they began to grow creating an unnecessary barrier to the smooth communications between the minister and the secretary with the departments. The ministry office was merely to be an office for the minister to service him in his work. He had a permanent secretary who was the head of the ministry who dealt with the operational control of the departments. 

If we agree that a minister should be in charge of departments and that departments engaged in allied functions should be grouped together, then the number of ministers must be limited to the number of clusters of such departments engaged in related functions. So there cannot be more ministers than the number of clusters of departments forming a related function of government work. 

Public administration, both theory and practice, requires that related functions should be co-ordinate for there is a tendency for each department to jealously guard its turf and oppose any interference from other departments in its work. So the need for coordination in the working of related functions is a well-accepted principle of public administration. Such coordination is provided by grouping departments engaged in related functions to form a ministry. So originally the number of ministers tended to be determined by the number of such clusters of departments to discharge certain delineated functions. 

There was the Machinery of Government Committee of 1918 (also called the Haldane Committee) which identified distinct functions to be carried out by the government machinery. The related issue was called the span of control. As one writer has stated: “Just as the hand of man can span only a limited number of notes on the piano so the mind and will of man can span but a limited number of immediate managerial contacts.”

This problem came to be called in the literature of public administration “the span of control”. The limit of control is partly a matter of the limits of knowledge (each department deals with and requires a certain body of knowledge). But it is also a matter of the limits of time and energy that any human being has. So a supervisory officer cannot have unlimited capacity to control a group of officials dealing in a variety of distinct functions. So an executive of any department or enterprise can personally direct only a few persons. He must depend on them to direct others. Thus the principle of hierarchy came to be established in an organisation as an essential feature. Several of our ministers who were ignorant of these principles of public administration created administrative and policy chaos by violating the principle of hierarchy and dealing with subordinate officials over the heads of their superiors. This was so after 1956 when a new class of politicians took office who were ignorant of modern governance and public administration. Those senior public officials who served after the 1956 revolution realised the situation but could do nothing to change the attitudes and methods of working of the new ministers. There was also a problem of class difference. The post 1956 ministers came from a different class than the class of educated elite from which the top ranks off the public service were constituted. There was a difference in upbringing and culture between the two groups. 

To get back to the issue of the number of ministers, it must be stated that the issue of the ministers’ relationship with departments were ignored by the new Members of Parliament. They wanted the posts not only for the higher remuneration the ministers received but also for the exercise of power. 

There is the theory that there is a scale of values people look for. First they want money, then they want power, and thereafter prestige. So while the supply of ministerial posts must be limited for efficient public administration, the demand for them is high. Members of Parliament want power and a minister’s post carries both power and prestige. So the rule relating ministers to the functions came to be disregarded and a new category of ministers without portfolios came into vogue. 

So even in Britain all ministers did not have departments reporting to them for control purposes. Some ministries in Britain also had more than one minister. The British politicians were conscious of the fact that the machinery of government cannot be disrupted without adverse consequences on the quality of the administration. So they tried to maintain intact the structure of the government as far as possible except where a new function such as the Ministry of Science was established. 

Since there cannot be two ministers in charge of the same department, the practice grew up to have ministers without any departments under their control. This enables the principles of efficient public administration such as the span of control and unity of command in management to be maintained. Our politicians should take these principles of public administration into account and seek to maintain them in creating the posts of ministers and in allocating functions and departments. There should be no overlap. 

Political leaders have to dispense patronage to their clients and supporters. But there are principles that govern appointments, promotions, tenders, etc., in the public service. These principles and procedures are essential for good governance. So the scope for the exercise of political patronage is limited. It should be so if we want good governance. Good governance is no magic formula. It requires ministers to follow tried and tested principles and procedures such as the tender procedure, transparent recruitment procedures and so on. These principles and procedures are essential to ensure good governance. 

To wind up the following conclusion reached by the Machinery of Government Committee in Britain 1918 is useful. 

They said the Cabinet should be small in number – preferably 10 or at most 15. Henry Fayol, another theorist in public administration, said more or less the same thing.