March 10: China is firing the boss of all babudoms, burying a tradition that was replicated with messianic zeal in many parts of India.

China announced today that it would dismantle its railway ministry, known as “Boss Railway” because of the sweeping powers the bureaucratic behemoth wielded, as part of the biggest streamlining exercise since 1998.

Like in India, the railways had become the symbol of the power of state in China. There were some parallels with the Indian Railways, which present the annual budget in Parliament while other transport carriers take care of their accounting in less hallowed real estate and the utility has its own police force.

The Chinese railway had its own police force as well as courts till recently.

The Chinese utility still has the Railway Art Troupe that sings, dances and puts on acrobatic shows and operas. Not to mention the China Locomotive Sports Team, which trains athletes in soccer, boxing, weightlifting, swimming and track and field.

The Chinese railway also handles 1.8 billion passengers a year and employs 2.1 million people.

But under the new plan introduced to the rubber-stamp national legislature, the railways ministry will be split. Its regulatory responsibilities will go to the transport ministry and its operations to a commercial entity.

The restructuring marks the latest periodic attempt to reduce government meddling in the economy and society — something many in India are familiar with.

The other key changes are:

Another influential bureaucracy, the family planning commission, that enforces the much disliked rules that limit many families to one child will be merged with the health ministry.

Two agencies that censor broadcasters and print media will be combined into a super media regulator.

Five agencies that police fisheries and other maritime resources are being united into one to better assert China’s control over disputed waters, potentially sharpening conflicts with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

The National Energy Administration, created five years ago to help oversee a pressing need for the fast-growing but resource-strapped economy, would be expanded to absorb a regulatory body that sets electric rates.

Overall, the realignment would do away with four agencies and reduce the number of ministry-level bodies by two to 25. Despite occasional efforts, the Chinese government’s role in the economy and the power of state companies have grown over the past decade, often to the detriment of private and foreign companies, which face a welter of industrial and other policies that have raised barriers to success.

This time, the streamlining plan includes guidelines to restrict and better define the central government’s responsibilities, limiting its issuing of permits for projects, the setting of standards and other policies that have slowed decision-making. “Departments of the State Council are now focusing too much on micro issues. We should attend to our duties and must not meddle in what is not in our business,” Ma Kai, secretary-general of the state council, or cabinet, told the legislators.

Asked about China’s decision to scrap the railway ministry, UPA government spokesperson and I&B minister Manish Tewari said: “It is difficult to extrapolate from one country to another; every country takes decisions based on local imperatives. And in a developing economy, the ministry of railways plays a unique and very important role.”

The same compulsion was cited by China, too, once. But the scope and power of the railways ministry made it a natural place for the leadership to stamp its determination. As it expanded the railway system and built the world’s largest high-speed rail network, the Chinese ministry ran up hundreds of billions of dollars in debt and sank into corruption, giving critics an opportunity to pounce.

The Chinese railway ministry was so pervasive and powerful that it resisted government reform efforts for 15 years. At each turn, the ministry resisted, using long-standing ties to the military and building a record for performance.

Over the past decade, it created the showcase high-speed rail system touted by the leadership as a symbol for Chinese technological power on a par with the manned space programme.

The ministry’s ability to throw money around to get things done and preserve its power in the end helped bring it down. Liu Zhijun, the bullet train network’s top booster, was ousted as minister two years ago, amid accusations that he took massive bribes and steered contracts, some of them associated with the high-speed rail network. Among his rumoured misdeeds: having 18 mistresses.

Complaints about the railways are common among Chinese. It’s the most popular form of long-distance transport, especially for Chinese who cannot afford to fly. But buying tickets is difficult, and food, drink and other services on trains are poor — problems often attributed to corruption.

“Corruption? Of course there is in the railway bureau. There’s that Boss Railway!” Chang Shangxi, a 32-year-old businessman, said as he waited for a train in Shanghai this past week. “I am sure corruption causes corners to be cut and work to be faked as the companies have to make the money back that they spent on corruption.”

Although Liu awaits trial, his fate — and perhaps the ministry’s — seemed sealed when bullet trains collided near the eastern city of Wenzhou in July 2011, killing 40 people and injuring 177. The accident outraged the country’s growing middle class — the prime users of the high-speed rail. Taking to social media sites, they questioned whether speedy development resulted in shoddy work. A government investigation cited design flaws and mismanagement. In the aftermath, the government began taking a harder look at corruption throughout the railways and the ministry. In one case, almost all of a $260-million railway line in the northeast had to be redone because sub-contractors filled bridge foundations with rocks and sand instead of concrete.

“In recent years, the railways have developed in leaps and bounds and safeguarded the smooth running of the economy and people’s lives and production. But its government and enterprises are not separated. It doesn’t link smoothly with other modes of transport, and there are other problems,” Ma said.

Reformers crowed at the ministry’s abolition. “It means the country has removed the last ‘stronghold’ in the way of reforming the industry from a planned economy to market economy,” the official Xinhua News Agency quoted Wang Yiming, a government macro-economic researcher, as saying.