civil services india

How Bureaucracy Has Left the Indian Civil Services Adrift

India’s crisis-ridden bureaucracy is unrecognisable, and this perception of the civil services overshadows the handful of upright officers who continue boldly to keep the system afloat.

Once hailed as the steel frame of independent India, the country’s civil service today is a pale shadow of its halcyon past when officers of high intellectual calibre, personal integrity, and the brio to give unbiased advice, held sway.

Successors of the ‘heaven born’ colonial Indian Civil Service, or ICS, and the analogous Indian Police or IP, newly independent India’s civil services was not too different. They equitably managed the turbulent times of Partition, rife with bloodshed, refugees’ influx, and the division of assets between the two newly created nations.

In the decades thereafter, guided by competent political leaders they kept hope alive by nurturing a fledgling democracy in a hugely diverse country, which few in the world thought would survive as a nation state.

But over seven decades later India’s crisis-ridden bureaucracy is unrecognisable; vilified for its inefficiency, nepotism, and corruption, but above all else, for its arrogance and high-maintenance and low mileage capabilities. This common perception of the civil services overshadows the handful of conscientious and upright officers who continue boldly to adhere to old values and keep the system afloat.

Ironically, it is because of this latter diminishing complement of officers that many systems continue to function relatively well.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to concur with this public perception of the Indian bureaucrats. He recently excoriated the country’s civil servants in the Lok Sabha, venting his ire particularly against members of the ‘hallowed’ Indian Administrative Service (IAS) that heads the country’s bureaucratic pinnacle.

Also read: The Civil Services Have Failed To Deliver and It’s Time To Reconsider Their Importance

The ‘babu’ culture

Participating in the motion of thanks to President Ram Nath Kovind’s parliamentary address, an incensed prime minister lamented that India’s growth had become ‘hostage’ to the whims and fancies of babus – a mildly pejorative euphemism for civil servants – and the untrammelled power they wielded.

“Babus will do everything,” an incredulous prime minister asked rhetorically. “Because they became IAS (officers) they run fertiliser factories ….chemical factories… even fly planes,” he fulminated. “What is this big power we have created,” he asked, going on to inquire of his fellow parliamentarians whether it was judicious to hand over the ‘reins of the nation (of power and governance) to babus’.

The prime minister’s outburst upset senior civil servants who rather than introspect on the criticism levelled against them spent their energy speculating on what had prompted Modi’s outburst. Near-unanimously they agreed that the prime minister’s tirade against them was because of a handful of projects that had been delayed; of course, due to no fault of theirs.

What Modi stated in parliament on February 10, starkly echoed the despair and helplessness of billions of Indians, subsumed by a bureaucracy which other than the IAS is supplemented by the Indian Police Service (IPS), and overseas by the Indian Foreign Service (IFS). Assorted central services oversee varied other departments like revenue, customs, railways, forests, and cantonments, amongst others.

New IAS civil servants headed for training. Credit: PTI

New IAS civil servants headed for training. Photo: PTI

Exceptions notwithstanding, there is a collective strain that defines them all, at least in the popular perception: power, pelf and relative inviolability. The civil servants’ calibre is in direct proportion to their ability to perform in the qualifying examination and the subsequent interview. Thereafter, efficiency, probity, conscientiousness, and empathy are of limited relevance for the average three decades most officers serve.

Most officers assume the trappings of feudal grandeur much like their colonial predecessors, but without either their efficiency, commitment, or impartiality. Their ‘power’ props begin with their massive office revolving chairs, with the mandatory white towel – changed regularly – draped over the back for reasons unknown. Over decades this white towel has emerged as an unquestioned symbol of bureaucratic authority that brooks no challenge and is always right.

Red lights flash continually outside their office doors to further indicate high office and importance. These worthies, ironically known as public servants, are largely inaccessible to common people who obsequiously line up outside their offices for redressal of their grievances, sometimes waiting the entire day without getting to see the ‘sahib’. In colonial times, those in authority were commonly known as ‘mai baap’ (my father); in independent India they have a shorter, adaptive Anglo-Indian appellation – sir ji.

Sir ji’s calls are screened by his army of staffers who invariably mouth the patent questions: ‘aap kahan se bol rahe hain’, ‘kya kaam hai’, or a helpful ‘dekhta hun sahib kamre mein hain ke nahin’. But this is mere tokenism as most callers are summarily informed that ‘sahib’ is either out or busy in a meeting. This generally means only one thing – the personal staff does not consider the caller important enough to bother the boss. Similarly, visitors are disdainfully discouraged either by making them wait, or advised to meet some other lower-level official in connection with their grievances.

Such inaccessibility contributes majorly towards building public perception regarding the importance and invincibility of the officer. And though civil servants cannot possibly meet, or talk to everyone, there is no system to differentiate between those who have legitimate grievances and others who do not. This malaise has percolated down to the lower power structure echelons, leaving millions of unrequited supplicants across the country.

A large proportion of these civil servants’ business is conducted via haloed meetings, attended by officers whose comprehension of the subject under discussion is normally limited to what is included in the briefs or notes prepared by their juniors. Moreover, these incessant rounds of meetings tend invariably to be long and tedious, devoid of all levity or humour, and seldom result in any definitive decision. In most instances, the minutes are recorded on the ubiquitous file which in turn remains in perpetual orbit.

The German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) had famously defined bureaucracy as a highly structured organisation predicated on specialisation and technical competence, a formal set of rules and regulations, a well-defined hierarchy, and impersonality in application of rules. A century later Weber would be hard pressed, to put it mildly, to define Indian bureaucracy even remotely in this overarching framework.

Even insiders, who have spent decades in civil service, find it difficult to explain this sarkari jalebi that impinges on every Indian’s life in varying degrees but one that renders the bureaucrat wholly indispensable. It is also a truism that the power an Indian civil servant wields is vast and in many cases in indirect proportion to the ability of the person exercising it.

Metaphorically, India’s bureaucratic hierarchy – divided into four groups – mirrors the toxic chaturvarna vyavastha, or the caste system, to which admission is determined by one’s performance in the annual civil service and other entrance examinations. And much like the accident of birth that determines one’s station in the chaturvarna vyavastha, entry into one of these aforesaid categories too determines the future course of one’s career, circumscribing mobility across the broad four civil service groupings.

Specialisation is an important facet of bureaucracy in the Weberian scheme, but in the Indian context the ‘generalist’ IAS officers are the ultimate mavens in all administration branches, as Prime Minister Modi emphatically pointed out in the parliament.

Potentially, an IAS officer with a mere bachelor’s degree in arts could well be deemed as much of an expert in financial management as in aerospace and defence, in most instances learning the basics on the job. The depth of knowledge and experience normally necessary in each of these areas, it seems, are no barrier. As the prime minister declared: the ‘Babu’s can do everything.

Also read: Lateral Entry Is Fine. but What About Enhancing the IAS’s Professional Competence?

Streamlining the country’s bureaucracy

India’s first Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), aiming at streamlining the country’s bureaucracy, had in 1970 recommended that an overarching ‘functional field’ needed to be created for the lAS. The Commission proposed that this could consist of land revenue administration, exercise of magisterial functions and regulatory work in the states in fields other than those looked after by officials from sundry civil services.

It also suggested that the jobs which do not fall within a particular ‘functional area’ need to be demarcated into eight areas of specialised administration: economic, industrial agricultural and rural development, social and education, personnel, finance, defence and internal security, and planning.

Expectedly, these recommendations were never fully implemented. Instead, a hybrid system was adopted that provided an edge to IAS officers in matters of promotion, postings, and career furtherance. Under this skewered arrangement, the non-IAS services received step-brotherly treatment leading not only to resentment, but also demoralisation. Though the non-IAS officers are now being inducted into higher positions in the ministries in greater numbers than before, such opportunities continue to be limited relative to the number of officers seeking such opportunities.

The recommendations of the first ARC continue to be relevant as governance has become increasingly technologically enabled and specialised. Successive governments declared their intent on assuming office of executing administrative reforms, but these were cleverly stymied each time by the internal forces, reminiscent of the delightful BBC comedy Yes Minister and later Yes, Prime Minister.

In one uproarious episode Prime Minister Jim Hacker asks of senior bureaucrat Sir Humphrey Appleby whether he knew of a civil servant resigning on a matter of principle.

I should think not! What an appalling suggestion! retorts Sir Humphrey in high dudgeon.

Familiar?

Amit Cowshish is former financial advisor (acquisitions), Ministry of Defence.

Debate | Civil Services: A Less Than Fair Assessment

It would be wrong to draw a direct parallel from the American and European examples of change in public service delivery effected through large scale successful private contracting.

The proposition that the civil services are a blanket failure and need to be reduced in their importance (‘The Civil Services Have Failed to Deliver and It’s Time to Reconsider Their Importance‘, N.C. Asthana, February 21, 2020) is poorly supported by facts or logic.

In any case, increased short term lateral entry at primarily policy analysis roles cannot translate into immediately enhanced service delivery where the political administration is inherently incentivised to achieve rapid results. Besides, lateral inductions of successful non-government professionals at senior levels in government as members of an existing service or on contract/outside cadres is not entirely new.

The positions of the Government of India, except a few, are not statutorily reserved for any service. Mere conventions govern the share of the various services in Central posts and an incumbent prime minister has near total freedom in shaping the senior civil service compliment by adjusting the induction of officers through deputation from various services in the departments and ministries.

The enhanced representation of some services in senior posts (conventionally joint secretary and above) is largely a reflection of two realities determining the functional character of the ministries. Firstly, that a large number of central ministries such as Rural Development, Public Health, Agriculture and Cooperation, Water Resources, Internal Security (Police), Urban Development are classified as state subjects in the constitution.

Secondly, the inherent diversity of the state and regional dispensations handling these subjects call for sufficiently granulated understanding of the diverse needs governed by regional-linguistic and cultural character. The requirement for senior staffing with a firm grounding in state subjects with regional nuance is naturally answered by an assemblage of professionals who have spent the initial decade handling state subjects, focusing on service delivery or regulation in specific regional contexts.

Also read: Debate: The Civil Services Are an Integral Part of India’s Growth Story

To expect dramatically improved results overnight in the same positions from an officer who has spent the formative years in the confines of a central department such as Income-tax or Defence Estates is over optimistic. Though a case for a specific person qualified with superior policy making skills can be made, the lacunae from direct experience of front-ending programme implementation will remain. It would be wrong to draw a direct parallel from the American and European examples of change in public service delivery effected through large scale successful private contracting due to the absence of effective markets in many sectors such as health care or primary education.

‘Expertise on tap, not top’:

Asthana has absolute clarity that the civil services are an unqualified failure in service delivery. But his yardsticks remain as unclear as his argumentative bias. He laments the relative uselessness of elite institutions in India’s development. He should see the rationale for continuing with an ICS like service post-independence in the Cabinet resolution for creating the IAS and IPS. It merely states that the newly and integrated Princely States (provinces) and the Presidencies directly governed by the Viceroy need a uniform standard of administration at the district and state levels.

In other words, a chief secretary or district collector or their counterparts in the police need to have the same formative background such as a university degree and needed to be trained to an even level of understanding the constitutional import of their office in addition to being at least trilingual in order to communicate with counterparts in other states or the Union government with whom state and district administrations need to be in functional communication.

Representative image of IAS officers. Photo: Twitter/@rashtrapatibhavan

Asthana worries that the decade-old Google does not reflect the intellectual rigour required of India’s senior civil service. I would argue that considered per capita, the Indian civil servants are more into publishing and intellectual discourses than their first world counterparts.

There is an interesting anecdote of of a US Army delegation at Delhi in the late nineties finding their Indian counterparts far more pedantic and intellectual than required. Decision memos for US presidents prepared by their under secretaries are never more than a page as compared to our voluminous cabinet notes called for by the complexities of the question being addressed.

There is great need to educate the service delivery machinery to be much more more businesslike and precise in their communication. Similarly, policy making levels need different data and evidence related skill sets to be honed.

Also read: The Civil Services Have Failed to Deliver and Its Time to Reconsider Their Importance

The requisite broad understanding of both the national character and regional nuance of an issue cannot be confused with the “understanding of a mere common man”. In fact, Asthana’s confusion resulting in this depreciation of the common man’s view of a complex issue has been answered well by Harold Laski in his celebrated essay ‘The limitations of the expert‘ (1931).

Laski forcefully establishes that “the expert sacrifices the insight of common sense to the intensity of his experience, dislikes the appearance of novel views, fails to see his results in their proper perspective, has a ‘caste – spirit’ and simply by reason of his immersion in a routine tends to lack flexibility of mind once he approaches the margins of his special theme. Specialism seems to breed a horror of unwonted experiment, a weakness in achieving adaptability, both of which make the expert of dubious value when he is in the supreme command of the situation”.

Summarising his preference of the common man’s uncommon wisdom to the rare man’s shared perceptions, Laski says experts should be “on tap, not on top”.

Public leadership: A Laskian design

Democracies are famously Laskian in their choices for public service leadership. Businessmen, lawyers, military leaders, career civil servants, novelists, poets, performing artists, and public activists are all elected as mayors, prime ministers and presidents in democracies.

Personal special knowledge of their chosen vocation or learning definitely helps them take better informed calls in and around those disciplines better than others. However, his choice of alternatives depends on his options that are likely to be those more endorsed by the common man who trust him rather than his trust in the acute expertise of the proponents of the proposal. The considered endorsement from a diversity of actors who have regionally granulated experience of the question is a far superior test deck rather than those of ideologically same-feathered lateral inductees or pro bono advisors as several watershed reforms that did not entirely satisfy the intention have shown.

Asthana’s comparisons of leadership in the United States Urban Policing actually goes to disprove his main argument which is that the civil service system needs to be improved (by reducing importance) through lateral recruitment at senior levels. He would argue that a foot-patrol man selected through rigorous internal departmental examinations or screening is the best bet for a two year term as New York City Police Commissioner.

Firstly, the New York’s Commissioner of Police is a discretionary political appointment made by the mayor of the city subject to rules and precedent made by the city. Regional policing in the US is a city subject reflecting its aboriginal rights in the colonies which formed the federation. The US Constitution and its machinery has evolved in a gap filling nature and predominantly prohibits the US federal government from entering and regulating the lives of the citizens.

Indian city administrations are mandated by a later amendment in the Indian Constitution and the constitutional Mayor in India is only 25 years old. Would Asthana recommend the selection of City Police Commissioner at the discretion of the city mayor from its constabulary? Firstly, law and order administration in India is not yet devolved to the local bodies.

Experience of structure, philosophy and methods of policing may not be satisfactory. Even assuming that it is devolved in future, does he think that such selection will be free from the inherent noises that vitiate a fair selection in the Indian scene such as community/representational considerations? How does he see the State and Union Public Service statutes operate in that selection?

If the cities were free to choose their police chiefs to diverse selection parameters, how do we ensure that the city police chiefs talk to each other in India’s highly diverse linguistic-cultural mosaic? His uneven comparison with the profile of New York’s police chief as a potentially ideal system, masks the continuing dissatisfaction of New Yorkers to New York’s police administration.

Further, he forgets that a third of the compliment of Indian Police Service of each Indian state is actually recruited from the State Police Service with due weightage for their performance also estimated through departmental examinations. Would he like the Mayors involvement in this screening by a beginning through performance reporting? I am not sure he may agree.

Indianisation: an unfinished agenda

The ghost of ICS is repeatedly cast on the IAS and its sister services without noticing the vast Indianisation that has changed the once prevalent Anglican elitism in the services. English anecdotes from the past century do not reflect the intense Indianisation and democratisation services like the IAS have undergone.

The services have become very broad-based, now recruiting from hundreds of small town colleges and institutes than a handful of English founded urban colleges which over-represented in the initial years and reflect much better the diverse social reality of India. After the Mandal reforms of 1994, it reflects Indian social segments better as well.

A task unfinished

Asthana ought to have seen that, like the story of national development, the task of civil service remains an ever unfinished one. In the very state he spent his time, he fails to notice the new ground broken by his colleagues by innovatively combining micro-finance and self-employment to empower women (Kudumbashree founded by S.M. Vijayanand, T.K. Jose and James Varghese), a joint sector airport developed first time by a State with private capital (CIAL by V.J.Kurien) becoming a model in PPP based civil airport development, decentralised tourism promotion councils and cost effective housing (C.V. Ananda Bose) and People’s Planning and Decentralized Service Delivery through Panchayati Raj (S.M.Vijayanand) which have become national models and templates for other States and nations.

The differential development in human capital, industrialisation and social development achieved by the front running Indian States such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh is a standing testimony to the intensity of the variegated state development machinery at work. Mandate of the people is converted through the imagination and commitment of the generalist elected leader through ground truth policies and practices developed by civil servants and specialists.

The junior levels cut their teeth through effective implementation of the schemes and programmes which becomes the base to reform and refine the practice and policy in later years.

PM Modi interacting with IAS trainees. Photo: PTI

No doubt, the opportunities in civil services as it exists in India offers huge responsibility and challenges to an aspiring young person. Part of the aspiration may be unjustified non edifying self-gratification also. I have during my own humble innings, and have come across recruits chasing ‘15 minutes of fame’ projects and mistaking glamour for moving mountains of hard work.

Nevertheless, the huge opportunity given by the country in two decades to try and reach five lakh homes with drinking water, successfully vaccinate and prevent loss of animal farming fortunes, make sense of induction training to young civil servants, assist a minister in office and parliament in disposing individual cases and developing policy, conceiving and grounding the development of a young university from scratch, extending quality power and water services, and calling hundreds of contentious over-litigated disputes in our democratic polity remanded even by the Supreme Court has certainly instilled a sense of a humongous responsibility and opportunity for a young and inexperienced mind which has the right motivation and ready to take on the rigour of a 23-hour daily drill in continuously pursuing functional knowledge in one’s assigned domain.

The mode of a cvivl service systems operation is not an inert system of sui-generis rules and techniques operating in a political void. Even astute technologists and econocrats have to take their trade skills through the prism of politics where influence and communication rules technical narrow cast objectives.

Asthana’s quick judgment does not display a considered evaluation of the thinking and rationale of makers of India’s civil service such as Sardar Patel and V.P. Menon. The house of the civil service needs fixing badly, and maybe part of the solution is allowing lateral inductees to join the services at higher levels also.

Maybe the regulars need the same reasonable contractual space, i.e., two-three years in a seat to develop a body of work as well? Even now there is a 10% window that the states select their non-state civil service officers into IAS. This can possibly be expanded as a one-sixth vacancies window to be recruited regularly by the UPSC from eligible private sector candidates.

Inducting eligible candidates outside services as contractual joint secretaries or advisors is the complete privilege of a prime minister who is not shackled by any constitutional or statutory restraint to limit his choice of able men and women to staff his government. Will Asthana trust the state and city dispensations also to choose their higher civil service-as the Indian mayors to have their police chiefs at pure discretion?

I am sure he may like to think over his premise again.

Dr. B. Ashok is a former Vice Chancellor and civil servant. All views are personal.

The Civil Services Have Failed to Deliver and It’s Time to Reconsider Their Importance

The knowledge that once recruited, civil servants are not obliged to prove their competence ever again has disincentivised performance.

It has been reported that the prime minister’s patience with the IAS is wearing thin. One of the reasons conjectured is that the efforts of the government do not seem to percolate down towards its intended recipients and hence it is vigorously pursuing the idea of taking more and more senior officers through the lateral induction process from the private sector. Whatever be the motive, it is a welcome step as the civil service has miserably failed to deliver.

The civil service has failed on delivery

The civil services exam, quite like the JEE, has been imbued with an aura of mystery. Common people think that those who manage to ‘crack’ these exams are crème de la crème of the country, and their ‘inherent superiority’ will take India up the Golden Path. Fact is neither IITians nor civil servants have done any wonders for the country. One of our rare success stories, the ISRO, has just 2% of its engineers from the IITs plus NITs, all the rest are from small engineering colleges.

Similarly, civil servants must also be judged by what they have delivered over the decades in terms of introducing better administrative practices, policies or imparting superior domain knowledge to the nation. The million-dollar question is what the civil service, based on a competitive examination-based selection, has delivered in 165 years of its existence, which could arguably be delivered only by them and not by others, say promoted officers, academicians or just common citizens? The answer is a shocking nil. In essence, Indian administration still functions very much the same way it functioned 165 years ago. Its resources have changed; its mind and spirit remain the same. You can do a Google search and can confirm that the intellectual contribution of some 60,000 civil servants to date in terms of original books and research papers published has been insignificant. The sorry state of the country in terms of its economy, public healthcare, education, research and innovation even after 73 years of independence is well known. The higher ranks of civil service claim a hand in formulating national policies too. This means that the blame for the many failed policies of the past 73 years must fall on the civil service too.

Also Read: Data Dive Shows Urgent Need for Civil Services Reform in India

Some apologists of the IAS argue that it is a multi-functional service for senior positions in the government that require a broad understanding of the various subjects that go into the making of overall policy. Question is what the criteria for determining this so-called ‘broad understanding’ is and who is competent to determine it? Moreover, there is no objective test for determining someone’s level of broad understanding. This is actually a euphemistic way of admitting that they do not know more than an ordinary man.

Civil services are the only job in the world where you are paid for your entire career for having obtained the job in the first place! No single exam, however tough, can guarantee lifelong delivery, particularly because there is no system of rigorous in-service examinations to check one’s competence to continue.

File image of UPSC candidates standing in queue for inspection by police personnel outside an exam centre in Gurugram. Photo: PTI

There is no logic for recruiting directly at the top

All over the world, people are recruited at the bottom of the ladder and from there, they earn their promotions depending on their merit, as proved through departmental examinations. The New York City Police Department, for example, had a workforce of 55,304 and a budget of $5.6 billion (Rs 40,320 crore) in 2018. You can compare it with a nearly equally big (50,000 strong) police department of Kerala in India, which has been adjudged the second-best in the whole country. In 2018, Kerala police had a budget of Rs 3,977.32 crore only, that is, about 10 times less than their counterparts in New York. Given the fact that the NYPD is technically much better equipped and spends much more, the job of the New York Police commissioner is understandably more onerous than the job of the DGP of Kerala. The DGP of Kerala is a direct-recruit IPS officer with a minimum of 30 years of service. The present NYPD commissioner, Dermot F. Shea, had joined the police as a patrolman (that is, at the bottom of the ladder) in 1991. He became a sergeant in 1995, a lieutenant in 199, a captain in 2003, a deputy inspector in 2008, an inspector in 2010, a deputy chief in 2013, the deputy commissioner of operations in 2014, the designated chief of crime control strategies in 2017, the chief of detectives in 2018 and the New York City police commissioner in December 2019. Even by American standards, he gets a very high pay of $238,000 per annum, which is much higher than the average pay of $186,622 per annum of a Lieutenant General of the US Army. If a promoted patrolman can head the NYPD, why do we need the feudal system of IPS officers to head a smaller police force? Why cannot promoted officers do it? Why do we also not devise a proper system of promotions through examinations?

The un-Indian, feudal soul of the civil service

Civil servants do not tire of referring to themselves as the ‘steel frame’. Little do they realise that when Lloyd George had spoken of the ‘steel frame’, he meant it as an instrument of perpetuating the British Empire—he had no concern for India or Indians. Speaking in the House of Lords on February 26, 1924, Marquess Curzon of the Kedleston had clearly said, “The British Raj in India will fade away and disappear unless you have a sound Civil Service to support it.” In the same debate, Lord Olivier, the secretary of state for India, also said that it was impossible to associate the idea of the maintenance and perpetuity of British Civil Service in India with the ultimate idea of Indian nationalism and responsible government.

While the fealty of the civil servants to the Empire was never in doubt, their real contribution is grossly overestimated. ICS officers could go about their careers because it was so ridiculously easy to go about it. Eric Hobsbawm, noted historian and Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, has pointed out that the Raj was ‘so easily won, so narrowly based, so absurdly easily ruled, thanks to the devotion of a few and the passivity of the many’.

After 30 years in the ICS, H. Fielding Hall wrote in 1895, “The whole attitude of government to the people it governs is vitiated. There is a want of knowledge and understanding. In place of it, are fixed opinions based usually on prejudice or on faulty observation, or on circumstances which have changed, and they are never corrected. Young secretaries read up back circulars, and repeat their errors indefinitely…‘following precedent’.”

Liberal statesman John Bright described the Empire a “gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain”.

The civil service after Independence

Ideally, the nation should have disbanded the ICS/IP immediately after independence to make way for a truly nationalist cadre of officers. However, rattled by the traumatic experience of the centrifugal tendencies in some princely states, Sardar Patel pitched for continuity of the civil service. In October 1949, he told the Constituent Assembly, “You will not have a united India if you do not have a good All-India Service which has independence to speak out its mind”, even as many chief ministers had vehemently opposed it and wanted state civil services as they felt that the idea of All-India Service opposed the federal principle.

The civil service has belied Sardar’s expectations and disproved his wishful thinking on both counts. First, there has hardly been any instance in 73 years when they spoke their mind. On the contrary, there are a million examples to prove that they have been yes-men par excellence—the quintessential courtiers reciting ‘huzoor behtar jaanate hain’ (the master knows better). Moreover, there is no evidence at all that the civil service has promoted the unity and integrity of the country, whereas the state services could not have done the same thing or better. In fact, until December 2018, as many as 1,669 Kashmiri subordinate police officers have sacrificed their lives in fighting terrorism. Mohd Amin Bhat, the only ‘federal’ IPS officer to be martyred, was also a Kashmiri.

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The feudal character of the IAS has become worse

Britain had produced a veritable battery of outstanding scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries in various fields. Ever wondered why not one of them was to join the ICS? The reason was simple. The Empire did not want the risk of ‘independent thinkers’ questioning the immoral ways of the Empire and its servants, whom Edmund Burke had described as ‘birds of prey and passage’. The Empire wanted submissive, impressionable boys for whom working in the colonies was a thrilling adventure with good money to boot, and who would do their bidding happily. Thus, a culture was born in which the primary requirement from civil servants was meekness. Meekness dovetails with sycophancy and everything associated with it.

V. S. Naipaul says that the attitudes the ICS men brought to bear to their work in India had greatly deteriorated by the end of the 19th century from curiosity and concern to complacency and cant. Gopalkrishna Gandhi calls the ICS a set of small-minded, small-sighted, small-feeling men. They had only to act pompous and pass their time in splendid isolation. The civil service, in its new avatar of IAS/IPS etc. took its ‘fortuitous’ continuation after independence as the license to exacerbate its feudal traits. The revolutionary poet Josh Maleehabadi expressed his anguish over this eloquently in his poem ‘Maatam-e-Azadi’:

“Shaitan ek raat mein insaan ban gaye (devils turned into humans overnight)”.

A fellow retired civil servant Avay Shukla notes that most IAS officers have very high levels of schadenfreude (pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune), and love nothing better than to see the proletariat squirm. You would never find a citizen who could claim that civil servants were kind to him or made his life better in such-and-such manner without any recommendation, pressure or outright bribe. No wonder, in spite of all the progress that the country has made, India ranks 140 in terms of happiness in the list of 156 countries (World Happiness Report 2019), with even Pakistan way ahead of us at 67.

Why civil service still fascinates people

As James Bond quipped in Goldeneye, “Hope springs eternal”. In spite of suffering at the hands of the civil servants and knowing well that the civil services have failed to deliver, most young people hope to join that elite group someday, to enjoy the powers and privileges, not to speak of the hundreds of crores they could make if they chose to be corrupt. That hope is the reason that few people oppose the illogical system. Not long ago, we had proper feudal lords who got their positions and titles through birth or sheer force of arms; the civil services have replaced them with ‘feudalism through exam’. The earlier we do away with this, the better.

N.C. Asthana, a retired IPS officer, has been DGP Kerala and a long-time ADG CRPF and BSF. Views are personal.