Civil Service

TIME TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF CIVIL SERVICE

India wanted its All India Services of the post-independent era to break away from the British legacy and as a first step altered the names of the services. It is an irony that the process led to and marked a dilution of quality.

The present

Indian

Administrative Services is not even a poor shadow of the old Indian Civil Service; nor does the Indian Foreign Service bears a resemblance to the Indian Political Service; and the present Indian police service lacks the vigour of the good old Indian Police.

The old All India Services was built on the tripod of faultless selection and recruitment, perfect training and exposures to the highest standards of professionalism and character to sustain it throughout. But, new India just failed to give these factors the importance they deserved.

Reasons for this deterioration are many. The first is inherent lack of passion for quality and excellence. The agency incharge of selections, the Union Public Service Commission, is manned by people unequal for the task either in their professionalism, efficiency, passion for brilliance or basic character, How can the process be reversed?

Merciless pruning of the extant services to create a compact and highly responsible core of administrative potentialities to handle a few sensitive key positions in the colossus of the administration is needed now. Nothing short or brilliance and highest potentiality to handle the affairs of the country should find a place in the wing that is

1

responsible for constituting the nerve-centre. The administration must be kept beyond the purview of extraneous constraints such as reservation of any kind and even age restrictions by way of multiple point entries for different age groups. The guiding principle here is drawing the best talents from whatever sources without restraints of any kind

for the

best results.

The services should not be treated as an employment

opportunity to the elite, but as the foundation and pillars of the government.

HUMAN RESOURCE

The basic source of manpower for these services has to be boys and girls below the age of 16 years who have completed secondary education. The selection must be made part of the final secondary examination. The UPSC must be made responsible for grooming those recruited. The commission must handle their further academic studies at the government’s expense for the next seven years to meet the demand of the services.

Identifying the best talents of the country at higher age groups has to be the goal of the Establishment Cell created within the UPSC on the lines of the Establishment Officer of the Home Department of the British Raj. The cell must get busy scouting for best talents from whatever source for direct absorption to the All India Services at the appropriate levels after initial training.

Outstanding professionals, technocrats and

creative minds of proven calibre can be the candidates.

2

Every recruit has to be put in independent charge of a subordinate job for two years under the supervision of a competent senior officer. His performance in this sphere must from a vital ingredient in the annual assessment. The trainee must be judged at every stage at different levels to decide his or her suitability for various jobs.

Five years of regular service after the field training must pave the way for the first promotion. This must function as a natural filtering process as those fit should be promoted in the mainstream while others get elevated to higher ranks in the related subordinate departments to man posts covered under the Central Services.

Mr.B.K.Nehru, in his memoirs “ Nice Guys Finish Second” refers to an incident in 1950s wherein the then Finance Minister T.T.Krishnamachari, asked the chairman of the Central Board of Revenue to show him a particular income-tax file. The latter refused point blank on the ground that the law did not allow it. While he agreed that T.T.K. was his superior, he contended that he himself could see the file as the chief of the Income-Tax Department while TTK could not as he was not directly involved with the department. India needs such spirit.

While the Ministers must lay down objectives and policies, their secretaries must formulate programmes including drafting appropriate laws and rules to channel the government objectives and policies. The onus of implementation of the programmes must be left to the departments concerned.

3

India, in the pre-independent years needed brilliant people to handle its administration. British India, with all its brilliant ideas and administrative wisdom, created the All India Services. It recruited brilliant people for the services, imparted the best possible training to them, exposed them to the highest standards of the profession and presented them the best of trust, powers and opportunities to carry out their responsibilities. The Government took care of all their personal needs, provided them with many opportunities for growth and bestowed on them a halo of invincibility.

The training programmes for the services should be relevant to the time and highly advanced in content. Subjects taught have to be updated every year by experts and made challenging even to the brightest among the members of the services unlike present training programmes which are intellectually impoverished, irrelevant to the time and do not help tune attitudes to higher levels. Another need is making the promotional tests mandatory and of a high standard. Overhauling the present mediocre Union Police Service Commission to create an efficient and responsible set-up capable of handling the enormous responsibilities under Article 320 that compels attention to arrest the degeneration set in, in the set-up that led to blunders in identifying talents and managing the services.

CREDIBILITY OF THE UPSC

A recent case is from Karnataka where three promising officers from the state cadre were denied selection by the UPSC to an All India Service for no obvious reason

4

for ten years from 1990 while their juniors scored the elevation. The acute frustration and demoralisation caused led to the break-up of family life of one of the promising trio and subsequent divorce, repeated violent behaviour by him in public leading to public humiliation and ultimately involvement in a murder case ending in his arrest and conviction.

The answer to unprofessional transgressions by the UPSC lies in transforming it to a highly professional outfit managed by people of unimpeachable character, efficiency responsibility. The objective can be achieved by suitable amendment to Articles 316 and 317 to ensure that only right and sensible people become members and chairman of the organisation and remain in the saddle only till they retain their moral and professional calibre.

This can be made possible by the constitution of a committee comprising the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Chief Commissioner of Central Vigilance Commission and Speaker of Parliament as members and the Vice-President of India as the Chairman to clear the names for appointments as members and chairmen of the UPSC for a fixed tenure and initiate actions for their removal by an appropriate procedure in fit cases. Changes to this effect in Articles 316 and 317 plug the loopholes in the existing provisions that provide too much scope for political interferences in the selection of members and chairman of the UPSC.

5

All –India Services as the nerve-centre of the administration has to be made responsible to an apex body called All India Services apex board. The board should oversee, supervise, study, control and manage every affair pertaining to the Services at its own collective wisdom and discretion with powers of

rewards, punishment and

placements invested with it. Sensitive posts in the governments and public undertakings have to be identified

in advance for the All India Services and once it is done,

placements have to be left to the wisdom and discretion of the apex board.

The

governments concerned and public undertakings as employers must keep the apex body constantly and periodically informed about the performances of each official placed under it and request changes wherever necessary with reasons therefore. The final decision on such requests has to be left to the judgement of the apex board based on its constant research, study, enquiry and assessment.

The best bet for professional resolve and high commitment in such an apex body is having senior most officers of the All-India Service in fine fettle as members of the apex board under the seniormost member as the chairman, appointed strictly on seniority. It is these members with tow-thirds majority who must be empowered to bar a competent senior officer from becoming a member or remove an existing member of chairman from the board by recording sufficient reasons for the act.

Under the new scheme one should be committed to service for life unless one offers to retire on health or personal grounds or forced out by the apex board for valid reasons.

Except in cases of retirement on request before the age of 60 years

for

6

nonmedical reasons or removal by the apex board as a punishment, every officer should be entitled to all the benefits as in service for life even after retirement. However, once confirmed in the service, one should be prohibited from taking up any private or other government jobs while in service or after retirement or even after resignation from the service. These safeguards should be relaxed only by the apex board.

The country should take cognisance of all the legitimate needs of these officers and provide them with the best possible living standards. Instead of salaries, these exceptionally brilliant officers must be allowed to decide and draw emoluments against performances every month on their own assessment which include liberal perks such as free education for children in any kind of educational institution, free

educational

supports, free medial aid of whatever kind, free club membership

and other

entertainments, free foreigh tours, free housing and transportation of whatever kind, help to earn permanent assets, free supplies of daily needs and other movable properties. Each officer must submit to the apex board a periodical report of his performances. The board must study each report to judge the officer. It may warn or take whatever action found necessary.

The Government is doing nothing to arrest the decline of the All India Services on all fronts. India is preoccupied with myriad issues of economic and social developments and perhaps the rapid deterioration of its All India Services does not seem important. But, the Government should realise that a strong civil service is mandatory for the survival of India and act fast.

7