What is the issue?
- The generalist character of the administrative personnel in India is losing its relevance, given the many emerging challenges.
- The need for domain knowledge in Indian Administrative Service personnel is being increasingly felt.
How has the system progressed?
- India inherited the civil service system from the erstwhile British.
- It was however felt that the colonial civil service system would be unsuitable for politically free and economically poor India.
- Renaming of ICS (Indian Civil Service) as IAS, etc had happened, but there had been only little change in practice.
- The IAS continue to be deeply hierarchical and rule-bound, and seniority continues to be the basic criterion.
- The goal of the training is still that of creating the all knowing “intelligent generalist”.
- The service thus holds its generalist character despite the increasing need for domain knowledge in administration.
What is the way forward?
- Many incremental changes to policy and government role have happened over the years since the time of independence.
- The civil service should thus assess the shift from seniority and experience based system to a domain knowledge based system.
- Organisational Change - Change in the organisation of government ministries and departments is essential alongside the change in the character of the personnel system.
- This could be carried on by clustering the departments based on their needs , demands and characters.
- The clusters may be categorised as security, economy, engineering, energy, social, rural, transport, science and technology, etc.
- System - It is suggested that the Indian civil service could adopt the system practised in the defence personnel.
- A person joining the Indian Army as an infantry man remains so throughout the career and cannot become an artilleryman, etc.
- Similarly, once “streamed”, the civil servants can spend the rest of their careers within the clusters or sectors as specified above.
- Training - Training and examination could be made mandatory to reach higher levels in the service.
- The academy at Mussoorie could engage in training officers in leadership qualities and more in imparting training in the domain knowledge.
Source: The Hindu
