By the IAS, for the IAS

This year a cloud hung over Civil Services Day on April 21. The report of the 6th Pay Commission leading to an outcry across the spectrum of civil and military services at its IAS-centric world view has on the one hand raised a question mark over the role of the IAS as disinterested custodian of the Indian state, and on the other hand shown how far behind the times the civil services of India are.

Consider a simple statistic. In 1981, out of a total of 60-odd secretary-level posts in the Government of India, about 25 were occupied by non-IAS civil services. Now when the total number of such posts has gone up to about 250, (so much for liberalisation and getting the Government off our backs), the total number of such posts occupied by those not privileged to be the Brahmins of Bureaucracy has remained about the same. This tells us two things, the first that despite economic liberalisation, and the supposed deepening of grassroots politics through Panchayati Raj Institutions, the state continues to be the growing Big Brother in our political and economic life. And second, that the IAS has deftly used its proximity to the political bosses and monopoly of key posts in vital institutions to ruthlessly cement its position at the apex of the public services.

It remains a telling commentary on the quality of our public life that other than the uniformed services, the armed forces and the police, who for a change have shed their usual diffidence and misplaced sense of propriety and openly criticised the motives and method of the 6th CPC, there appears to be little discussion about the significance of the 6th CPC to the quality of India’s governance at a critical juncture. India today is poised on the verge of a social and economic transformation that if managed properly would propel it to the rank of great powers in the lifespan of a single generation. In the worldview of the 6th CPC, the IAS and the IAS alone has the wherewithal to take India to its tryst with destiny, never mind the fact that 60 years of the history of independent India suggest otherwise.

In its initial years, the IAS presented itself as the custodian of a nascent democracy. As the socialist experiment of Nehru gathered steam, it positioned itself as the instrument of planned development. With the coming of liberalisation in 1991, it has reinvented itself as the facilitator and regulator of the free economy. It seems that no matter what the needs of the times and irrespective of its patchy performance, the IAS is indispensable to the well being of the Indian nation.

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