The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has apparently sought empanelment of non-IAS (Indian Administrative Service) or Group A officers for the senior posts of secretaries in the central government, and it can only be hoped that such a policy change would leaven the existing hierarchical differences among groups of bureaucrats. The genesis of the differences is rooted in the structure of the Civil Services examination. Those scoring high marks and securing top ranking are assigned to the IAS, while others, based on the scale of their marks and rankings, are relegated to services like Indian Accounts and Auditing, Revenue, Customs, Income-Tax and the Railways. 

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There are a total of 36 services other than the IAS and the Indian Foreign Service (IFS). The pre-eminence of the IAS is reflected in the appointment of its cadres to the higher echelons of the service, with IAS officers taking over as secretaries in the various ministries of the central government. The top bureaucrat, the Cabinet Secretary, invariably happens to be from the IAS cadre. This, not surprisingly, has generated a great deal of resentment among non-IAS groups of bureaucrats.

Ever since the 1991 reforms, there has been talk of reforming the bureaucracy in order to meet the challenges of a professionalised free market economy. It was felt that the administrative skills that an IAS officer acquired over the years were far too general in nature sans the technical knowledge or domain expertise that is necessary to deal with specialised domains like, for instance, international trade, taxation, security et al. It is against this background that those serving in specialised services like the Indian Revenue Service have now laid claims to receiving equal treatment at par with the IAS in postings to senior positions in the Ministry of Finance. 

Statistics indicate that though a larger number of non-IAS service officers have over the decades come to occupy the top positions of secretaries and joint secretaries in central government, the IAS officers still continue to have an edge in securing these powerful positions. 

There have been suggestions that like the American system of governance, the Indian government, too, should induct experts having superior knowledge in specialised subjects of governance. For example, the Administrative Reforms Commission set up by the UPA I with Congress leader Veerappa Moily as chairman, mooted the idea of lateral induction of experts into policy and decision-making positions in the government. The commission also came up with a proposal against civil servants having a secure tenure of 35 years. The committee suggested periodic assessments and the policy of terminating an officer’s tenure on grounds of unsatisfactory performance. But the Manmohan Singh government chose not to act on these recommendations.

But now it seems that the Modi government is reviewing the conditions of service so that those with domain expertise would be picked for key decision-making positions in government. This approach is sure to undermine the privileged status that the IAS officers had enjoyed so far. And some of them have openly come out against the officers seeking pay parity in the Seventh Pay Commission. 

There is little doubt that the Indian bureaucracy, in consonance with the changing times, is in dire need of a total revamp. The civil service as it exists now is a continuation of the colonial bureaucratic set up within the “steel frame” structure that was then dominated by the Indian Civil Services (ICS). It can be argued that in the colonial times such a system of bureaucracy had provided stability to the state structures. But it is high time that the bureaucratic structures are democratised to loosen the grip the IAS officers continue to exercise over the system.