The sad truth about the Indian Civil Service
Millions dream to crack the insanely hard UPSC examination and be recruited in the coveted Indian Administrative Services. These aspirants intent to ‘shake the system’ up overnight and do great things for their country. Popular Bollywood films portray civil servants powerful individuals who can get politicians on the right track and fight corruption from its very root.
However, the sad truth is that the civil servants rarely have mediums to stand up to injustice or badly thought out policies by the political leadership. Contrary to popular belief most civil servants are executers of political will instead of independent literate policymakers. An IAS officer does what the politician in power says even if that politician has no idea about governance. If by good fortune an officer refuses to be a silent observer of outright injustice and defies the political leadership, the officer is most likely to be transferred or sidelined.
According to Times of India, two-thirds of civil servants serve in one position for 18 months or less on average. This means that the focus of a civil servant is on surviving in a position and ‘not messing up’ instead of trying to innovate and progress. Why take a risk and inflict a blot on one’s career when a post is most likely temporary?
The civil services has limited means to influence policymaking in the interest of the nation, but has limitless means to engage in corrupt activities in company of politicians. As the ground level executers of policies, most of the corruption which occurs happens through civil servants. Once again there is not much incentive for a bureaucrat to fight this plague called corruption as the outcome of any complaint will surely be a transfer, so why not benefit from it instead? After a certain period of time corruption becomes a normalized factor in the officer’s life who once was a young idealist who planned on eradicating the very problems of society.
Now, there is no doubt in the fact that civil servants in India live a life of dignity. But not of freedom. They have no right to follow their own conscience. Instead, they are ordered around by individuals who might not know anything about administration but know how to charm and please people in order to garner votes. There are many IAS officers who seal their mouths shut and wittiness the blatant murder of the nation in front of their very eyes at the hands of politicians. There are even more officers who aide politicians in their crimes. However, there are a rare few who try to prevent these crimes. But even these rare few are exiled and transferred.
Is this a problem? No! The purpose of civil services is to implement and execute the decisions made by the elected government. It would be an attack on democracy if unelected civil servants started making political decisions. However, the problem is that many people in India believe that civil servants, especially IAS officers, make political decisions and wield enormous amounts of power. That couldn’t be further from the truth as I have explained.
Another problem is that civil servants do not carry out policies and schemes in the desired manner in numerous cases due to mainly two reasons: corruption and frequent transfers. If an officer knew that he or she would be transferred after around one and a half year, why would they take risks and try to improve the state of affairs? Instead, maintaining the current state of affairs is more preferred. This leads to progress being slowed down even more. For once even if an officer is willing to take a few risks for progress, corruption especially from higher ranks would halt the honest efforts. Anyone brave enough to protest can easily be transferred and ‘sorted out’.
It is truly saddening that so many people aspire to become the officer to change how the country functions and in order to do so sacrifice years of their life attempting to pass the UPSC exams which are inhumanly competitive and hard just to become a politician’s henchman or a slightly affective bureaucrat at best.
