Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Duvvuri Subbarao believes that the civil services in India have to be reformed and reinvented as the "steel frame" has certainly rusted. The term "steel frame" is used to describe the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) because of its strong and durable nature.
However, Subbarao told news agency PTI: "The steel frame has certainly rusted." "I firmly believe that a country of our size and diversity still needs a generalist service like the IAS but the service needs to be reformed, and even reinvented, in many ways," he said, adding that the solution is not to throw away the rusted frame but to bring it back to its original lustre.
Subbarao, who also served as the Union Finance Secretary during the Manmohan Singh government, said when the IAS was instituted soon after Independence as a successor to the colonial-era ICS, it was seen as the home-grown answer to the enormous task of nation-building.
While IAS officers led this effort from the front, built an impressive development administration network from ground zero, and earned for the service a formidable reputation for competence, commitment, and integrity, Subbarao said, its reputation began unravelling in subsequent decades.
"The IAS lost its ethos and its way. Ineptitude, indifference, and corruption crept in," he said. This negative view, he added, is shaped by a minority of officers who have gone astray, but the worry is that that minority is no longer small.
UPSC conducts the civil services examination every year to select officers of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), the Indian Police Service (IPS), and others.
Last month, former Niti Aayog Vice Chairperson Arvind Panagariya said changing the bureaucracy system is difficult in the country and that he always felt that lateral entry was one way to proceed. "But even that has been extremely hard," the economist said at the 4th Columbia India Summit in New York. He also said the central tendency of the Indian bureaucracy has been to be an obstacle to change.
In May this year, economist Sanjeev Sanyal said that a large part of bureaucracy is largely dull and boring and about passing files up and down. He also said that a lot of young Indians waste their prime years preparing for the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) examinations when only a few thousand make the cut.
"I would say it's a waste of time. And I always discourage people unless they really want to be an administrator, they shouldn't take the UPS exam. Many of them after having gone through it, then they get frustrated through the course of their career. In the end, life in bureaucracy is not meant for everybody. And large parts of it, as with any profession, but large parts of it are largely dull and boring and about passing files up and down. Unless you really wanted to do it, you're not going to be particularly happy with it," Sanyal said in a conversation with Siddhartha Ahluwalia on his podcast The Neon Show.
However, former Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant recently said that the UPSC is not a 'waste of time'. "Pride in serving India runs deep. Working with the govt offers immense job satisfaction and opportunities for transformative impact at an unmatched size and scale. While private sector collaboration is crucial, govt policies catalyse growth," he said.