The Indian Archaic Service - Most of Civil Servants not Happy with System
THE Centre For Good Governance conducted a survey among the officers of the Indian Civil Services, IAS, IPS, IFS, IRS etc. about what they think of the civil services and what could be done to make governance more effective. The Survey has come out with interesting findings which of course every civil servant knows. Many officers who participated in the survey were brutally frank. Here are some views of the bureaucrats on themselves.
Why Revenue Service? Probationers leaving other central services and joining revenue services or preferring revenue services over even the coveted IAS clearly betrays their intentions.
Poor Quality of Support Staff: poor quality of support staff is a major factor in poor work environment. It has been suggested by some IFS officers that instead of poor quality support staff from India, who also happen to cost more, the missions abroad should be allowed to hire persons locally on more competitive terms. It is also felt that disciplinary procedures are very cumbersome and lengthy and do not lead to any positive impact on the system in most of the cases.
Top Heavy: Cadre restructuring in some services has resulted in fewer posts at the support level as higher posts were created by keeping these in abeyance or by abolishing them; and dilution of work content of officers at the higher level with shrunken jurisdictions.
Transfers and Postings: complete lack of transparency which provided opportunity for political interference and other extraneous factors to interfere with fairness in the system. Suggestions for improvement included independent committee for transfers and postings, performance based postings, stability of tenure as well as proper human resource planning. The ‘politicization’ of postings and transfer was mostly strongly felt in the states as pulls and pressures from local politicians were much more than at the central government level.
Price of Honesty?: What worries an honest government servant is the prospect of being posted to an obscure post with zero job content or worse a string of such postings as a price for one’s honesty and commitment. Establishment of internal grievance mechanisms, accountability of senior officers and defined transfer policy for each department were suggested as important measures to avoid arbitrary decisions in postings and transfers. It was suggested that transparency could be ensured through open advertisement of deputation posts through online and offline media to invite applications from interested officers.
Postings, transfers, nominations for foreign trainings, deputations to central secretariat, international bodies, etc. should be handled by an independent committee, tribunal, statutory board or the UPSC. Lack of stability in tenure owing to frequent transfers has been a concern as it adversely affected job satisfaction, children’s education, and family togetherness and placed officers at the mercy of corrupt influences. There should be a fixed tenure of at least 2 to 3 years for all civil servants (except officers of suspected integrity) to ensure accountability and maximize their impact on the job.
Inconveniences for the officer’s family have been another major cause for dissatisfaction with postings and transfers.
No transfer for the sake of transfer: Officers strongly opposed the idea of transfers for the sake of transfers as it killed the motivation of officers and curtailed their incentive to specialize in a particular field. It was therefore suggested that officers should be allowed to specialize in the initial stages of their service and further postings be planned in consideration of their specialization.
No Ladies in DRI?: Female officers felt that they were denied opportunity to serve in sensitive and challenging posts (for e.g. in DRI in Revenue Service). [It is strange but true; there is hardly any lady officer in DRI, though they have a Lady Boss and the poor Government is not able to find a replacement for her, even though she had been promoted as Board Member.]
Training: Many officers felt that selection for trainings has become biased and prerogative of the seniors. Foreign trainings and programmes in prestigious institutions in the country are limited and are open to few privileged officers.
ACRs: ACRs have become a routine and meaningless exercise with most officers receiving an ‘Outstanding’ or ‘Very Good’ for enabling easy promotions. Further, superior officers use ACRs to force submission of subordinates or destroy the career of honest and upright officers who do not yield to corrupt influences. Very often, ACRs are not submitted in time and, therefore, serve limited purpose as a regular feedback mechanism. It was felt by many that ACRs are prepared in an arbitrary and opaque manner and that the criteria set in the ACRs were not capable of distinguishing between good and poor performers. However, not all officers are in favour of disclosing the ACRs as they felt that superior officers may give higher grades to non-performers, due to fear of non-cooperation from disgruntled subordinates.
Integrity: There is a feeling that commitment and integrity are not recognized; and honest and upright officers are sidelined or harassed. It is also felt across all services that value system has eroded because of excessive political interference. There is an urgent need to weed out the corrupt and dishonest officers.
Anonymous Complaints: In case of services dealing with revenue collection, it is common practice to derail an honest assessing officer by making anonymous complaints against him. Enquiry on baseless allegations itself is a punishment; it does not matter if (s)he is exonerated at the end. It has been pointed out that lure of post retirement assignments is a major reason for spinelessness of the senior civil servants. The system does not distinguish between bona fide and mala fide mistakes. It is felt that those who work are bound to make mistakes and when such mistakes are viewed seriously officers tend to play safe and avoid taking any decisions.
RTI - Harassment?: Human rights organizations and commissions deliberately misrepresented cases and unduly harassed the officer concerned. At times citizens and their representatives use RTI to harass them.
Lack of accountability: One theme that recurred again and again in the comments was the complete lack of accountability of civil servants. Audit objections are dealt with by regularizing expenditure without ever fixing responsibility. In any case officers move from job to job while the audit objections are dealt conveniently by their successors. It has been suggested that Audit Objections should be tagged to officers so that the government has a financial profile of the officer.
IAS vs Non-IAS - The Divide: The issue of perceived disparity between officers belonging to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and other services is considered as a major cause for inter-service rivalry and demoralization of non-IAS officers.
Most non-IAS officers consider it unfair to perpetuate the entry-level advantage of IAS officers (derived from a higher rank in UPSC examination) for the entire duration of the service spanning 2 to 3 decades. Most non-IAS officers resented the hegemony of IAS in all the senior positions in government, which gave them the authority to undertake cadre management and planning of all Services often disregarding the interests of Services concerned.
Non-IAS officers also felt that IAS officers enjoyed a clear advantage over non-IAS officers in remuneration, empanelment, promotions, foreign assignments, housing allotments, and infrastructural facilities. Most non- IAS officers experienced delays in empanelment and promotions compared to IAS officers, often resulting in non-IAS officers being forced to report to IAS officers junior to them.
Many of them feel that it is unfair that the advantage given by scoring a few marks more in the civil services should be carried for the rest of one’s career. If there be only one common examination, many feel that there should be only one service called Indian Civil Service.