The civil service of half a century ago is not the one of today, says MoS Singh at The Indian Express Excellence in Governance Awards

“I was telling them the other day in the academy that what is appreciable is not what you learn from this academy, but what is equally appreciable is what you soon unlearn and learn outside. Like for example there is a Cabinet reshuffle in the middle of the night, the same bouquet which was given to me would be given to someone else the next morning. They do so so seamlessly, it’s worth learning,”

In the past 10 years, the government changed the format of the PM Excellence awards from an individual profile-based award to one based on flagship programmes. The government also introduced a new post of assistant secretary for new civil servants to spend three months in the Union government before joining their respective states, Singh said. He said new civil servants would be pampered when posted as SDMs, with multiple attendants. But as assistant secretaries, they worked with undersecretaries like interns, he said.

“Suddenly you’ve come out of the academy, you’ve become the big boss over there and in a small town, you’re treated like a maharaja. On the one hand you have people there making a beeline to gain your patronage, on the other, you have the matrimonial market chasing you, so in that humbug you get confused. So we thought this could be a leveling ground.”

Referring to the changes in the bureaucracy, he said: “There is a huge democratisation of civil services. It is no longer confined to an elite section. Earlier on we had civil servants mostly from the South Indian states, like Tamil Nadu for example, Kerala and in North, of course Bihar. Now we have toppers from the most unlikely states like Punjab, Haryana. So that’s a huge demographic change. And you have a huge percentage of women civil servants coming in, almost 28-30%, which was hardly 3-4% earlier on.”

Recalling the evolution of the IAS from the ICS pre-Independence, he said the role and expectations from the administrative service changed on August 15, 1947.

“The civil service of half a century ago is not the one of today because after all he is the child of the same society. Vohi gun aur apgun us me bhi hai. You cannot blame the civil servant for something you find that has been happening inappropriately, after all he is not different from the society that has groomed the others. But at the same time, the level of accountability has increased, the scrutiny has increased.”