The world8217;s most complex job

I was interested to see, a few months ago, that the UPSC is attempting to change and update'' the training courses for the civil service...

I was interested to see, a few months ago, that the UPSC is attempting to change and 8220;update8221; the training courses for the civil service. As I understand it, such updating would mean the adding of management inputs which would make it easier for young civil servants to deal with a more market-oriented world.

This may well be necessary. Nonetheless, it has left me pondering a more basic question which has exercised me ever since I married into the civil service two decades ago. That is, how in the world can anyone really prepare for the Indian civil service, given the fact that its demands are perhaps more complex and less definable than in any other job anywhere in the world?

At this point I may as well come clean and confess that I am an admirer of our civil servants. This is not so much because of what they actually do as because of what they are expected to do, which is so extraordinary that I admire them simply for being expected to do it.

What they are expected to do is to function in a situation which is, nearly always, many situations at once. In other words, it comprises an enormous network of conflicting interests: community interests, caste interests, local interests, state interests, vested interests, political interests. A collector who has to decide where to sink some tubewells has to balance all these, if he can, before turning to the actual question of where water is to be found. If he is spirited enough to go ahead and sink them wherever the water-table is right he may find that he has caused an uproar among one or other section which makes the whole exercise counter-productive. And I am glossing over the little detail that if certain people do not get their cuts, our collector may find that he has lost his job.

There is, of course, no help for it: carrying this baggage around with us is what democracy is all about. My point is only that a larger share of the weight rests on the shoulders of the civil servant than is generally acknowledged. And it is a weight which has to be shifted about at every step; when the collector in question finds himself in a new district, he will have to negotiate the whole grid once again, this time perhaps from the point of view of controlling a riot. How, then, do we ensure that the young men and women who enter the service are fit for the tight-rope walk on which they have embarked? And that, as they lurch along, the concept of public interest8217; will somehow remain in the forefront? Traditionally, we begin by ensuring that they can get a certain number of marks in Organic Chemistry, or Ancient Indian History, or whatever it be. That is, we ensure that they have brains, which is an excellent beginning, but it is only a beginning. Beyond that they are required to have character, integrity, balance, emotional intelligence, peripheral vision, adaptability, tactical agility, staying power, and a few other things.

As far as I know, the UPSC interview makes a brave effort to gauge the presence of these qualities within the time allotted to it. For the rest, it is perfectly clear that the real training has to be given by our civil servants to themselves, and it is training which will take a lifetime. Perhaps the only way we can help is by expecting that they will achieve it, and being clear about the magnitude of what we expect.