INDIA
The Indian Government will soon announce plans to reduce the country’s more than 60 Federal Public Service Departments to about “three or four”.
According to a five-year vision document prepared by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the Government will attempt to drastically reduce the number of Departments (often known as Services in India) to ensure the state machinery functions more harmoniously.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official from the DoPT said the idea was first proposed last year, but the Government decided not to publicise it until after the Federal election, which it won with an increased majority.
The Indian Public Service includes more than 60 specialised Services classified into Group A and Group B.
Some of the more prestigious Group A Services include the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the Indian Police Service (IPS) and the Indian Revenue Service (IRS).
At present there are more than 25 Group A services alone.
The official said the Government had not yet decided how to undertake the rationalisation project, but a possible solution could be to classify the Services into three groups.
“One way of doing it is dividing the services into the IAS, which would include all non-technical services; the IPS, which would include all security-related services; and the Indian Technical Services, which would include all technical services,” the official said.
“This is just one idea doing the rounds … the Services could be rationalised in other ways too.”
In its Strategy for New India @75 document released last year, the Niti Aayog think tank suggested significantly reducing the Public Service across the board.
“The existing separate Civil Services at the Central and State levels need to be reduced through rationalisation and harmonisation of services,” the Niti Aayog said.
“Recruits should be placed in a central talent pool, which would then allocate candidates by matching their competencies and the job description of the post.”
It also suggested there be a single examination, with successful applicants feeding into both Federal and State bureaucracies, but the DoPT official said that was yet to be fully thought out.
New Delhi, 24 July 2019
