INDIA
Fresh from its landslide win in the Indian elections, the Government of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is doubling down on its pre-election move to recruit outside experts to the country’s Public Service.
While the Union Public Service Commission had shortlisted nine candidates for Ministries at the rank of Joint Secretaries, the Government has now decided to recruit more than 50 outside experts at various levels, including Undersecretaries, Directors, Joint Secretaries and Additional Secretaries.
The original decision to recruit fresh talent laterally into the bureaucracy was guided by the logic that the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers were generalists who moved from one Ministry to another through their careers and did not necessarily have expertise in any one area.
There has been rising discontent in the Public Service with the stranglehold the IAS has on top jobs, precluding officers from specialised services such as the Railways, Forests, Revenue, Information and so on from rising to head the Ministries in their areas.
An officer from the Indian Forest Service (IFS), who did not wish to be named, said the Government was now using lateral entry when it had plenty of expertise within Public Service ranks that had never been used efficiently.
Currently more than 60 per cent of the officers serving in the top positions in the Central Government are from the IAS.
The IFS officer said there were people in services such as the Geological Service, Postal Service, Telecom and Statistics who devoted their careers to becoming experts in their fields, only to see IAS officers brought in over them.
Another officer, from the Indian Revenue Service, said that while the organisation initially welcomed lateral entry as a way to break the stranglehold of the IAS on higher bureaucracy, it now felt career officers would continue to be losers.
“The Government plans to take its lateral entry experiment forward, but even if it will finally put an end to the dominance of the IAS in the Government, what happens to us?” the officer asked.
New Delhi, 7 June 2019
