Category Archives: Civil Services

Beacon of hope, repression, efficiency….

The reason for the recent notoriety of the beacons is the decision of the Union Cabinet on 19 April 2017 to remove all beacons. Working fast, the draft Rules were issued the very next day. It was another measure to remove symbols of the so-called VIP culture in India. In the recent past certain State Governments have also issued similar notifications. Most notably Punjab, which is infamous for the overuse and misuse of the beacon policy. It can be argued that this decision of uprooting the whole beacon policy was taken as the earlier steps to rein in the misuse saw only mixed success.

One would recall that in December 2013, the Supreme Court in SPECIAL LEAVE PETITION NO.(C) No.25237/2010 delivered a judgment that was also much discussed in the media and public. The beacons were restricted to

The men in uniform; operational agencies which require un-hindered access to the roads for performance of their duty; those engaged in emergency duties such as ambulance services, fire services, emergency maintenance etc, and police vehicles used as escorts or pilots or for law and order duties shall not be entitled to have red lights but lights of other colours, e.g., blue, white, multicoloured etc.

and a few other specified dignitaries. The sudden removal of beacons from a large section of public servants caused large heartburn – both among elected as well as appointed public servants. Various kinds of subterfuges were devised – new kinds of colours were imagined, as only red and blue beacons were regulated by the SC. Various kinds were parities were pleaded to include one category of persons after another. Although the 2013 judgment severely restricted the beacons, the numbers were still much higher than was warranted in the aftermath of the SC judgment.

The removal of symbols of power is a democratic urge. This urge has been witnessed all throughout history, but especially so in the new democratic world where anyone can question the powerful and the mighty. To segregate people on the basis of public utility is decidedly suspect in the eyes of many. It is not just the beacon and siren that are suspect symbols of power, but every appendage and privilege that comes with public office. Where policy is forged on the pulpit, limits of logic are reached fast, and every norm and standard is questioned anew. Frequently, such symbols vanish upon such close questioning. It is facile to say that in a republic, every person is a sovereign. Even our Prime Minister says that all Indians are VIPs:

The real charm is when, however, the recently de-privileged express anguish at a policy that has benefited them all their lives. Mark the words of Vinod Rai, Ex-IAS and Ex-CAG, in his article titled “Beacon of Repression“:

The sight of a red beacon vehicle created a feeling of revulsion among the public. The vehicle speeding down congested roads in metropolitan cities with blue beacon police vehicles has become such a common sight. They specialise in jumping red lights much to the chagrin of fellow motorists. If you do not give them a pass, you run the risk of facing the ire of the khaki clad in their cavalcade, who excel in unbecoming gestures, and may even land a danda on your bonnet. After all, is it more important for these VIPs than what you and I would have set out to do? Even if it was, they could have stepped out a few minutes earlier.

Curious how wisdom arrives after superannuation.

Beacon of hope, repression, efficiency….

Red beaconsBeacons have always been an envious bone of contention. The beacon may be many things to many people – a status symbol, a token of having ‘arrived’, a relic of colonialism. What people don’t like about it, they project those feelings onto the beacon. It is a beacon of desire – every one would want to sit in a car with beacon, and just live the experience for once, if possible. It is a beacon of aspiration – most mothers would aspire for their children to have the beacon one day. Of hatred – one hates the beacon-wrapped vehicle that breezes past the red light, or gets that extra edge under the blind gaze of the traffic police. And so we must try to understand what is it about the beacon that touches us so strongly.

Beacons serve two purposes – as a symbol of power, and as a marker of privilege. And they are very close to each other.

As a symbol of power, it tells that the occupant of the vehicle has an important status in public life. Thus, a private citizen – no matter how much revered or powerful – is not entitled for it. Since money is so often a substitute for power, this symbol ensures that when it comes to matters of public life, money does not raze over state power. Hence, an Amitabh Bachchan or a Mukesh Ambani does not have a red beacon. However, an representative of the people – howsoever poor, or a government servant – having risen from the slum, can have the beacon. This beacon does not belong to the person, but to the position the person is holding. The moment the position goes, so does the beacon. It is attached to the state (or situation) – hence it is a status symbol (and status symbol is not a bad word).

The beacon is also a marker of privilege. It has rational reason to exist. The beacon can serve the following purpose:

  1. It can tell the toll booth that the vehicle need not pay a toll, and may pass through the exempted/VIP lane. Public servants should not pay toll, just like a private person on company duty does not pay toll from his pocket – the company bears the toll cost. If public servants, including MPs/MLAs are forced to bear the toll, either they would reduce their journeys required in public service, or they would try to earn extra money to pay the toll.
  2. It can tell those manning a secure area that the occupant of the vehicle need not be checked. It saves time.
  3. It can tell the importance of the occupant, and the vehicle can be directed to the proper place.
  4. With different coloured beacons, the vehicles can be segregated according to importance.
  5. On public roads that are always busy, it provides a smoother and faster passage so that the public servant can reach to a venue earlier. He certainly can leave half an hour earlier, but there are only 24 hours in a day, and one cannot leave half an hour earlier if there are ten meetings in a day.

Consider a Chief Minister on a typical day. A CM is allowed to use a commercial flight, or even a chartered chopper, but not a peon. The opportunity cost to the society for each minute in a peon’s and a CM’s life are vastly different. Based on this logic, the society/state allows greater privileges to the CM so that she can reach a place faster. Extend this logic to the roads. To move from one place to another would take an average of one hour. For a ten minute engagement in one area, a CM may have to spend 2 extra hours on the roads to travel like a normal citizen. With ten different meetings or more in a day, the CM would essentially be spending the whole day on the roads. Or she would sit at home or office and stop moving to the outside locations. Society would be the loser.

Removal of beacons may not be such a problem for those very high dignitaries that are given police escort. However, only the very few dignitaries at the top are entitled for an escort who can clear the traffic for the vehicle. Removal of beacon would mean the difference between efficient time management of a public servant, and its absence. I won’t be surprised if the average distance covered by the public servant is reduced in the aftermath of the beacon removal. The beacon ensures a faster passage when on public duty. In a recent survey of Indian traffic speeds by Ola, it transpired that the average speed of vehicles in Indian roads vary between 19.6 Km/hr (Chennai) and 27.1 Km/hr (Hyderabad). This is slow. And time is money, more so for the high dignitaries. A CM late by one minute is 100 wasted minutes where there are a hundred participants.

Guide to Inter-cadre deputation in IAS

Waiting for you...
Where to?

The first IAS officer I saw up close was when I looked myself  up in the mirror, after selection. West Bengal is certainly not the place to be if one wants to join the IAS, or I would have seen more and have been inspired earlier. Since the IAS contains the I (which stands for Indian), I always presumed I would get to see the world, and be posted in one state in January and be going to another in two years. Alas, they have something called a cadre system. In simple words, a cadre is essentially a state – if you get one cadre, you are confined in your postings within that state. Thus, a Himachal Pradesh cadre officer would spend most of working life in Himachal Pradesh – and within it, mostly in Shimla, the capital. This embargo ensures that officers from other states are always pining to a posting closer home, or at a more convenient location. Deputation is a major mechanism of going out of your cadre, although for a small duration.

I am a Himachal Pradesh cadre officer. After almost ten years, I have recently joined the West Bengal cadre on inter-cadre deputation.

The following is the succinct guide to the inter-cadre deputation:

  1. Talk to concerned people in your own cadre to know whether they are willing to let you go. This may include the Principal Secretary to CM, Chief Secretary, Personnel Secretary, the CM himself or herself, or any other person who may control postings, etc. Proceed to the next step only after you get a goahead from the concerned people.
  2. Talk to the concerned people in the cadre in which you want to join. Again, this may include the Principal Secretary to CM, Chief Secretary, Personnel Secretary, the CM himself or herself, or any other person who may control postings, etc. Bother yourself with proceeding further once you get a goahead here.
  3. Apply to your own cadre in writing that you want to proceed on inter-cadre deputation. You have to state a grave reason for it to make any progress at the level of DoPT later on. I stated that my parents are very ill, which is the case. In case your parents are healthy, you have to give some equally grave reason. I doubt whether the DoPT guys would be charmed to get your application stating that you want to join your kids or wife who are in the other cadre. Some people send an advance copy of the letter to the receiving cadre. I am not sure the receiving cadre would process this advance copy unless they receive it from DoPT – so, sending an advance copy may or may not be useful. There is no harm, though.
  4. The DoPT would then forward your application to the concerned cadre. I am not sure, but the file may go upto the level of the Secretary. DoPT may take upto a month for this.
  5. You application sent by DoPT is now processed by the receiving state. This may go upto the level of the CM or the CS. The receiving state will now write to DoPT that they would welcome you should you be sent to them. This process may take upto 2 months.
  6. Once the acceptance by the receiving state is received by the DoPT, it goes in a small black hole, and then it put up to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) in the PMO. The ACC, I am told, does not sit in a meeting, but processes these files at the respective tables. Cases are not sent to the ACC unless sufficient number of cases gather. The ACC approval is the final stamp of approval. Thereafter things can be delayed, but the process is through. ACC will send the file back to DoPT. This whole process can take upto three months. Some people advise that it is not sensible to push your case in the PMO – the folks there may just do the opposite! So, you are sufficiently warned!
  7. DoPT will send a letter to your cadre telling that ACC has given approval for the deputation, and that they may leave you. This may take upto two weeks.
  8. The Personnel Dept. of your state will now release you.
  9. You join your new cadre, typically in the Personnel Dept. of the receiving state. You get your posting thereafter.

For me, the whole process took about six months, with gentle follow ups. It can be shorter or longer – quoting precedents to DoPT doesn’t help.

Do note that inter-cadre deputation is given for a period of three years only. You may receive two more years of extension, one year at a time.

A deputation is a major operation in your career. It becomes important for your professional and personal life. I am of the opinion that every officer who is not in his home cadre should opt for one.

Wishing you the best of luck in your endeavour!

Update: How to get extension?

So you are about to exhaust your quota of three years? What to do now?

Well, you can get an extension of upto two years, one year at a time. And you would have to apply through the usual process again – the route is just the opposite. Start six months before your deputation is about to expire so there is sufficient time:

  1. Apply to the receiving state.
  2. Receiving state recommends the extension to the DoPT.
  3. DoPT writes to the borrowing state (your parent cadre) for their comments and recommendations.
  4. Receiving state sends the recommendation to the DoPT.
  5. DoPT issues NOC to the receiving state for the extension.
  6. Receiving state issues matching notification for the extension.

Needless to add, you have to manage all the nodes on this journey. Talk to concerned people beforehand.

You can get more extension…however, I am not competent to tell you that 😉 As they say in DoPT – show me the man, and I will show you the Rules!

End the IAS : Part II

This is the second part of a three-part series of articles written in response to Mihir S Sharma’s article titled ‘End the IAS
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Sharma makes two other charges that are related. He says that, firstly, IAS officers are generalists, lack knowledge, and therefore, secondly, make blunders. He further corroborates that he seldom pays for those blunders. One additional consequence of such generalist experience is the lack of innovation that besets our policy sphere.
The generalist versus specialist debate is old. The issue has been raised many times before expert committees and commissions even before independence. On each occasion, the generalist service at the top management has been given a thumbs up because of the TINA factor (there is no alternative). Although Sharma says that this generalist civil service is based on ‘Victorian public school principles’, the same is far from true. I am sure he used the word Victorian as a metaphor for foreign and old, but how does being foreign and old make the administration of a ‘fiendishly complex’ country difficult? As a culture, our history is millennia old, but the major sustainable and structured steps to simplify administration and regulate life by rule of law and science came during the tiny sliver of time under foreign rule. It is for this reason that many of our systems and structures are still based around those inventions and discoveries that occurred when sovereignty was with the island nation and not with us. It is precisely the complexity of our inherent society coupled with the complexity of modern life that a generalist service can bring a sanity out of chaos today. It is patently untrue that all high positions of the government are taken up by the IAS. With passing years, many of the positions usually held by the IAS officers (called cadered posts) are increasingly going to specialists. The vast majority of the public sector undertakings (PSUs or government companies) are now manned by specialists, drawn from their own cadre. Many technical organisations like the revenue services, the railways services and others have specialist officers or groupings of them (Boards) at the apex level, to guide operations as well as make policy.
I will take the example of the state of Himachal Pradesh, a place I know a little better than some other places. There are many departments that are traditionally headed by specialists. Thus, the agriculture, horticulture, public works, irrigation, health, animal husbandry, electricity, even higher education departments/organisations are headed by people from their own cadres, or specialists. There has been no study that shows that the performance of these departments are any better. By its very nature, the specialists would have many advantages over the gypsy IAS that roam around. The specialists are certainly more knowledgeable (in theory) due to their decades of cultivated passion in one focussed area. They know the people through which the work is to be done. They are psychologically relaxed knowing that they have stability of tenure (that has ranged, in one department, close to twenty years at the very top!). Hence, they can plan and effect that plan. Knowledge would lead them to the latest innovations happening across the world – the latest patents, the best seeds for planting, the latest techniques in building bridges and skyscrapers. But we all know, that does not happen. We all blame our government hospitals manned by specialist. The airlines run by specialists. The colleges and universities ruled by knowledgeable specialists that have written hundreds of double-blind-peer-reviewed papers in their lifetime.
Contrast this with the positions of the IAS officers. As per a Times of India article ‘68% of IAS officers have average tenures of 18 months or less’. Once posted, thus, they have to hit the ground running. One senior officer was going on a holiday for Dussera. He left by train with his family, got a call regarding his new posting while having his first tea on the train, got down at the next station where a vehicle was rushed, leaving his family behind on the train. He joined work the next morning, and conducted elections to the Lok Sabha in his new district. Another officer, running one district, was leaving home for a holiday. Again, on another train, he got another call. He rushed back to join as the Collector of another district. To take a personal example, I was the Collector of one district for one month. Next time I was posted to another district, I counted my tenure in units of months – this month, I have to get this done, the next month I would have to get that done. IAS officers, due to the very fleeting nature of engagement with a position, are an impatient lot. He does not always have domain knowledge, does not know the officers and workers of the concerned organisation and does not have stability. Add to this fleeting nature of tenure, the multiple responsibilities that most IAS officers  have to bear. All IAS officers in most points of their careers have adjusted such multiple responsibilities. It is not a happy affair, but but a part of the job that must be done. Frequently, an officer would come to a meeting whose briefing file would be handed over to him at the door of the meeting room as he steps in – he goes through the papers in the best manner he can, and tries to do justice to the need of the hour. My own daily schedule is a maddening rush from one office to another, one meeting to another, dealing with issues fluently like a Casanova would deal with women – with passion and attention while one woman is with you, with lesser detachment when the next damsel demands your energy. Given the stark shortage of officers, bestowing of additional responsibilities is the only way organisations can be run and managed. The generalist nature of the IAS helps. One senior officer described the IAS as aloo (potato) – you can put it in any soup, sabzi, biriyani, parantha or what have you! If you have specialists manning leadership positions and have a crisis of HR in hand, how would you have them manage affairs? How can Director Agriculture, for instance, step in the shoes of Director Horticulture should there be such a requirement (do recall that in Himachal Pradesh, as I described earlier, both these positions are with specialist officers)?
So, one might ask, if the generalist is no better than the specialist, but only suffer from additional handicaps, why should we not post specialists to all leadership positions?
The reason would be that the generalist officer has a lot of exposure and experience of not just the concerned department, but of other organisations. Having seen a lot, he has a lot to put on the table. The very trait that is ridiculed is the benefit of the generalist. One day he learns how to grow fish, the next day he learns how to grow corn. When he learns how to raise cows, he knows how to champion extension work in the village. Before the IAS officers gains in seniority and sits in the reviled air-conditioned rooms (as if all others are sitting in non-air-conditioned rooms), he has seen the farmlands, the badlands, he has met the sweaty farmer and the dockyard goon, the respected retired Colonel and seen the pathetic school toilets. He has worked as mediator, as an advocate, as an activist, as a rebel, as a dutiful soldier, and frequently, as a discarded has-been. By the time one rises to join the policy level, the IAS officer is the only of its kind that has rubbed shoulders with the outcaste as well as industry captains, the broken man waiting for a decade for justice as well as the be-wigged lordships (okay, no wigs, but lords all the same), the struggling karyakarta as well as the muscleman-turned-minister. Such variety gives a unique perspective to the generalist officer that cannot be earned through focussed journey in a narrow field.
One can find examples on either side, but innovation may be expected out of someone who has seen a wider world than from someone who has seen less of it. India presently ranks 76 in the Global Innovation Index, an annual survey of 143 economies/states. To blame 4800 offices in a nation of 125 crore people for this dismal ranking is to place too much confidence in the IAS and too less in the nation. Nations like UAE, Kuwait, Montenegro, Serbia and Jordan, and certainly China (rank 29) are much ahead of us – nations that are neither known for their democratic spirit or the robustness of their bureaucracy. As a culture, we are always looking for a shortcut, be it in education or job-seeking. Cultivating the innovative spirit cannot come naturally in such an environment. What we call jugaad are but science experiments of primary schoolers. They may save money (the primary objective on most occasions), they don’t earn patents or money, or generate jobs and revenue (beyond a point). India has not seen a Nobel prize in science since C V Raman (Physics, 1930, the year of the Salt March). Most of our Information Technology companies are service companies for other organisations – it is but a rare occasion when a software or a hardware product natively developed in India has seen a modicum of success (Hotmail is an American product, co-developed by a programmer born and brought up in India; it is not an Indian product). It would be instructive to see if specialist officers have better innovative spirit than generalist officers. One wonders if any survey or research has been done in this regard. In the absence of conclusive evidence to the contrary, it seems logical to expect innovation from an impatient gypsy than from a bored artisan.
In governance, innovation can be of two essential types. The first kind of innovation is operational innovation. This is where you change a form, a process or a system that does the same thing better or faster and more easily. This keeps on happening every day in the field. Sustainability and replicability of such steps are the real issues rather than the lack of such innovative steps. The second kind of innovation is policy innovation. In this you create a new system or a new world. You disband a Planning Commission. Or you prescribe a new system of railways (like the Bibek Debroy panel is advocating). Such innovations go further, but may hit a roadblock with change in the political winds. Many of the policy innovations have seen major structural or financial adjustments with the change in the government in New Delhi last year. This is, again, not a bad thing. Firstly, it is democratic. Secondly, this enables experimentation with different models, and the discovery of the best one. Of course, governance is not all serendipity. It is conscious but tentative steps into the unknown, with bonafide public interest at heart.
Sharma talks of the Uber example. Uber is a tech company that has developed a mobile app that enables registered drivers and cabs to be used by clients. It is a virtual marketplace bringing together supply (cars and drivers) with demand (transportation). Uber started operating in Bangalore, India, in August 2014 and accosted controversy within four months wherein a female client in New Delhi alleged that she was raped by a driver using the Uber service. Sharma points out the ‘colossal idiocy’ of the response of the government of closing down the Uber service. One does not know, but he seems to allege that this spark of idea came from an IAS officer. Let’s presume that, indeed, a generalist officer was behind this decision. The facts of the case (Uber service, or other services of its kind are unregulated; they are falling foul of financial as well as transport regulations; the driver of the taxi did not even have a driving license and had a criminal record, hence internal scrutiny was lax; Uber has been in controversy across the world earlier and has been banned, variously, in many countries; the Nirbhaya gang-rape case happened only two years back in New Delhi only, and the political firmament was fidgety) were such that one could have taken any decision. In public administration, at times action is decidedly better than inaction; the Uber case was one acute example. Sharma’s ‘colossal idiocy’ statement, if anything, is self-reflective.
Sharma talks of blunders and mistakes. The only person who makes no mistakes is the person who does nothing. Frequently, inaction itself is a blunder. At times, inaction is criminal, as an ex-Prime Minister is lately finding out. The present political and administrative ethos is one of too much scrutiny and fault-finding. We had heard of policy paralysis. This would be a natural state of things should every mistake of today is searchingly criticised with the wisdom of hindsight. Noah Vosen (a character) says is perfectly in The Bourne Ultimatum (2007): “You know as well as I do decisions made in real time are never perfect. Don’t second-guess an operation from an armchair.” Any action or innovation can go two ways – some may be liked by some, others disliked. The real touchstone of any action is justice – does it do justice to the cause for which an action is intended? If the answer is yes, the action is right, despite controversies. The problem is that such answers are not instantaneous. Big dams were a hit in Nehruvian era, and were called modern temples. Those were the days of big dams everywhere. By 1997, about 40,000 dams over 15 metres height had been built across the world. But dams are unpopular now. They cause forced migration, ecological damage, financial distress, and we are lately realising, even geological turmoil on a large scale. Policy decisions are judgment calls. Some win through them, some lose. Unless a nexus is established with ulterior motives, policy decisions per se are never wrong. They may be inappropriate. Attribution of criminality in the absence of established malafide is unjust. It causes policy paralysis. Policy paralysis causes greater damage to economy and the nation than even mild corruption.
But do IAS officers escape accountability in case of decisions proved wrong? This is what Sharma alleges. Far from it. IAS officers are routinely removed by the political executive for perceived rights and wrongs. Although cases of Durga Shakti Nagpal and Ashok Khemka are championed as examples of wrongful removal, such removals are very normal. More officers are removed for doing things rightly than doing them wrongly. The issue is not lack of accountability. The issues are how to measure it and fix it, and once that are done, to implement it. Of course, IAS officers cannot be removed from service for policy wrongs. That is not only improper, but unconstitutional (again, Sharma would come across some legal hurdles). A CEO, when removed from one company, swiftly finds employment in another. The same may not be true of a generalist officer who has forgone earlier opportunities of financial ingratiation, and thus must be protected. But officers are routinely removed from their positions, and DO pay for wrongs when they are perceived. Most rapes that reach primetime television are followed by suspensions and transfers of various officers, including generalist SDMs and Collectors. Uber India CEO is not suspended or transferred or sacked for a rape under his watch. There is more accountability in public service that in many other areas of public or corporate life of India.

End the IAS : Is it a solution?

“By whatever constitution India may be ruled, no government will be able to ‘do without District Officer”

– (Simon Commission Report, 1928)

“End the IAS”

– Mihir S Sharma

This article is a searching response to another article by Sharma that said that the IAS must go. The article appeared on June 5, 2015, in Business Standard.

 

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PART I

 

The IAS is akin to the top management of an impossibly large and complex entity called India. Every large and complex entity needs administration without which it would return to chaos, the natural state of things. This administration is provided by a system that may vary in shape and complexity depending upon the master it must serve. Easier to manage societies like pastoral and tribal societies require fewer people to manage, and fewer laws and rules to guide their day to day life. Life being simple, the structure around life is simple. The inherent Brownian motion in society would create more complex systems as populations grow. Life now being complex, the structures around life would be complex.

This administration is normally called bureaucracy. Weber, one of the founders of modern sociology, was one of the foremost thinkers on bureaucracy:

“[His] interest in the nature of power and authority, as well as his pervasive preoccupation with modern trends of rationalization, led him to concern himself with the operation of modern large-scale enterprises in the political, administrative, and economic realm. Bureaucratic coordination of activities, he argued, is the distinctive mark of the modern era. Bureaucracies are organized according to rational principles. Offices are ranked in a hierarchical order and their operations are characterized by impersonal rules. Incumbents are governed by methodical allocation of areas of jurisdiction and delimited spheres of duty. Appointments are made according to specialized qualifications rather than ascriptive criteria. This bureaucratic coordination of the actions of large numbers of people has become the dominant structural feature of modern forms of organization. Only through this organizational device has large- scale planning, both for the modern state and the modern economy, become possible. Only through it could heads of state mobilize and centralize resources of political power, which in feudal times, for example, had been dispersed in a variety of centers. Only with its aid could economic resources be mobilized, which lay fallow in pre-modern times.

– http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/weber12.html

Weber’s model of bureaucracy was essentially based around six principles, all of which are still valid today.  Of course, Weber was not the only thinker to either analyse bureaucracy or to define it. But let’s keep this discussion less theoretical and more practical.

Thus, when Sharma says ‘end the IAS’, one answer could be – yes, by all means do that. But whatever replacement you have in mind, would be another bureaucracy. You may call it management, managerial ring, cloud nine, abra cadabra, or what you will. It will still remain a bureaucracy. Of course, one can devise the new bureaucracy differently. One can change this bit and that bit. But it would still retain its DNA as a bureaucracy. Talking of change, cannot the present system be changed? Of course it can, it has and it does! The only unchanging thing is the fire in the hell, they tell me. Without again turning this into another history lesson, the post of the Collector or its equivalent have seen changes in power, responsibilities and mandate constantly before independence. Post independence, the whole civil service changed, starting from the name itself (from ICS to IAS), the colour of the skin of the men and women manning (womanning?!) the service, bosses (from Queen to the President, certainly a change of sex as we mostly have male Presidents), language of official discourse (from purely English to English mixed with vernaculars), attitude (from colonial to democratic) and others. The list of the statutes that name the Collector, or more recently, the Deputy Commissioner, is myriad. With each such naming, the Collector and others are statutorily required to take on new responsibilities. Were there any other such office on which such responsibilities could be bestowed, they would have been. So long as we have nation states, we would have someone heading them. So long as we have lesser units like our states, we would have someone heading them. So long as there are districts, we would have someone heading them. So long as we have sub-divisions, we would have someone heading them. So long as we have villages and towns, we would have someone heading them. Oh, lest I forget, so long as there are companies, we would have someone heading them too. The cobbler shop, the restaurant, the school, the hospital, the everything – leadership is required at every level that must be provided by someone or something (although I am not sure Artificial Intelligence will be given leadership positions within the next fifty years).

So yes, the IAS may be banned theoretically, but it would be replaced by its doppelganger.

But only theoretically. “The services known at the commencement of this Constitution as the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service shall be deemed to be services created by Parliament under this article”, so says Article 312(2). Articles are the provisions of the constitution, and they are of two types – those that can be amended/deleted, and those that cannot be amended/deleted, as they fall foul of the basic structure of our constitution. Evolving from earlier, the doctrine of basic structure was robustly threshed out in the Keshavananda Bharti case, and the federal structure of the constitution is universally agreed to be part of this. I am not sure if the Supreme Court has specifically enunciated if the IAS and IPS are part of basic structure, but they are part of the very fabric of the federal character of our nation – and the federal character is a basic structure. As we saw earlier, a provision that is part of the basic structure, cannot be amended/deleted.

So, the legal situation is this. Firstly, IAS and IPS are constitutional services, and hence sacrosanct. It is not impossible but difficult to amend the constitution. Very difficult. But stop. IAS may also be part of the basic structure (I am just saying maybe) of our constitution, and that CANNOT be amended (again that is not entirely true. You would need to pack up half the judges of the Supreme Court and tell them to say that the federal structure is not part of the basic structure, and if they say so, lo and behold, it is no more a basic structure. Then you can amend the constitution in the normal way, which as we saw earlier, is not a very easy thing to do).

Thus, if Sharma is to ban the IAS, he will have a few legal hurdles to cross. But let’s be romantic, and not be bound by the mores of fallible men. The history of mankind is a jamboree of the unthinkable. The Arab Spring of 2010 and thereafter saw the socio-political foundations of more than a dozen countries cast asunder by tidal waves of emotions in the hearts of the young and the restless.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven! (Wordsworth)
I want to be young. The funny thing about our constitution is that it still harbours many provisions that the Supreme Court has already termed unconstitutional! Sample Article 368(5) that says “For the removal of doubts, it is hereby declared that there shall be no limitation whatever on the constituent power of Parliament to amend by way of addition, variation or repeal the provisions of this Constitution under this article”. The legislature, in its constituent role, can make any change, any provision in the constitution – including the very amending article (368) itself! Or so it wishes. The Supreme Court says, cool down – you cannot make or unmake anything.
But the constitution itself is a historical document. It was born in a context. It is not even very old, and already pockmarked with a hundred changes. One can think of a time when this constitution goes and another comes. Pakistan already is having its third constitution post-independence. The famed unwritten constitution of England is mostly documented. It has a Supreme Court it did not have earlier. Nations come and nations go. It is a haughty man that thinks that anything created by man cannot be undone. Or that man and mankind itself cannot be undone. There are more things in heaven and earth, dear men of law,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Sharma is right. The IAS can end, damn the legal hurdles.
But why should it end?
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