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| Infatuation for civil services a colossal waste of human capital | | | Virendra Gupta
The primacy to
administrative
jobs is quite obviously a legacy of our colonial past. We have to throw off this colonial yoke. Prevailing attitudes in our society must change if we are serious about reclaiming our pride of place in the comity of nations as a knowledge society as in the days of Nalanda. This change can only help us to move forward on PM Modi's vision of 'Make in India'
I had an opportunity to interact with several candidates taking civil services examination this year because of my association with Samkalp, an NGO which has been doing admirable service in helping underprivileged children clear the premier exam.
Among the candidates who were covered in my mock interview boards, I was surprised to see a very large number of qualified medical professionals as well as engineers, including those who had passed out of IITs.
Most of them had left high salary jobs with reputed companies, including multinational corporations, some having left their jobs 4-5 years back, to take up preparation for the civil services exam as a full time occupation. What a colossal waste of human capital!
Why is there such a huge attraction for the civil services, with young people willing to give up well paid jobs for Government jobs? Is such a craze justified in the country's broader interest?
A bizarre report recently of more than a lakh people, including many PhD holders, having applied for a few jobs of Government peons, had certainly left many stumped.
Keeping these things in mind, when I asked candidates about their reasons for joining the Government jobs, their responses ranged from the "desire to serve the nation" to "attraction for a big platform" provided in the Government jobs rather than merely money.
What was obviously not stated was that they were clamouring after status and position in society a sad reflection of our own values and prejudices.
The dismissive attitude that most of us have towards the technical jobs is disturbing. I cannot understand how an engineer who builds factories and highways which are so critical for our progress or a doctor who saves human lives or an educationist who is responsible for guiding our future generation or for that matter a scientist who is exploring new frontiers of knowledge deserves any less credit for nation building than a generalist administrator.
Prevailing attitudes in our society must change if we are serious about reclaiming our pride of place in the comity of nations as a knowledge society as in the days of Nalanda. This change can only help us to move forward on PM Modi's vision of 'Make in India'.
The primacy to administrative jobs is quite obviously a legacy of our colonial past when most of the positions in ICS were filled up by the Britishers since they alone could be trusted with protecting the interests of the colonial power. Understandably, the interests of the country or the people inhabiting the country hardly mattered in the scheme of things then.
There is hardly any developed country with overarching civil services as in India, whose members specialise across the diversity of our socio-economic spectrum: one day in the Petroleum Ministry, the other day in tourism and the next move to banking or renewable energy.
Can we always be sure of safe landing?
What about the attendant risks and the precious time lost in familiarisation of a civil servant who moves to an altogether new field? We cannot afford such luxuries when we are faced with huge developmental challenges.
We have to throw off the colonial yoke. We do not any longer need the 'steel frame' and must instead create specialised cadres comprising professionals who feel a sense of pride and belonging in their work without having to suffer the ignominy of being ticked off by someone years junior to them not because of technical competence but only due to the latter's membership of an 'elite' service.
A beginning could be made with highly specialised ministries such as agriculture, power, mining, renewable energy, banking etc on the same lines as our foreign service that by all standards has managed itself quite well.
In a survey at the UN headquarters in New York some years back, Indian diplomats were adjudged as being among the best in the world!
Separate specialised cadres should be created for each of these ministries where recruitment is based on requisite technical qualifications and members are given the opportunity to reach the highest position in their respective ministries.
I have seen this arrangement, where the professionals feel empowered and work very well in Israel. Its first Prime Minister Ben Gurion is believed to have accorded a lot of respect and access to scientists and technical professionals who have been largely responsible for the country's technological edge.
Youngsters who leave lucrative technical jobs to enter civil services are bound to look down on the technical professionals with whom they come to interact. It is a different matter that their own delusions of grandeur and "big stage" get shattered soon after entry to the Government service because of pressures and controls from different directions.
This unfortunately leads to frustration and early cynicism, resulting in increasing incidence of compromise and even corruption in the ranks of the civil services.
We need to empower our technical professionals since they are the real engines of India's progress and our policies must be designed to make use of the full potential of their creative energies. If they can excel and distinguish themselves as high achievers abroad take the case of Silicon Valley surely they do not deserve to be treated as second rate in their own country.
PM Modi has rightly been promising less governance. That is a laudable objective in keeping with the best practices in other more developed countries.
It would be best achieved by internalising governance at grassroots and institutional level rather than imposing administrative controls from above through the civil services as in the colonial times.
We must move on to modern approaches of governance where barriers and hierarchies are broken down, where the choice of career would be dictated by technical competence and aptitude rather than the archaic and regressive notions of status and power and where every professional is treated equitably and encouraged to contribute optimally.
Given our democratic setup, it is the political leadership's task to provide the requisite oversight for governance - we do not need an "elite" civil service to arrogate to itself that task.
(Courtesy: dailypioneer.com) |
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