PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

TOPIC: CIVIL SERVICES IN INDIA

SUBMITTED BY:

SNEHA

BALLB, 4TH SEMESTER

SUBMITTED TO:

ASST. PROF. PREM KUMAR

DATE: 20TH MARCH, 2020

1
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the assignment titled “CIVIL SERVICES IN INDIA” submitted to the
CHRIST ACADEMY INSTITUTE OF LAW, Bangalore by Sneha for the degree of law, is a
bonafide research work carried out by her under my guidance.

Bangalore ASST. PROF. PREM KUMAR

Date- CHRIST ACADEMY INSTITUTE OF LAW,

BANGALORE

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the assignment titled ‘CIVIL SERVICES IN INDIA’, which I am
submitting CHRIST ACADEMY INSTITUTE OF LAW is the outcome of the research
carried under guidance of Asst. Prof. Prem Kumar. The extent of information collected from

2
existing literature has been cited and fully acknowledged at the appropriate places. I further
declare that this assignment wholly or impart has not been submitted to any other college.

Bangalore Sneha

Date-

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I bow down with all my praise before my Lord Almighty for having
helped me to complete this task at the prestigious CHRIST ACADEMY INSTITUTE OF
LAW, Bangalore. I express my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to my guide Asst. Prof Prem
Kumar, for his helpful guidance, original ideas and encyclopaedia knowledge to complete this
work and the insight throughout my research work. The idea of taking up this topic was
seeded in my mind by Asst. Prof. Prem Kumar. More than anyone else, his influence has
contributed to my development in this field. Lastly I would like to express my gratitude
towards my parents and friends for their kind co-operation and encouragement which help me
in completion of this assignment.

3
SNEHA

ABSTRACT
The civil services are one of the most important cogs in the machine that is the Indian
‘system’. In this country of extreme diversity and socio cultural variations, the civil services,
right from old times, have managed to maintain order within chaos. As the nature of politics
and organisation of society and government changed over several years, it became imminent
for the bureaucracy to reinvent itself as well. The study provides a brief historical description
of regime transitions and transformation of bureaucracy in Indian Federal state. It also
analyse the Indian government perspective for understanding the Indian bureaucracy under
different regimes and India Civil Service reforms as well as the role of the civil service to
explain national development in India in the context of globalisation.

4
INTRODUCTION
In the process of governance, which involves several set of activities to deliver effective
services to people, civil service plays a pivotal role in providing shape to policies that reflect
people’s needs and put their suggestive, analytical and informative roles to implement the
policies. It is recognized that civil service plays a crucial role in all societies whether
developed or developing. In the modern administrative state, public administration has
become so significant that our development, up liftment and progress depend mainly upon the
efficient functioning of public administration. Civil Services are the bedrock of public
administration. Civil services have assumed more important role in democracy to ensure
good governance, both in developing and developed countries. Bureaucracy or civil services
is an administrative body of officials whose roles are determined by written rules. All-India
services are those services which are common to both central and state government. It must
be mention here that the central and state government have their separate services called the
central services and the state services respectively. Thus, All-India Services are in addition to
the central and state services.

At present, there are three All-India Services. They are:

Indian administrative service (IAS)

Indian police service (IPS)

Indian Forest Service (IFS)

IN 1947, indian civil service (ICS) was replaced by IAS and the indian police (IP) was
replaced by IPS and recognised by the constitution of All-India Services .In 1963, three All-
India Services where created. They are:

Indian Forest Service

Indian Medical and Health Service

Indian Service of Engineers

However, out of these three, only the Indian Forest Service came into existence in 1996. At
present, there are only three All-India Services— IAS, IPS and IFS.

5
THE INDIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRTAION SYSTEM
The main function of Indian administration or administrative system is to act in accordance
with the objectives or principles laid down in the Preamble to the Constitution, Directive
Principles of State Policy and, finally, the Fundamental Rights. Our administrative system is
also related to the development of the Indian economy. India will be constituted into a
sovereign socialist secular democratic republic. India will also make untiring efforts to secure
to all its citizens—justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. It is also the duty of the state to
create an environment in which all the citizens can enjoy the fundamental rights.

The state of India shall be administered in accordance with the directive principles. Though
these principles are not enforceable by the court, these must guide the policy of the state. In
other words, whenever the state India or the authorities of constituent units make law or
formulate policies they must keep the Directive Principles of State Policy in mind. This
indicates that the public administration of India is burdened with certain responsibilities. Both
in the formulation of policies and in their implementation the authority must be guided by
both the Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles. This makes the public administration
responsible. The idea of responsibility is associated with accountability. We thus arrive at the
conclusion that the public administration of India is both responsible and owes accountability
to the people. It is not simply a tax collecting and order maintaining agency. The
administration of India will make utmost efforts to ensure justice, liberty, equality and
fraternity. Our administration must make all efforts to realise the lofty ideals stated in the
Preamble. These constitute the key to our Constitution. Ernest Barker in his Principles of
Social and Political Theory says: “I am proud that the people of India should begin their
independent life by subscribing to the principles of political tradition which we are in
the West call Westerns, but which is now something more than Western.”

What Barker wants to say is that the principles or the ambitious ideals laid down in the
Preamble are out and out Western. But the great fathers of our Constitution wanted to make
all these as indispensable parts of our life. Justice, liberty, equality and fraternity must be our
goals. These are not only confined within the two covers of our Constitution, these are to be
achieved through continuous efforts. Our administration is the vehicle and it is reformulated
from time to time to reach the goals. The President, the ministers, governors and all other top
admin-istrators are to take oath that all of them must act in accordance with the principles laid
down in the constitution and observe it faithfully. It is a clear indication of the fact that the

6
public administration in India is always accountable to the people. From broader perspective
we can say that our administration is a respon-sible one. The term accountability cannot be
effectively differentiated from accountability. Whenever a body or person or public
administration is account-able it indicates that it is responsible. In our parliamentary system
of Westminster model there exists a chain of responsibility. The council of ministers
including the Prime Minister is responsible to the parliament, the parliament is responsible to
the electorate. The violation or breach of accountability will result in serious consequences
which are undesirable. More than two centuries ago Rousseau talked about popular
sovereignty which was supposed to work through open general assembly. His concept of
democracy and governmental function were modelled by direct democracy.

CIVIL SERVICES IN INDIA

In parliamentary system, it is the political executive (responsible to legislature) who
determines policies and programmes of government. The implementation and administration
of these policies and programmes is the responsibility of the civil servants who, by virtue of
their training and professional experience, are well- versed in the actual functioning of
government.

An important characteristics of the civil service system in India is classification based on the
concept of the “service”. Under this concept, civil service posts are grouped in to distincts
homogenous cadres under a common service named on the basis of specific functions
attacted to the posts in question.

The various civil services at the union and state levels can be classified in different ways.
Firstly, the civil services can be categorized into three broad groups- central civil service, All
India Services and the state Civil Services. The Central Services function under the union
government generally

The people who met at the open general assembly were the supreme authority and for that
reason the government was accountable to the people for all activities. Today this type of
government is simply a practical impossibility, but the underlying idea—the accountability or

7
responsibility — remains. In the administrative structure of India the accountability has been
prioritised. Our public administration is based on law. The Constitution is the authority and
supreme guidance. It is generally said that in USA the constitution is sovereign and in all
federal states this principle holds good. Since the constitution is the supreme authority the
accountability of all is to the constitution. Admin-istration is based on the constitutional law.
This has greater and important implications. Art. 14 of our Constitution says: The state shall
not deny to any person equality before law or the equal protection of the laws. Our
administration must discharge its duties in accordance with this principle. It is known to the
students of public administration and political science that the common law of Britain
contains this principle. The British administration scrupulously follows this principle. In our
administrative system the equality before law and equal protection of law are strictly adhered
to. We can say that the public administration in India is based on law and acts according to
law.

Indian administration may reasonably be termed as development admin-istration. The father

of the concept is Fred Riggs who initiated the idea that the Weberian theory of bureaucracy
has been modelled specifically for the developed capitalist societies. But this model has very
little relevance for nations which have not earned the status of capitalism. He has shown that
the administrative model of capitalist society is not fully applicable to the emerging nations
and from this background a new term has been coined the development administration. The
idea of development administration has radically changed the general concept of public
administration. The chief aim of public administration is not to collect revenue, maintain law
and order and implement the decisions of state. The aim is far more important —modern
public administration must ensure the development of a prismatic society. The collection of
revenue and maintenance of law and order are no doubt important tasks but no less important
is to reach the desired stage of development through the administrative function. In this
respect it has been observed that in a developing nation the public administration must give
the utmost priority to the rapid progress of economy. Since India is a developing nation its
progress can be achieved through a rejuvenated admin-istrative process.

Hence one of the most important characteristics of Indian public administration is to develop
the economy through the judicious use of scarce resources. Since the ministers are temporary
executives it is not possible for them to shoulder the onerous burden of development, the

8
responsibility falls upon the public administration. Amartya Sen in his recent book
Development as Freedom (Oxford, 2000) has said that development can be achieved through
an elaborate process of expanding the real freedom that people enjoy and public
administration is a part of that process of expansion of freedom. Sen maintains, development
requires removal of major sources of unfreedom, poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic
opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as
intolerance or over activity of repressive state.

In India the development administration is not confined within the four walls of
implementation of policies. India’s is a planned economy-naturally all aspects of planning,
programmes, policy formulations, projects and implementation of decisions are all associated
with planning. In India there is a central Planning Commission. The Prime Minister is the
head of the Planning Commission. But he is a political and, in that sense, temporary,
executive. The public administration of independent India is to a large extent a continuation
of the civil service created by the British raj. There were several factors behind this
Continuation and one such factor is that the founding fathers of free India largely adopted the
British parliamentary system and neutrality, the civil service system adopted by the British
rulers had, its relevance in the post-independent India.

SOME OF THE OBSERVATIONS OF 2ND ARC REGARDING

CIVIL SERVICES IN INDIA
It is widely recognised that the civil services have contributed to stability in terms of
maintenance of peace, the conduct of fair elections, managing disasters and the preservation
of the unity of the nation, providing stability and maintaining order in a vast country prone to
various conflicts - ethnic, communal, regional etc. Nonetheless there are certain concerns
about the performance of the civil service in the context of realizing a results-oriented
government. Some of them are:

• It has been pointed out that the Civil Service in India is more concerned with the
internal processes than with results.
• The systemic rigidities, needless complexities and over-centralization in the policy
and management structures within which the civil service functions are too complex
and often too constraining.

9
 • The structures are based on hierarchies and there are a large number of veto points to
be negotiated for a decision to eventually emerge.
• To compound it, the size and the number of ministries and departments have both
overloaded the decision-making system and diminished the capacities of the
individual civil servants to fulfill their operational responsibilities.
• Rapid and fundamental changes are taking place in the country in terms of rapid
economic growth, urbanization, environmental degradation, technological change and
increased local awareness and identity. The response time to adapt to these changes is
much shorter than it used to be. As instruments of public service, civil servants have
to be ready to manage such change.
• On the other hand, the perception is that they resist change as they are wedded to their
privileges and prospects and thereby have become ends in themselves.
• The 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution have brought about a major
change. Rural and urban local governments have to be enabled to become institutions
of self government. To bring this about, the existing system of administration at the
district level has to undergo fundamental changes. Though sixteen years have passed,
the progress remains very slow and local governments are 'local' only in 'form' but are
'central and state in content'
• With the passage of time, the role of civil society organisations, in governance, has
increased with demands for better governance. The same can be said of the private
sector, which is increasingly providing services in several areas, which hitherto were
the exclusive preserve of the public sector. Consequently, civil servants should view
civil society organisations and the private sector as partners in the process of the
country's governance.
• There is need to shift from pre-eminence of governance to effective governance with a
focus on decentralization and citizen-centricity.

CONFLICTS BETWEEN CIVIL SERVICES AND

DEMOCRACY
• Rigid organization structures and cumbersome procedures.
• Elitist, authoritarian, conservative outlook
• Men in bureaucracy fulfill segmental roles over which they have no control.
Consequently, they have little or no opportunity to exercise individual judgment.

10
 • The requirement that a bureaucrat should follow the principles of consistency and
regularity automatically limits his capacity to adapt to changing circumstances.
• The general rules which may take for overall efficiency produce inefficiency and
injustice in individual cases.
• Civil services’ difficulty to cope with uncertainty and change is a key limit on its
efficiency.

REFORMS NEEDED IN CIVIL SERVICES

BROAD REFORMS:

• The development work needs some flexibility from a strict observance of rigid rules
and regulations. Rigid rule bound bureaucracy should be changed into flexible and
action-oriented.
• Reforms are required in the field of recruitment of civil servants so that right people
could be recruited who can ensure smooth functioning of democracy.
• Training of civil servants should be able to bring about behavioural and attitudinal
changes.
• Administrative procedures, rules and regulations need to be simplified so that red
tapism could be minimized; decentralization of authority and collegiate decision
making; de-emphasis of hierarchy in the administrative structure Adoption of modern
management techniques such as management by objectives; elimination of corruption
so as to secure clean, honest, impartial and efficient administration; creation of new
work culture and encouraging creativity.

CONCLUSION
The new challenges of globalisation, political decentralisation and social empowerment have
an unfailing impact on the role of the civil service. The consensus now is on liberalisation,
privatisation and globalisation. The role of the civil service in the changing scenario will be
reduced in certain areas and transformed in other areas. The regulatory mechanism during the

11
period of transition will require a high degree of specialised knowledge in society and this
can come only from a very high quality institutional training. To tender sound political advice
on terse economic matters, mere generalist background will not help and higher services will
have to work in tandem with ' research bodies outside Government. Globalisation and
liberalisation, if it is to lead to higher growth with social justice would require the civil
service to play an enhanced role in the delivery of facilitator service and development of
human development resources.

The civil service in India has continued to be mired in obsolete paradigms of the past that
primarily emphasise the law and order functions of the administration. There is a predominant
culture of conformity and little incentive for innovation that hampers adaptability to the new
tasks of development. Esman M.J. rightly highlights the fact that the "State bureaucracies are
representative of the publics they serve by ethnic criteria, but not by other factors such as
class, caste or occupation, since educational opportunity, the key to meritocratic access, is not
distributed anywhere in lndia". The bureaucracy also suffers from a paradox, where extreme
impersonality exists together with ready susceptibility to personal pressures and
interventions.

In spite of being based on meritocratic recruitment, the lAS is not insulated from society. P.
Evans, for instance, classifies the Indian State as being neither predatory nor developmental
and is of the view that the primary problem is "the recalcitrant challenges of India's social
structure" and problems "exacerbated by the way the bureaucracy has defined its relation to
society". The ethnic religious and regional divisions in India add to "the administrative
nightmare" of trying to govern such a huge country. And, in spite of no being patrimonial in
character, the bureaucracy suffers from "less internal capacity, more difficult environments
and less carefully defined agendas of involvement". These features combine to "put
embedded autonomy of the sort that characterises the developmental State out of reach".

In the area of Indian civil service reforms, the issue of public appointments postings is
central. Key postings, if recommended by Civil Service Boards, would ensure the impartiality
of the decision. Following which, the government will choose one appointee chosen by the
Civil Service Board. A subject committee of Parliament would confirm the appointment
through public hearings. Once appointed, the functionary would have guaranteed tenure of
three years with provisions for removal or transfer only on grounds of proven incompetence
or corruption. Success or failure in implementing the Civil service reforms will depend upon
the sincerity and continuing support from the government, the strong commitment from

12
department among civil servants. Citizen oriented governance has emerged as a significant
focus of administrative reforms in India in recent years. The bureaucracy has taken a leap
forward in taking measures towards fostering accountability, promoting transparency and
openness, civil service perfermance and integrity. Many structural measures are being
introduced. These need mindset of bureaucracy and citizens also providing the much needed
support and feedback.

REFERENCES
Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (8 June 2011). "The civil
service system". New Delhi: Government of India. Archived from the original on 17
February 2012. Retrieved 11 October 2011.
Sharma, Aman (14 April 2012). "Federal Government paper admits corruption at all
levels in civil services". India Today. New Delhi. Retrieved 14 April 2012.
Meghna Sabharwal and Evan M. Berman. "Public Administration in South Asia:
India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan (Public Administration and Public Policy)"
(2013), ISBN 1439869111 (Online)
"Civil Service". The British Library. 8 June 2011. Retrieved 14 August 2015.
Goel, S.L. Public Personnel Administration: Theory and Practice. Deep and Deep
Publications, 2008. ISBN 9788176293952.
Maheshwari, Shriram. Problems and Issues in Administrative Federalism. Allied
Publishers. ISBN 9788170233428.

13