The British Raj created a special service to rule the undivided India after the rebellion of 1857. The sole purpose of this new service was to rule, control and extort taxes, on behalf of the British monarchy. It had nothing to do with serving common people. The commonly known Indian Civil Service (ICS) was actually created in 1958 as the Imperial Civil Service. Sooner it became the steel backbone of the British Raj. At one point, a small cadre of little over thousand people ruled more than 300,000,000 Indians. Each officer had an average of 300,000 subjects, and virtually controlled every aspect of their subject’s lives. Hence, with a handful of clever, shrewd and rather ruthless people, a small country like England was able to control a vast and populous country like India.
At the time of the partition, there were 980 ICS officers consisting of 468 Europeans, 352 Hindus, 101 Muslims, and the rest from other communities. The service was divided into the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP). The British Empire has gone but it left behind one of its biggest legacies or curses. The first Prime Minister of India is known to have ridiculed the service and noted that someone had defined the service as, “with which we are unfortunately still afflicted in this country, as neither Indian, nor civil, nor a service”. Gradually, the service became untouchable and all-powerful, taking the shape of a coloniser within. The governance and democratic institutions having become its slave, we have thousands of monarchs in today’s time working on the same old colonial principles with total domination. Has the British legacy succeeded and brought the country to its knees? Has the service maintained its glory till date by doping the common people?
A friend from Bihar told me that parents are happy to fund their children as long as they are preparing for the civil services exam. The brightest brains with professional degrees from institutes like IITs, IIMs, and medical schools are sucked in. What makes IAS so prestigious? Is it the average salary? No, I do not think so. Professionals can make much more by honest means. Does the type of work and contribution to society make it desirous? One has to be a fool to believe that. The perks and the secondary, side sources do make it attractive as long as one is ready to compromise one’s integrity. Any graduate, with an average intelligence, can perform the said duties as there is hardly anything professional or technical about it. With a few months of training, you are supposed to run any department and that is why any graduate from any background can apply to join.
This brings us back to the societal hypocrisy contrary to the values we try to teach our children. We still love and respect people who rule us than those who serve us. There are unlimited opportunities for corruption once you are an alleged civil servant. A recent survey showed India to be among the worst corrupt countries due to this rigid and self-serving bureaucracy. The crony capitalism is another gift of the service. The service still commands the power which it had during the colonial times and has made sure that every aspect of your life is hostage to its interference. The power strangely comes with respect, maybe out of fear or the hangover of the slave mentality. Hence, professions like teachers, nurses and academics hardly matter in our kind of society, as corruption and power is what people aspire to. By qualifying an exam, a person suddenly becomes a VVIP, an elite and ultimately out of reach to a common man. Why is that? And how is it compatible with justice and principles of democracy?
How can you afford the lavish lifestyle of one class of employees and fail to pay even basic salary to the front line workers? You may be able to punish politicians by sending them out of power at the next election, but there is no way of holding Babus accountable. The failure of various public services and institutions run by these generalist elites is no secret. They may have been relevant and effective a century ago, but in the current age, institutions and services ought to be run by technocrats, engineers, scientists, and academicians, who actually have the knowhow of respective fields. Is it not scandalous that important services like health and education are failing us for this simple reason? If by some chance a department is managed by experts in the field, they are hardly allowed to function independently. All this is done to command power and keep control, doesn’t matter what the cost.
“Time and again, questions have been raised about the imperviousness, wooden-headedness, obstructiveness, rigidity, and rule- and procedure- bound attitude of the bureaucracy. Indian bureaucrats are said to be a power centre in their own right at both the national and state levels, and are extremely resistant to reform that affects them or the way they go about their duties’’, notes a study from IIM Ahmedabad. Hence the business of never ending files finding it hard to move from table to table. What is the contribution of the civil service to society? Try to make a guess. Are we not losing best brains to a service which is meant to do more harm than good? The same job can be done by an average graduate on a much less expense and better efficiency. If the service was any good, why didn’t the British take it home?
I am in no way trying to take a dig at those who join the service and why wouldn’t one aspire to be elite more so when there are hardly any jobs around. The problem is with our collective hypocrisy, the societal attitude and how it has glorified a service beyond its merits without any real reason. Our Media goes amok for weeks once someone, as they call it ‘cracks’ the said exam. A public figure and celebrity is born overnight. But I wonder why? What do people think will change by someone qualifying an exam and taking a managerial position? Compare this to a scholar, who is awarded a degree. The poor fellow has to pay for a small press release on page three. No one is ready to write a few lines unless in exceptional circumstances and people hardly take notice. Some employees being special than others just because the service used to rule on behalf of a monarchy centuries ago is preposterous. Doesn’t it speak volumes about our collective moral bankruptcy?
In the context of Jammu & Kashmir, it is not hard to imagine the service doing exactly what it used to do for the British. A local Babu with whatever beliefs and values, signing the detention papers of a juvenile, supervising and at times covering up incidents of human rights abuse is no secret. I read recently on social media that one of the Deputy Commissioners has a fetish for using PSA on local youth. The argument that locals in the civil service is good for native population is mere rationalisation as they have to prove loyalty to their masters by going the extra mile which at times means legitimising the brutalisation and occupation. It hardly matters how well-meaning one may be, the system has to be obeyed without any ifs and buts. It demands absolute surrender, loyalty and there is no room for doubt or questioning. Guess who is pulling the trigger and who is in command?
So when people talk about serving humanity, earning an honest living, the betterment of the society, ending poverty, the alleged civil service is hardly the way to go. I am no way against people joining the civil service, but it should not be at the cost of false morality, making role models of people who are simply an extension of a failed and corrupt self-serving service. I do not have to explain how various departments function once such officers take charge no matter how well-meaning they may be. People need to think long and hard how they make gods out of ordinary people and in return make their own lives hell. It is time to rethink this colonial system if the society has to come out of the clutches of corruption, crony capitalism, and VVIP menace. You may be thinking how will the system function without these elite officers? But THE question you should be asking instead is; is anything working now?
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