UPSC cadre allocation proposal: PMO’s move for a ‘loyal’ bureaucracy

The PMO has recently asked all the Ministries ‘to examine if service allocation/cadre allocation to probationers selected on the basis of the civil services examination be made after Foundation Course. Examine the feasibility of giving due weightage to the performance in the Foundation Course and making service allocation as well as cadre allocation to All India Services Officers, based on the combined score obtained in the civil services examination and the Foundation course.’

The suggestion to give weightage to a trainee’s performance in the Foundational Course in allocating service or cadre has been considered several times in the past and rejected each time on valid grounds.

One, as more than a thousand qualify each year in all-India and Central Services, they are trained at several Academies with the result that uniformity in assessment cannot be ensured. Two, even at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy at Mussoorie, where the author spent eight years on the faculty, more than 400 turn up each year for training. It is impossible for the staff to judge each trainee objectively.

Three, experience shows that there is no co-relation between performance at the Academy and in the field. Those with English medium background and good in extra-curricular activities tend to dominate the Foundational Course. Officers from poorer backgrounds are hardly noticed, though they too may do quite well later in their careers.

Four, there is no methodology as yet that would enable the faculty to assess whether a trainee is suited for Income Tax or Railways.

Five, the main purpose behind getting many services together at the Foundational course is to develop inter-service and intra-batch camaraderie, and to encourage free and frank discussion so as to look at governance issues critically. If their service or cadre is determined on the sweet will of the faculty, the training environment would degenerate into servility and fear. I quote here from my first address to the trainees of the 1996 batch:

‘Our Academy is often accused of glamourising idealism. This Academy is the Gangotri of Indian Administration. At least here Ganga must be clean. No matter if Ganga becomes dirty when it reaches Allahabad and Patna. So therefore, we take it as a compliment if someone says that we are trying to glamourise idealism. But such an idealism should not only be confined to classroom debates, but should be actually transformed into action.”

“I am very proud of the last two foundational course trainees, 94 batch and 95 batch, who ensured that the age-old feudal practice of hand pulled rickshaws in Mussoorie, of man pulling man, was abolished and replaced by cycle rickshaws. This historic and revolutionary change was effected by your immediate predecessors who had no executive authority, no administrative powers, and no financial budget at their disposal. If they could do so much, imagine what radical changes you could bring when you actually start wielding power in the field.”

“The other point is that ours is not a Military Academy. This is an Academy where we would like you to think and to come up with constructive ideas for nation building. And, therefore, we give a lot of emphasis on free exchange of views and criticism. In this Academy, you can criticise everyone, right from the Prime Minister down to the Director.”

“We give you forms every week to evaluate our performance. In administration you will find that it is only the seniors who write reports about the juniors. But in this Academy, it is YOU who will be writing our reports every week. You tell us what you think of our lectures and in what way we can improve ourselves. So, this dialectic of constructive criticism is the philosophy of this Academy.”

“Lest you think that your Director has no sense of humour, I must end my talk with a story. A young girl was going out on her first big date. Her mother said, “be good”, and then she said, “enjoy yourself”. The daughter got very confused. She said “mother, make up your mind. How can I do both?” Well friends, in this Academy you can do both, be good and enjoy yourselves.’

I wonder if this kind of relaxed environment, which made all the trainee officers proud of the Academy, contribute their best, and even thirty years later recall their days at the Academy with nostalgia, would survive if cut-throat competition and fear of losing their desired service/cadre is in their minds all the time.

Lobbying and politicking will enter the process. They would leave the Academy with disgust and anger and would start their service with allegations of favouritism, representations, and even litigation.

Rather than turning out officers with moral courage, integrity and protectors of ordinary peoples’ rights, the Academies will produce self-serving buffoons who would ‘lick up and kick below’.

Over the decades UPSC has acquired a reputation for integrity, transparency, independence and credibility. Many retired civil servants and intellectuals have shown concern about the proposed move to belittle the merit-based system evolved by the UPSC and substitute it by subjective assessment by government-appointed directors of various Academies.

This proposal would not have got so much publicity if it was not seen as a continuation of the present government’s efforts to dilute and politicise all independent institutions of high credibility, such as the Election Commission and Supreme Court, and now the UPSC and the Academies. Conformism and majoritarianism are the preferred values today in place of freedom of expression and impartiality.

One would like to end by quoting from the hero of this government, Sardar Patel; “Today my Secretary can write a note opposed to my views. I have given that freedom to all my Secretaries. I have told them, ‘If you do not give your honest opinion for fear that it will displease your Minister, please then you had better go’. I will never be displeased over a frank expression of opinion.”

Sad that we have forgotten Patel.

(The author was Director of the Mussoorie Academy from 1993 to 1996, and retired as Secretary Planning Commission in 2002)