The British when ruling India put the people under the yoke of the Indian Civil Service ICS. Officers who administered India and were trained to look after the interests of the ruling class and not the people. The IAS that is moulded in the ICS pattern has a similar mindset of governance that has proved detrimental to the growth and prosperity of the Indian nation and its citizens. This attitude to governance has led to gradual decline during the last sixty five years of freedom and has seen a nation under-perform on almost all counts of human and economic development.

The last decade was the worst and the 2014 elections were a vote for change, where the Netas were dumped unceremoniously for corruption and poor governance. Though we voted against the Netas for misrule it was often the Babus or the IAS officers who actually thought out, ideated and drafted out the disastrous policies that sunk the Indian economy especially during the last decade. However there is no straight forward provision in the Indian democracy by which the Babus can be voted out

It is hence now the time to think how to remove the IAS yoke. The British themselves who gave us this system have diluted the civil service in their own nation. A senior private sector executive from the oil sector today heads the British Government agency that handles large scale state projects. Singapore’s civil servants have to move out to the private sector, off and on, to gather experience. New Zealand has taken the lead and removed the system of civil service hierarchies and fixed pay grades that used to spawn complacency and inefficiencies in Government jobs.

The US has always kept itself away from the practices of the British colonies and has never had civil servants. Academics from its Ivy League schools and from the private sector provide the Federal Government its officers. A few years ago a person no less than Infosys Chief NR Narayana Murthy suggested that the IAS has become sell by date. He emphasized that the IAS in its present form needs to be abolished. “For over 1,000 years, the government belonged to someone sitting either 2,000 miles or 4,000 miles away. There is no sense of societal ownership,” he said. “The penalty (for corruption) is minimal. As a result, there is no fear of repercussions and there is no accountability.

Prime Minister Modi who has supported India’s babus from day one must take a call on wether the US system has delivered better than the British system of civil servants. He must think out of the box solutions for the nation to evolve. We need to realise that India needs better officers in the administration services than the current lot who have not been able to deliver. We need a structural change in governance and the current administrative set up of the IAS, the IFS, the IRS and the IPS is too archaic and un professional to deliver. Here are three reasons why that must change.

1) The IAS is not trained to work individually but perform as a team leader from day one. Without the clerks in the Government who actually start a file an IAS officer is unable to work. The private sector teaches executives to perform individually as well as collectively. The modern day work culture actually demands that capability which IAS officers lack because they are taught to be administrative officers and not executives. In the private sector one moves from the executive position to the managerial position while an IAS officer assumes the managerial position from day one and hence lacks the mindset to execute individually.

2) The IAS structure is noncompetitive and hence breeds complacency. Everybody reaches the peak of the grade and everyone works in silos. Seniority not performance holds the key to promotions and contacts developed with political leaders give them plum postings . There is no competition amongst the peer group in the administrative work they do. For example among the IAS there is no provision of having 5 DM in a large district, two senior DM and one District Magistrate and competition to be a DM. Every district will have one District Magistrate and an IAS officer will be posted as a DM.

3) The IAS structure has no provision for learning through a competitive environment. In the private sector the learning is continuous and is compulsory because the pressure is on performance. The IAS has continuously avoided the discussion on performance and there has hence been no incentive to learn. Learning was perhaps less necessary ten years ago than now because things were not changing so fast. However technology up gradation in all sectors has radically changed the way things are happening. Today’s world is based on performance and performance is based on learning and execution. The IAS structure which is far removed from these realities should hence no longer be the sole people who become administrators in the state or central Governments. Governance needs a whiff of fresh air and it is time to make administration in India an non exclusive domain of the civil services.