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New School for Babus

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The Prime Minister’s proposal for educating and shaping the new bureaucrat is only a first draft. Changes and modifications will be made at the stage of discussions and debates. The underlying idea is that ever since the present IAS system was devised, it has remained unchanged and unmodified in any way except peripherally. The system continues, whereas the demands on the system have vastly increased.

Many of the old school members of the steel frame are unable to sympathise with the new aspirations of the people with whom the bureaucrats (at least a majority of them) have not been on the same wavelength. The babus are least interested in change but the people, both urban and village, are fed up with the old mode of decision-making. While the babus excel in file notings, group meetings and pickling the urgent problems of the people as long as possible, the people are insistent on change.

Here it must be mentioned that most of today’s ministers are incapable of getting the better of their top secretaries, since they (ministers) seldom get on top of the problems. Most of the MPs are either incapable or unwilling (for extraneous reasons) to pinpoint the crux of the matter in order to help the minister to hasten decision-making. So when the Prime Minister speaks of reforming a weak, inefficient and corrupt delivery system, it has many more angles than reforming the recruitment of civil servants.

Under the new recruitment system envisaged by the Prime Minister, an All-India Entrance Examination for class XII students will be held on the pattern of the present entrance test for NDA or medical or IIT. Obviously, the talent pool will vastly increase (at present about three lakh candidates appear for IAS entrance). Those who pass the test will be selected for a five-year course in a national academy. Those who complete the first three years successfully will get their graduation degree. The best of these graduates will be sent for a two-year service-specific course on the basis of merit and choice. Those who do not make the grade will be ``released’’ to the job market.

Here is the rub. This can cause a lot of heart-burning and disappointment, for these bottom rankers can argue that they could have tried for a medical or engineering degree, their only sin being trying to serve the country. The selection procedure does not end with the two-year service-specific course. On the basis of annual exams, students will be selected for another two-year service-specific course, leading to a degree like MBA. Again those who do not come up to the required level are made to leave by a mysterious ``filter’’ process. Imagine this happening to young men and women after seven years of back-breaking studies and field work.

One may well imagine the acrimony and frustration in the ranks of the ``filtered’’ rejects. One hopes that most of the second phase of the course will be spent in the field, meeting the people, discussing region-specific issues and finding solutions. The new civil servant is the new face of the government, the new fine-tuned delivery system in which they have to deliver on rain-harvesting, drought-fighting, providing drinking water, implementing plans on primary education, health, sanitation, medi-care etc. A national debate is urgent on the entire selection process and training methods.

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