As always much of the rhetoric in the mainstream media about the proposed amendment to the IAS rules is shrill and one sided without understanding the context of the rules and the changes. Every Chief Minister is reading out cut-pasted statements on the “attack on federalism” while completely forgetting the fact that the same Sardar Patel —the architect of the All-India services who they are all quoting — also envisioned a strong center with strong states for cooperative federalism to happen. There is a lot of talk of camaraderie, brotherhood, and cooperation among the critics of this amendment.

Federalism cannot be a one-sided construct, where “bhaichara” (brotherhood) means one bhai (or behen) is always hitting the other “bhai” but expects him to follow the spirit of camaraderie. It is very easy to blame Government of India (GOI) when even your pet cow doesn’t give milk, but can someone dive deep to understand the real issues rather than pointing fingers to win meaningless brownie points ? The All-India Services are indeed meant to be federal in character; they are not UPSC-recruited State services. "Federal" does not mean "Central" — but equally it does not mean "State". Many states are treating them as State services and flouting the existing norms, expressly agreed upon in writing between GOI and the States.

Every major CM is indulging in theatrics and drama about attacks on democracy and some imaginary fear psychosis among the officers, whereas not a single IAS/IPS/IFOS Services association has said anything at all, probably because there is none! Or else at least those in the States which are making the loudest noises would have spoken up!

The IAS rules have a Central Deputation Reserve (CDR) that specifies the number of officers that each state will loan to the center, and this is obligatory on their part to do. What has been happening so far is because of a combination of the state’s reluctance and individual officers concerned not always wanting to serve in the center for a plethora of reasons, the CDR is underfilled. A case in point being the lady Chief Minister who is shouting the loudest has sent no officers Government of India (GOI) in the past almost 2 years. Is this in the spirit of federalism? I am personally aware of many officers who are keen to go to GOI as also some for serious personal reasons but have not been allowed by many states including West Bengal. Madhya Pradesh all put together has sent only 7-9 officers in the last 4 years and their CDR shortfall is 90 percent whereas Bengal is at 95 percent, followed by Telangana at 94 percent and Haryana at 92 percent! (It may be kindly noted that Haryana and MP are BJP ruled states and thereby the change in rules is not an attack on the opposition ruled states but is an attempt to get agreed upon officers for serving at the Center).

First, against the above backdrop, all that the rule change has done is to ensure that it is now obligatory to fill the originally mutually agreed upon CDR within a specified time frame. Dillydally by either officers or by the state government will not be allowed. Indeed, all three must tango when they have to in national interest.

The second vital point everyone is missing is that the whole point of an All-India Service (AIS) is to have rich field experiences from different states, of myriad complexities and complexion, infuse and inform policymaking at the center. What is happening currently is in areas where the field experience is most valued such as rural development, school education, health etc. is slowly getting managed by non-IAS officers who despite their inherent individual merit, do not have the field exposure of making a non-working school or a PHC work. For example, if an Indian Railways Service or a Defence estates officer is made in charge of primary education or for looking after the nation’s hospitals policy, when he has never supervised or visited a government school in his life it becomes much more difficult to extract the relevant experience to inform and imbue policy making at the GOI level. But this is exactly what’s been happening in GoI for the last many years even pre-dating the NDA Government.

Third, the different state cadre officers always keep an eye out for their respective states to protect the interests of that particular state in Delhi. By denying GOI deputation in its full-strength, states are the ones who are losing out by not having officers from their cadre representing them in GOI. The IAS cadre network is strong like a family, and usually watches out for its own, but by denying adequate numbers to GOI, various states are harming themselves.

Fourth, at every cadre review, almost every State Government seeks an increase in cadre strength citing “shortages” and indeed there are shortages everywhere. What GOI is saying is “lets share the shortage”. What has been happening so far is that under the garb of an expansion in cadre strength, state governments seek to promote officers not just from the state civil services, but occasionally riff raffs such as RTO inspectors to the IAS! What is stopping the State Government from hiring laterally? Why even this female Chief Minister had declared she would do lateral entry, many moons ago. What is stopping her from doing so rather than insidiously trying to subvert the working of GOI?

If one looks at the offer list of 2020 out of the 5000+ IAS officers in India 39 are on offer to GOI (and 5 from IPS and 14 from IFOS!) as against a significantly larger agreed upon CDR. All put together there are probably only about 368 IAS officers in GOI at various levels already present in GOI today. How can one expect GOI to function effectively without the availability of officers in adequate number and quality, both at once? The CDR shortfall state-wise, is as follows at present which shows this starkly:

Lastly, on the issue of picking specific officers even where the consent of the state is not given that is restricted to specific situations only. Imagine if they had not been a Julio Ribeiro or a KPS Gill, who were deputed from other cadres, India might have lost Punjab forever. More recently if it had not been for a tough no-nonsense officer like BVR Subrahmanyam going as Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir at a crucial time in its history, things may have turned adverse there. Likewise in the same way another brilliant and tough officer like Ashok Vardhan Shetty who has opposed these IAS reforms, could well have been sent to another cadre in such a situation. Two Marxist Chief Ministers agreed, to send an outstanding officer BS Raghavan (West Bengal cadre) to become Chief Secretary, Tripura. Was federalism not in peril then or is it only in peril when it is done by this NDA Government?

In such special situations should the government not have the option of selecting specific officers, especially when now they are even bringing in even professionals from the private sector for specialized roles? The argument is that this can be misused. I concede this is correct, but do we stop using Google maps because terrorists use it for planting bombs? Or stop buying knifes at all because they can also be misused? Perhaps a cap of a maximum of 1 percent of a cadre strength could be put on such callings by GOI or another State Government, to prevent misuse. Appropriate safeguards can be built in to ensure this provision is not misused to punish good officers.

Let us not forget that the consent of none of the central service officers including the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) or the Indian audit and accounts service (IAAS) is ever taken before transferring them from Mumbai to Nagaland so what is wrong if GOI says give me what is due to me, as agreed with you during consultations, to enable me to run a tight ship, nay run the country?

In sum, it is a much-needed change in IAS rules to enable the quality of government and quality of governance at the Government of India’s level to improve visibly and dramatically. Those who complain of policy design failures should believe that the quality of the policy design also depends on the quality of the officer handling it and the same policy will come out in multiple ways- good or bad- depending on the quality of the hand at the wheel. What these reforms seek to do is simply to tighten a loophole which enabled recalcitrant officers and reluctant state governments — who did not want to serve in GOI for various personal or in some cases political reasons — to do so now , when called upon to serve the country.

—The author, Srivatsa Krishna is an IAS officer. Views are personal. He can be followed on Twitter @srivatsakrishna

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(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)

First Published:Jan 24, 2022 5:02 PM IST