M.G. Devasahayam 
India’s elite civil services (IAS, IFS, IPS, IRS etc.) have been accused of descending from oak tree to bamboo frame and then deteriorating into bundles of reeds blowing with the wind. Here is a narrative that is adding cowardliness as another hallmark.
Sometime around the middle of December 2024, I received an invitation to speak on the panel discussion titled “Indian Civil Services: Frame, Crutch, or Cage?” as part of the ThinkEdu Conclave-2025 being hosted by the New Indian Express at Chennai on January 27-28, 2025. I promptly accepted the invite. On January 14, 2025 I got the confirmation with the request to send my brief bio along with a high-resolution picture.
I promptly complied with the request. But astonishingly, on January 16 I received an email from the organisers saying that while they deeply appreciated my co-operation, they are constrained to cancel the session. This was because despite the ThinkEdu team’s tireless efforts, they were unable to secure enough speakers for the panel!
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Taken aback, I checked with the moderator who had brilliantly moderated the ThinkEdu-2020 session on the theme ‘Who is an Indian: Is Hindi an Imposition?’ in which I had participated and was to moderate the 2025 session also.
The 2020 session was explosive and New Indian Express had reported it thus: “The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is not only unleashing anarchy, but is also not implementable… If you had asked me a month ago (about my identity as an Indian), I would have answered as a proud Indian but today, I really don’t know if I’m Indian at all. They say my passport, Aadhaar and even voter ID is invalid,” said Devasahayam, a former army-infantry officer, during a panel discussion alongside Congress MP Jothimani and academic Madhu Kishwar.”
The moderator confirmed the reason for cancellation of the session and it did not come to me as much of a surprise. I have been getting similar reports from some TV as well as several social media channels that finding a former civil servant to speak frankly on affairs of governance is almost impossible. This is more so because of the fear psychosis that has gripped the institutions and instruments of governance in the last few years.
India’s best minds being wasted as mere status quo time-servers
As a result, civil servants have become unimaginative, acquiescing and compliant instead of being imaginative, un-acquiescing and dynamic. Also, even decades after independence, pet theories, myths and mindsets of the colonial era about the civil services still persist. First and foremost is the “practice of Omertà” i.e. “a civil servant should be seen, not heard.”
Under this anachronistic arrangement, some of India’s best minds that constitute the civil services are being choked and wasted as mere status quo time-servers. What is worse, by remaining silent and unable to speak up against corruption and misrule, the conscientious among the civil servants are fast losing their principles and personality. This is unacceptable, particularly in the face of mounting venality in governance that is destroying the fibre of our democratic polity.
Second is the notion of “subservience to political masters” that envisages a meek and “abdicating” role for civil servants. This is an aberration since All India Services are covenanted/mandated in the Constitution (Article 312) and its members have statutory role to play in giving honest, fair and just governance to the people, particularly those the ruling politicians do not represent.
In our skewed electoral system of “first-past-the-post” and the reality of low voter turnout, ruling politicians represent only a minority of the electorate and the people. If the civil servants surrender to the rulers-of-the-day and do their biddings without demur, where will the majority flee?
Third, too much of protection can make a person to play safe. This is what is happening to many civil servants – they play safe to avoid even minor inconveniences for upholding honesty and integrity in governance. They compromise and acquiesce every time just to keep their posts and positions safe.
Fourth, the practice of “jack-of-all-trade,” fitting round-pegs in square holes and square-pegs in round holes, is the villain of professionalism and probity in civil service. This feudal practice enables politicians to play favourites and post anybody for any job, the main criteria being their pliability!
Dismantling these archaic hangovers and undoing the practice of Omertà is the challenge and the opportunity for civil servants committed to the constitutional scheme of governance. But that is just not happening despite the stellar role assigned to civil servants in preserving and cementing Indian democracy, specifically electoral democracy with the Election Commission and Returning Officers (District Collectors) as the fulcrum.
Civil servants must bear the blame for discrepancies in electoral practices
A 2017 study had concluded that the civil service had been outstandingly effective in the exemplary manner in which free and fair elections were conducted in India.
Tragically, it is no longer so! In the current setting, this is the major failure of the civil services. This has been repeatedly pointed out to the Election Commission of India (ECI) by the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG) of former civil servants in 2019 and 2024.
“The 2019 General Elections appear to have been one of the least free and fair elections that the country has had in the past three decades or so…. If it continues, it is bound to strike at the very heart of that founding document the people of India proudly gave themselves–the Constitution of India–and the democratic ethos that is the very basis of the Indian Republic…,” the CCG had said in 2019.
“Our group has been interacting with the ECI since 2017 and has sent many letters to your predecessors: there has been no response from the ECI over the past five years.…. In spite of the enormous powers vested in it under Article 324 of the Constitution of India, the ECI, in recent years, has exhibited a strange diffidence, especially in dealing with actions that impact the conduct of free and fair elections,” it had again said in April 2024.
In his research paper titled “Democratic Backsliding in the World’s Largest Democracy,” (2023) scholar Sabyasachi Das, formerly of the Ashoka University who studied the 2019 General Election to Parliament, says that electoral manipulation can take place at the stage of voter registration (registration manipulation) or at the time of voting or counting (turnout manipulation).
According to the research paper, at the time of voter registration, manipulation is done in the form of targeted deletion of names of voters who are unlikely to vote for the incumbent party. At the time of voting, polling officers can strategically discriminate against registered voters, who are likely to vote against the ruling party. Manipulation can take place at the time of counting of votes due to confusion created by variations in voter turnout data and percentages as well as weak or prejudiced monitoring by counting observers appointed by the ECI who are pliable.
During the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Das’s findings came true and electoral manipulation was pursued in a systematic manner. There have been cases of huge registration manipulation from various states, more recently from Maharashtra and Delhi. Root cause for this is Rule 18 of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, which allows for deletion of voter data without notice or an opportunity to be heard by the affected citizen.
While retaining this Rule ECI has merely issued letters to election officials that no deletion should be done without issuing proper notice. But this is just not being complied with and bulk deletions in the run up to the elections has become the norm rather than the exception!
Turnout manipulation during voting and counting has been largely facilitated because of the implicit faith of ECI in the EVMs which are black-boxes that do not provide provable guarantees against hacking, tampering and spurious vote injections. Thus, elections must be conducted assuming that EVMs can possibly be tampered with.
Though a Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) is installed in every EVM, paper slips are not counted and matched as per sound statistical norms to verify/audit the votes polled and votes counted before making the results public. This has resulted in unusual and abnormal spike in votes polled after the close of polling on which ECI have no data! This has exposed elections to the possibility of serious fraud rendering the EVM system unfit for democratic elections.
With deepening debilities – absence of vote auditing/verifiability; registration/turnout manipulation; electoral corruption; cash-for-votes; voter suppression; pursuing hate-agenda; violation of model code; serious irregularities in counting and declaration of results, denial of data etc. – India’s electoral system is heading towards multi-organ failure.
These facilitate unfair elections and stealing of people’s mandate resulting in India morphing from a vibrant democracy into a ‘electoral autocracy’! Civil servants must bear the bulk of the blame because they are the ones who carry out the entire electoral process as District Election Officers, Returning Officers, Observers, Chief Electoral Officers, Deputy Election Commissioners, Director Generals, Election Commissioners and Chief Election Commissioner!
Yet, let alone serving civil servants, even former bureaucrats are not willing to speak up except writing some rare letters! It looks as if in ‘New India’ cowardliness has become a virtue!
M.G. Devasahayam, formerly of the IAS, is coordinator, Citizens Commission on Elections.