Ajay K. Mehra 
Last month, a Union Public Service Commission advertisement for recruiting professionals into India’s central bureaucracy, 10 joint secretaries and 35 directors and under secretaries, by September 17, 2024, stirred the hornet’s nest in political circles across the country. The Union government’s initiative to make direct lateral recruitment of professionals at the higher echelons of the bureaucracy drew flak from opposition parties and experts.
Since Indian Administrative Service (IAS) personnel are selected, appointed, trained and posted through a streamlined process by the UPSC and the Union home ministry, a sudden move for direct lateral entries appeared contentious.
Congress president Mallikarjun Khadge said, “As part of a well-planned conspiracy the [Bharatiya Janata Party] is deliberately making such recruitments in jobs so that Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, other backward classes and Economically Weaker Sections categories can be kept away from reservation.” Rahul Gandhi criticised the move as an attack on people belonging to Dalit, tribal and backward communities. Not being able to explain this even to their allies, the government withdrew the advertisement on August 20, two days after it had been published.
The civil service in India
Even though a Civil Service Commission was set up in London in 1854, the evolution of the modern civil service in India began after the administration of India passed on from the East India Company to the Queen-in-Parliament following the 1857 revolt. While competitive examinations began in London in 1855, the process was streamlined only after 1857. Satyendranath Tagore was the first Indian to be selected. From 1922, the examinations were held in India as well.
No wonder, the systematised way in which administration was conducted by Imperial Civil Service (ICS) officers for the Raj impressed the Indian leaders. The Indian ICS officers were used by the leaders who took over the reigns after independence. Sardar Patel laid the foundation of the IAS. For a systematised process of recruitment of personnel for the Union government, the Constitution of India gave statutory status to the UPSC in Part XIV.
The steel frame of India
Arguing for the All-India services, Patel stated in the constituent assembly on October 10, 1949, “The Union will go, you will not have a united India if you have not a good All India Service which has the independence to speak out its mind, which has a sense of security.” He told the first lot of the IAS probationers on April 21, 1947, “It will be your bounden duty to treat the common men in India as your own.”
Patel also designed the formula for posting IAS and IPS officers from cadre states to the Centre through a consultative process. These cadres were expected to bring the administrative experience of their states to the Centre and vice versa. The design was purposely meant for regular cadres, creating a cooperative structure of governance between the states and the Union government.
In the initial years of independence, as the British officers left India, the deficit of personnel within the bureaucracy necessitated lateral appointments. With the Planning Commission coming into existence on March 15, 1950 and the first Five-Year Plan launched in 1951, focusing on development of the agricultural sector, India’s administrative architecture was oriented as development administration. Given the need for expertise, and also due to the shortage of officers, the Union government made several appointments from the ‘open market’ based on candidates’ competence and expertise in various fields. It also drew from the talent pool available in academia. However, that initiative did not affect the regular processes in place.
While the UPSC continued to select the top bureaucracy, domain experts were also appointed from time to time with equivalence with the IAS. Accepting the need for reform, the first Administrative Reforms Commission (5 January 1966), chaired by Morarji Desai/K. Hanumanthaiya, recognised the need for specialisation in the functioning of the government. It stressed on streamlining the process of civil service recruitment and training; it also underlined need-based lateral entry of domain experts at senior levels, but not a regular channel of appointment.
While endorsing the recommendations of the first ARC, the second ARC (August 31, 2005) under the Chair of Veerappa Moily, went deeper into the issue. The Moily Commission discussed the pros and cons of lateral entry at the Senior Administrative Grade in the Government of India and emphasised the need for reforms in personnel management within the civil services. It argued that “throwing open all senior management positions to a fresh round of de novo recruitment at any particular level may, in the Indian context, carry certain risks.” The likely, in fact near certain, gap between policy formulation and the complexities of implementation at the grassroots level would be a major challenge of such appointments.
However, it felt that the available pool of talent and “outstanding skills”, outside the government departments or in its bureaucratic pool, available in the society could be utilised on “some positions in government departments”. The second ARC felt that “lateral entry as done in the past on an ad hoc basis can hardly be considered a suitable model of manpower planning since the present incumbents in government departments tend to resist entry of outside talent and the whole process remains personality driven and inchoate. There is therefore a need to institutionalise the process of induction of outside talent into the government.”
It further said, “the commission is of the view that lateral entries should be done at the present level of Additional Secretary/HAG (Higher Administrative Grade) which is a leadership position from which one can aspire to reach the rank of secretary to government. These posts involve leadership rather than purely operational roles and issues such as requirement of greater functional/technical knowledge at operational levels and the difficulties of managing large-scale recruitment at lower levels can be avoided by following this approach.”
The second ARC also proposed the creation of a talent pool of professionals who could be inducted into the government on a short-term or contractual basis, bringing fresh perspectives and cutting-edge expertise in areas such as economics, finance, technology and public policy. It proposed the creation of ‘the Central Civil Services Authority’ for the purpose.
The tradition of lateral entries has existed and very prominent names of the past governments, including Dr Manmohan Singh, Dr Montek Ahluwalia, Sam Pitroda, Nandan Nilekani, Raghuram Rajan, Bimal Jalan as chief economic advisor and RBI governor, Kaushik Basu, Arvind Virmani and so on were appointed through this route.
Therefore, there are three real issues to be discussed. First, such appointments should be at the levels from where broader policy frameworks emerge. The micro-level management of policy implementation otherwise has been seen to be faltering. Second, the selection of personnel from the management pool brings out the problem of adjustment between two different work styles geared towards goals of maximising profits and taking the benefits of public policies to the poor. Third, lateral entries at the middle levels have led to issues in co-existence between personnel trained for different purposes.
While an apprehension of the government recruiting ideologically compatible persons is there, the issue of protective discrimination on select appointments is not an issue at all.
Ajay K. Mehra is a political scientist. He was Atal Bihari Vajpayee Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, 2019-21 and Principal, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Evening College, Delhi University (2018).