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The Administrative Services Circumstances that attended independence; Partition, transfers of population unprecedented in known history, integration of some 300 princely states, war in Kashmir, the assassination of Gandhiji. The one island of stability, of predictability, appeared to be the administrative structure. Most of the British members of the ICS had left, the few that remained were pro-India. The Indian members of the ICS, very few in number, made it clear that they were more than willing to hitch their wagons to the new regime, some out of nationalism, others as good bureaucrats whose dharma is to carry out the orders of their superiors. The IAS or Indian Administrative Service replaced the ICS and the pre-independence structure of all-India services, provincial or state services and central or Union government services was retained. The Constitution mentions only two all-India services that were in existence at that time: the IAS and the Indian Police Service (IPS), but it provided for more by giving the power to the Rajya Sabha to resolve by a two-thirds majority to establish new all-India services. The Indian Forest Service and the Indian Engineering Service are two services set up under this constitutional provision. The all-India services have been a significant force for national integration, for typically half the cadre of each state must come from outside it. Further, each officer spends the first few years at the district or sub-district level, then some at the state level, followed by a stint at the Centre, then usually back to the state and so on, thus acquiring familiarity with all levels of administration and intimate knowledge of the work culture, strengths and weaknesses of each. The central services also perform a unifying role in that their recruitment base is the country as a whole. Officers of the Audit and Accounts Service, or Railway or Customs can be and are posted in different parts of the country even though they will work in central government offices and not in state government offices as in the case of IAS or IPS. |
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