Introduction
When I left the Indian administrative service in 1993, I still had more than sixteen years of services left before superannuation. I was in fact only slightly past the half way mark, in my career. Although I did not possess that mixture of moderate ability and immoderate ambition that leads on to success in the civil service, I was not entirely unsuccessful. I had been collector for a reasonable length of time had been head of many departments and I retired voluntarily from service, was secretary of government. My career had therefore followed the usual course, and I could look forward to another two decades, more or less, of time bound promotion, time scale pay rises and comfortable mediocrity, had I stuck it out. After retirement, had I been like the average civil servant, I could have wangled an extension of service, or sought some other sinecure. For your true civil servant never retires, he just becomes a governor, or an ambassador, of chairman of some statutory body, commission, tribunal or committee; if nothing else, he becomes the administrative head of the local chapter of the Boy Scout or the Red Cross. Life without the trappings of office seems to be inconceivable for all but the few.
I was not however like the average officer; I say this in all humanity, as a confession rather than a claim. What distinguished me from other was not however superior ability. It was rather an inability to obey order without examination their rationale, to take things on sufferance, to accept conventional wisdom without question. I think if you do not have an instinctive veneration for authority, you are not really cut out to be a civil servant. The civil servant accepts certain loss of personal freedom and independence, in return for a certain measure of authority. Most people in fact do not know what to do with their freedom; all that they crave is authority. They think the exchange well worth their while. I did not think so. I had no regards for authority as such, and I valued my freedom, all that they crave is authority, they think the exchange well worth their while. I did not think so. I had no regards for authority as such, and I valued my freedom a great deal. This was my problem. Allied it this was a restless intellect, a vein of irreverent humor and habit of putting across my views in a blunt and unvarnished manner, without the usual circumstances and qualification. As a result of these temperamental angularities I found myself in almost perpetual revolt against the norms and conventions of the civil service. In every gathering I was the outsider, in every meeting I was the devil’s advocate. I felt I was in an organization whose values I did not accept, and which in turn had little use for my peculiar abilities and talents. It was thus a formal acceptance of this natural parting of the ways, which led to my retirement.
This is not however a book of reminiscences, this is in fact a philosophical work. I have included biographical details in this narrative only when they throw some light upon the characters and texture of life in the service. This is relevant to my purpose. These details will show the reader why I failed to fit into the ethos of the civil service. I have used the civil service as metaphor to symbolize the general reverence of power and authority which is sapping away the vitals of our society.
This is not therefore an indictment of the civil service. It is an indictment of civil service elitism; symbolized by the Indian Administrative service. Elitism is of course a well known historical phenomenon. In the civil service context this is characterized by a hierarchical organization stricture, restriction of lateral entry into the elite cadre, thus making it a closed caste, and the cult of the generalist. Elite have their Elite have their use of courses. Elitism is justified when it leads to a high standard of conduct and when the elite is required for the attainment of some overwhelming purpose. This is the case when an empire needs a selective band of officials to maintain its authority over a large territory. Or when an organization threatened with mortal danger, needs a praetorian guard to defeat the hostile forces. The Chinese mandarins fall into the first category. The society of Jesus brought into being to protect into the second category. The Indian civil service falls into the first category. The Indian administrative service does not fall into any category because it does not have this larger purpose.
All elites stand in the danger of losing their elan and becoming mere guardians of the status quo once this purpose is lost. In order to maintain morale and to give the rank and file something to live for, elites disguise their real purpose. They formulate a morally elevating creed to provide them with a sense of mission. In the case of Chinese mandarins, this was provides by the Confucian creed, in the case of the Indian civil services it was provided by the notion of the, “white man’s burden”. This creed is really only a smoke screen to hide the real purpose of the elite which is always a conservative one. , but the rank and file believes in the mission in spite of themselves. The best member of the civil service is always too intelligent to be taken in by any comforting illusion, but these members are too high minded in any case to behave with anything but complete commitment and dedication. It is the behavior of the average member which is determined the official ethos of the service The greatness of the Indian civil services was the average member of the service, in spite of notions of racial arrogance, still maintained a high level of conduct and integrity. Its greatness is increased by the fact that it also able to produce a large number of people who were willing to jeopardize their career prospects rather than compromise with their principles.
However even these self willed individual were able to achieve something only because their authority was unchallenged. This is the point to be remembered. They were successful because their word was law. Therefore those rare beings that were uncorrupted by the power or unmindful of the policy objectives of the central government were able to impose their own will on the course of events and translate their own good intentions into reality. Perhaps if the same autocratic power granted to member of the IAS, some of them may be able to do as good as job. Indeed those few officers who have been able to do some good work in the field, are again opinionated rather than looked to the state government for guidance. When I reflect on my own career, I realized that my own achievement, such as they are, have been due to my disregards for any authority other than my own conscience and conviction. However, when I acted as if I was an autonomous centre of authority, I was over reaching myself. In a democracy an unelected official has no right to act in this manner. My behavior was therefore quite inexcusable. The irony is, there is no other way to make use of civil service elitism. It works only when an official is willing to use power creatively, but such use of is outside the score of his legitimate authority. This is the existentialist dilemma of elitist civil service.
Therefore civil service elitism can work only when the civil service enjoys unchallenged political dominance, and has sufficient number of men willing to defy authority, to satisfy their own craving of conscience. Such a combination of circumstances is rare. For the most part, elitism is practice, boils down to a sterilize obsession with rank, status and the trappings of power. This is especially true in cases where, the over-riding purpose or mission has been attained, and the political authority that stands behind the civil service is no longer seriously threatened. Having attained this purpose, the civil service does not wither away, as one might think. It becomes a self perpetuating organism, and its central purpose becomes, the preservation of its own privilege. This is the fate of all elitist civil services. But the situation is even worse is democratic countries, because here civil service elitism does not have the same sense of mission even at the very beginning. Deprived of this larger political purpose, here the civil service becomes a conservative enterprise right from the start, obsessed with niggling details of and status. It ends up as a collection of small minded snobs.
The philosophical justification for civil service elitism is provided by Cardinal Newman, in a famous essay on the nature of the so called liberal education. This education is defined by Newman as- “it (the liberal education) teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle of skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit and to master any subject with facility.
This system of education according to Newman, “does not make physician, surgeon, or engineers or soldiers, or bankers, or merchants, but it makes men.
We have to ask ourselves if this romantic idealization of a defunct system of education is really to the point. A system that believes that a person who has acquired the benefits of this so called liberal education can really come to grips with any job. However complex is out of touch with the complexities of the modern world. It is based on a distrust of the professional and a denigration of the specialist. This is again at bottom a snobbish attitude. There is no reason why an amateur should be better than a professional at the same job, except that this attitude appealed to the class prejudices of the British ruling class which shunned and looked down on all useful work and idolized the gentlemanly idler. Civil service elitism is based on caste feeling and has the same drawbacks as caste. Both deserve to be overthrown for the same reason.
The antidote to caste is castelessness, the antithesis of hierarchy is to throw public service opens to all comers and to find the right man for the job at all levels. Why should all jobs of joint secretary and above not be open to all suitable candidates? This would at least provide an opportunity to all those generals, and police officers and doctors and engineers to reach the top of their professional, who are told at present that they do not know their own jobs well enough to be really put in charge. It would in fact do more. To the more enterprising professionals it would provide an opportunity to prove their mettle in other jobs as well. This would prove the maxim that it is only when you can do your own job well that you can do any other job properly. This would be a fitting rejoinder to the banal snobbery symbolized by the cult of the generalist.
Such a rejoinder is necessary because the attitude behind the cult of the generalist have important social consequences. The glorification of the amateur at the expense of the specials means in practice the disparagement of all intellectual attainment and scholarship. It means that the downloading of science and technology, because science and technology depends on specialized knowledge. It is not surprising that Indian’s academic institutions are in terminal decline because of the wholesale adoption of the civil service culture of petty intrigue and jockeying for power.
No wonders little origin; research is done anywhere and no Indian has the Nobel Prize for science since C.V. Raman. A civilization where the impulse for innovation and enterprise has atrophied and where the search for knowledge is not actively encouraged is without the means of progress and advancement. It is a society doomed to stagnation and decline.
It is also a society which lacks the means for economic growth and innovation. The preference for the civil servicemen as that young men and women put security above all things. It means that no one is willing to strike out on his own, to make his fortune, to build an empire, to found a new sector create a new utopia. Economic growth thrives on the spirit of enterprise. A society where it is the dream of every young man to secure salaried employment with the government is a society which looks down on trade and enterprise as second rate occupation. In such a society no on dreams of founding his fortune of innovation or creativity. What people dream of is rising to the top after a life time’s deference to the culture of conformity. Such a society is again without dynamism and is headed for economic catastrophe.
But this is not to say that the business of governance is not important. It is. That is why I argue that the high minded generalist who is really inspired with the ethics of public service should join politics. This is the area which desperately needs men of faith and conviction. As long as the summits of build life are occupied by smugglers and bootleggers, no civil service in the world can improve matters. That is why we should give up our fascination with number two jobs like the civil service and start opting for the number one job that is politics. That is the message of this book.
