This refers to Mihir Sharma's column "End the IAS" (Ticker, June 6). There is a middle position before ending the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). Why not free it from the elaborate procedures that encase it and slow it down? After all, the same IAS delivers quickly during elections, emergencies and so on, when procedures are simplified or even lifted.
If any IAS officer does manage to acquire domain knowledge, he isn't always placed in that area, so that he gains diverse experience. Even if he or she manages to stay in the special area and spend some time as a Home Secretary or Cabinet or Chief Secretary, they would be overlooked for their lack of diverse experience. Domain expertise is most useful in the middle management area but general managerial capability is still required at the highest levels, and is sought out in preference to specialists. The IAS does provide this.
But that also happens in China, where party members are typically engineers, scientists and so on. But at the highest level, it is their general capability and diverse experience that count. The difference in their efficient system lies in the procedures, powers and freedom to operate.
Ending the IAS might be a tempting thought but it might not produce the desired results if done suddenly.
I would recommend a freer hand with less rigid rules for five years or so to assess how it works. If it does not, ending the IAS would make sense. Perhaps it is not the IAS per se that is the obstacle, but the rigid way in which the government is structured.
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If any IAS officer does manage to acquire domain knowledge, he isn't always placed in that area, so that he gains diverse experience. Even if he or she manages to stay in the special area and spend some time as a Home Secretary or Cabinet or Chief Secretary, they would be overlooked for their lack of diverse experience. Domain expertise is most useful in the middle management area but general managerial capability is still required at the highest levels, and is sought out in preference to specialists. The IAS does provide this.
But that also happens in China, where party members are typically engineers, scientists and so on. But at the highest level, it is their general capability and diverse experience that count. The difference in their efficient system lies in the procedures, powers and freedom to operate.
Ending the IAS might be a tempting thought but it might not produce the desired results if done suddenly.
I would recommend a freer hand with less rigid rules for five years or so to assess how it works. If it does not, ending the IAS would make sense. Perhaps it is not the IAS per se that is the obstacle, but the rigid way in which the government is structured.
Pradeep Singh Gurgaon
Letters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:
The Editor, Business Standard
Nehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg
New Delhi 110 002
Fax: (011) 23720201
E-mail: letters@bsmail.in
All letters must have a postal address and telephone number