How can the road ahead for lateral entry in bureaucracy be smoother?

The govt's biggest lateral hiring initiative came undone in three days, but the issue remains alive

August 17, 2024: UPSC advertises 45 lateral entry posts for joint secretaries, directors, deputy secretaries in the govt of India

August 17, 2024: Opposition comes down heavily on the govt, saying reservation for SCs, STs, OBCs bypassed in these posts

August 18, 2024: Govt officials begin an outreach on the background of lateral hiring, tracing back the concept to the UPA rule

August 19, 2024: Jitendra Singh, DoPT minister, writes to Preeti Sudan, Chairman, UPSC, to cancel the advertisement

Does the bureaucracy need specialists, especially in niche areas such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, electric vehicles, climate change, cryptocurrency and many others? Is there resistance among civil servants to outsiders? How can the road ahead for lateral entry be smoother? And should there be reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs within the lateral recruitment system? Business Standard spoke to several officials who have held key positions in the government.

One of the renowned lateral hires, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who held many positions including economic adviser in the finance ministry, special secretary to the PM, commerce secretary, finance secretary, and then deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, says the idea that a generalist civil service pool is sufficient to fill all jobs in the government is simply wrong. “The idea that all government jobs should be filled by promotion from within ignores the fact that many jobs require specialised experience which cannot be acquired by working within the government. This is especially so in an economy developing rapidly and when technology is changing,’’ he points out.

Even as some lateral hires believe there is tension while working in the government, Ahluwalia says: ‘’I think resistance by civil servants is exaggerated. In any case, it can be overcome by allowing civil servants to take a five-year break and work in the private sector in mid-career. This would introduce a degree of parity.’’

Consultants, experts

Former Election Commissioner and retired IAS officer, Ashok Lavasa, brings in the consultant angle into the narrative. While stressing that in principle he is in favour of lateral entrants, he says the government needs to make clear the need for such recruitment. “Expertise in any subject can be offered by a consultant. Recruitment of those consultants into the government will not make a difference in what they have to offer as advice,” he says. 

Lavasa says a joint secretary or a director recruited as lateral entrant will have to pass their inputs through the system, akin to a consultant’s recommendations. ‘’But as part of the system, if she is overruled, she will continue to serve the government without making any perceptible impact on those decisions,” he points out.

Vivek Rae, member of the Seventh Pay Commission, says: “A regular civil service officer in the Government of Inbdia manages complex and arduous processes of democratic governance, which includes expending considerable time and effort in servicing Parliament, Parliamentary committees, CAG, and Vigilance matters, besides domain-specific issues. Lateral entrants will face challenges in addressing these issues.’’ An expert, unencumbered with these responsibilities can instead be hired as advisor or consultant either by the department or by NITI Aayog, as is already being done, Rae suggests. "There is thus no merit in positioning domain experts directly as director or joint secretary,” he says.

Although the list of successful lateral entrants is long, including Nandan Nilekani, Manmohan Singh, Rakesh Mohan, Shankar Acharya, I G Patel, in addition to Ahluwalia and many others, there is scepticism among civil servants about the process. A retired IAS officer, who does not wish to be named, says if the government wants to get actual talent into the system, it needs to go through a search and selection panel to identify the people to get on board. Though the process for hiring lateral entrants itself has moved back and forth between UPSC and separate selection committees over the years, the concept of getting domain experts into the government dates back to the 1950s. Under the Industrial Management Pool, set up in 1957, many technocrats such as Prahlad Basu, Mantosh Sondhi and Lovraj Kumar were inducted into the government.

There was another round of lateral entries when professionals such as V Krishnamurthy and D V Kapur were appointed secretaries in charge of technical departments like power and heavy industries. Later, in 2002, the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government inducted private sector professional R V Shahi as power secretary to push electricity reforms. In 2005, the Second Administrative Reforms Comm­ission, chaired by Veerappa Moily, recommended lateral entry to carry out government policies.  

Need to reform

Government officers point out that if not used carefully, such recruitment can “degenerate into an uncontrollable spoils system” to benefit the politicians. “Lateral entry of professionals is a simplistic solution seeking to remedy a very complex problem. Used selectively, it could benefit in limited areas. Used liberally, it could completely destroy the system,” says former chairman of UPSC, Deepak Gupta. 

Towards achieving a balance, officials say it is important for the bureaucracy to introspect as well, in order to create officers with expertise.  “People (IAS officers) get transferred after five years of service. I had to fight to retain a person beyond five or seven years. …. We have constraints that keep us from developing experts,” says a senior bureaucrat. 

Lavasa points out that the government should go for systemic reforms while onboarding lateral entrants. “For instance, if there are to be lateral entrants in a cadre because of the expertise they bring, the numbers of the rest should be trimmed.” 

On the other side, there is criticism of the Indian bureaucracy. Former Indian Police Service officer and Central Information Commissioner Yashovardhan Jha Azad pointed out the contributions of lateral entrants such as M S Swaminathan, Verghese Kurien, Homi Jahangir Bhabha, Manmohan Singh and Montek Singh Ahluwalia to India’s Green Revolution, White Revolution, space programme and economic reforms.

“But the entrenched babu mafia never allowed outsiders,’’ Azad said on X, while stating that United Progressive Alliance 1 and 2 tried lateral entry but failed. So, whether you keep or throw out lateral, horizontal or vertical entries, nothing will change unless you overhaul the entire system, says Azad.

Constitutional expert P D T Achary, a former Lok Sabha secretary general, told Business Standard that lateral entry as a principle had been used in the past to induct domain experts, but the latest effort to “recruit a large number of people” through the UPSC was inconsistent with the idea. “It showed that the intended objective was to bypass reservations. Recruiting a large number of people will have to follow constitutional provisions on reservations,” he said.

As Ahluwalia explains, it is not tough to provide for reservation. “This concern (of bypassing reservation in lateral hiring) can be addressed by introducing reservation in this category and expanding the intake or calculating the reserved jobs that would have been bypassed and adding them to the reserved category of the normal intake.’’

There may be many other procedural changes that can be implemented which HR experts could suggest, he says.

Then and Now

1957: Industrial Management Pool set up to boost quality of top bureaucrats; technocrats inducted

2005: Second Administrative Reforms Commission constituted under Congress leader Veerappa Moily; lateral entry of officials an objective of the commission 

2017: NITI Aayog report suggests lateral entry in senior and middle levels to bring in fresh talent and augment manpower

2018: Govt advertises for joint secretary level posts based on NITI report

August 2024: UPSC advertises 45 lateral posts at the mid-level, withdraws the ad after Opposition protests over bypassing reservations

> So far, 63 appointments have been made through lateral entry at the level of joint secretary, director and deputy secretary in the last 5 years