Govt must not waste or misuse lateral entry to bureaucracy

The notion of lateral entry must not be discredited by the hiring of politically-connected time-servers

There has been much discussion of an advertisement placed by the Union government in newspapers seeking applications to 10 posts at the level of joint secretary. The advertisement states that the tenure of a successful applicant will be three years, extendable to five. This advertisement has re-opened an old debate about lateral entry into the all-India civil services and, beyond that, about larger administrative reform. There are broadly two views that need to be examined in this context. 

First, there are those who argue that the current bureaucratic set-up is antiquated and inefficient. It was designed for a much smaller