The provincialisation of All India Services

All India Services were to be all India in character for a purpose. Any dilution of this central tenet should worry policymakers

In the constitutional foundations of the country, and in the actual working of the government, the All India Services (AIS) play a role that requires them to have a genuinely all India character. The extent of this all India character has declined in recent decades. This has adverse effects and has implications for our thinking about the government human resources process and decentralisation.

The working of the civil services loomed large in the imagination of our founding fathers such as Sardar Patel. While we ordinarily think about a Constitution as being about rights of the citizenry (i.e. putting limits upon