Author: Shyamlal Yadav
Publication: India Today
Date: June 1, 2009
URL: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&Itemid=1&task=view&id=43488§ionid=36&issueid=107&latn=2
Introduction: More women. More recruits from
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. India's public servants are becoming
more like the public.
If Britain's World War I prime minister David
Lloyd George were to examine the steel frame that the Indian Civil Service
was supposed to be, he probably wouldn't recognise it. It's more like clay
now, moulding itself to the shape of an emerging India. An India of caste
mobility, an India of female empowerment and an India of affirmative action.
If in 2000, the number of women selected was 59, in 2008, it had risen to
166. If in 2000, the number of OBC students was 61, it was 236 in 2008, largely
because of quotas introduced in 1993.
It was the same story of growth in the number
of representatives from SCs and STs, from 25 to 130 and 14 to 61 respectively.
The democratisation of aspirations and the accessibility of inspiration is
reflected in yet another figure. While 3.27 lakh students applied for the
exam in 2007, only 1.61 lakh took it and only 638 were selected finally. In
2008, all of 3.18 lakh students applied but 1.67 lakh appeared in the exam
and 791 were picked up when the results were declared in May. Just compare
that with 2002, when 1.16 lakh students appeared in the exam and only 457
finally made it.
It is a test of will, determination and courage,
spanning almost a year of three exams: prelims, mains and the personality
test. The Government of India doesn't allow everyone the privilege of running
it. In recent years, that privilege has been going to a broader class of people.
It is reflected in the language that students use to write the exam. If in
2000 the number of candidates who opted for Hindi as their medium was only
16, it went up to 32 last year. It's also a result of a more market-driven
economy which allows urban students the luxury of many more options than their
rural cousins.
As the economic meltdown burns more fat cats
and the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations make public service a more profitable
enterprise, this trend will increase. Akashdeep Chakraborty, an Indian Postal
Service officer who has been course coordinator at the Lal Bahadur Shastri
Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, for the past four years, says a more
inclusive civil service has shown that merit is no longer confined to those
educated in English medium schools. "The language which today the recruits
choose varies from Hindi to Punjabi to Tamil to Oriya," he says.
Just take this year's top three recruits.
IIT Roorkee graduate Shubhra Saxena gave up a four-year-old job in a software
firm and took the exam in English; Sharandeep Kaur, a well-off farmer's daughter
from Bathinda, took it in Punjabi; and Kiran Kaushal, a Chhattisgarh Public
Service official from Raipur, chose Hindi. They are no longer a curious minority.
Of the 791 recruits to the civil services, 166 are women and 10 of them are
in the top 25.
Currently, the total number of IAS officers
in the country is 4,538 and out of that 609 are women officers. As prime minister
Manmohan Singh said last year, the poor and the underprivileged complain the
government is biased, business believes it is intrusive and the middle class
insists it is corrupt. That may well be so. But a large part of India believes
it is a marvellous meritocracy. Five achievers show how.
The New Bureaucrat
