Private Sector Entrants in UPSC: A Pause Needed To Address Paucity of Procedure

Bringing specialists into civil service is a major step towards reforming but it requires a careful approach.

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(Photo: Erum Gour / The Quint)

The recent recommendation of 31 candidates by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) to be inducted into senior and mid-level positions in various union ministries is the second such attempt towards bringing specialists from private sector in the senior and middle level of bureaucracy. Earlier too, nine lateral entrants from private sector were inducted in 2019.

Bringing specialists into the civil service is a major step towards reforming civil services but requires a careful approach to be fruitful. Various committees and plethora of think tanks have from time-to-time highlighted the need for professionals’ entry into the civil service but many constitutional as well as practical aspects are still there to be touched upon.

Standing the Constitutional Safeguards

Meritocracy demands that the recruitment procedure of selecting professionals should stand the test of merit through a fair and transparent procedure. The fair selection and appointment of civil servants is the foundation of modern merit-based bureaucracy. It was achieved after a long and conceited struggle to overhaul the patronage-based system where bureaucracy was a part of the political community. The need of neutral civil service was highlighted by the Northcote Trevelyan Report of 1855 in Britain laying the foundation of a civil service commission, independent of the government.

In India, although competence was one of the criteria to appoint administrative officials during the pre-Mughal and Mughal time, they essentially remained kings’ men. The idea of merit-based recruitment was advanced during the British colonial rule only.

The Trevelyan idea of an independent civil service commission has got an expression in the Union Public Service Commission, a body that acts as the custodian of merit principle in the recruitment system of civil services. Elaborate safeguards have been provided in the Constitution itself to ensure autonomy and independence in its functioning and insulate the recruitment of civil servants from any political interference or patronage.

Therefore, any deviation from the established procedure must also fulfil the conditions of fair procedure of recruitment. It is significant to note here that under Article 321, Parliament can hand over additional functions to the UPSC, thus it is necessary to go through the parliamentary procedure before any modification in the recruitment process takes place.

As far as the recent induction of candidates laterally is concerned, the government agreed to hand over the task of selecting the candidates to the UPSC only after the intervention of Supreme Court where the notification of the induction of specialists by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) was challenged in 2018 (as DoPT is not a recruiting agency).

To be constitutionally correct and to increase the legitimacy of the move, the recruitment procedure of induction of lateral candidates should be initiated in the parliament. A comprehensive legislative process will not only help usher in clarity over various aspects of lateral entry recruitment but also legitimise the process and provide it with the endorsement of wider political forces.

Addressing Practical Aspects

There are many other practical aspects too which need to be addressed before scaling up this process, for example, the entry of professionals in the policymaking arena is likely to generate the issue of conflict of interest, which may put the public good in jeopardy. There is also an apprehension expressed that the lateral entry is an instrument to bypass the reservations for the socially disadvantaged groups (reservation system has not been followed in the lateral entry so far).

Further, the civil servants are sceptical of the entry of professionals into the generalists-dominated policymaking arena, highlighting the need for creating a positive opinion among them for the success of any such effort. The adverse view about lateral entrants among the civil servants may leave the entire process a failure casting a negative impact on the functioning of bureaucracy as a whole.

In the absence of careful thinking over these questions, the chances of replication of existing problems into the new system remain high. For example, in the absence of fair procedure, it can further enhance the problems of politicisation of bureaucracy with which the Indian bureaucracy is already afflicted with.

Other Countries’ Experience

The experience of other countries shows that the induction of professionals in the bureaucracy is a tightrope walk for the government. For example, in Pakistan, the lateral entry system was introduced way back in 1973 but in the absence of full-proof procedure, it proved to be a disaster for the impartiality of Pakistan’s bureaucracy.

Aminullah Chaudry in his book Political Administrators: The Story of Civil Service of Pakistan has widely discussed how there was direct control of the government over the appointments, dismissals, retirements, recruitments, promotions, and grievances of the lateral entrants, which thereby led to the chances of misuse of discretion in authority.

Lack of transparency in the recruitment procedure and lack of stringent standards reduced lateral recruitment to a political instrument that benefited only the political loyalists and punished the opponents. And finally, when it was reversed in 1979, its impact could not be rolled back completely as it was retained as the induction of army men during the subsequent military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq.

Failed experience of Pakistan’s lateral entry programme highlights the need for India to develop a nuanced understanding of various aspects of selection procedures of lateral recruitment before expanding it further.

Other countries’ experience over bringing professional skills into the civil service also offers insights into other alternatives which India can explore given the apprehension over the complex procedure of lateral entry. For example, in the United States and Australia position-based system is followed where appointments are made through a wider pool, comprising all civil servants who are qualified to apply as well as those applicants from the private sector with relevant competence and experience. Whereas India follows career-based system, which is like closed enclaves and where the officials are recruited at the entry-level and nurtured and groomed to work in any organisation through managed rotation across various organisations.

The Administrative Reform Commission in its 10th report too recommended to follow elements of position-based system in senior and middle management level. In Chinese bureaucracy, incentive system and the longer tenure of civil servants ensure expertise in domain knowledge.

In India, the officers can be given sufficient time to recognise their interest areas and then be encouraged to work in the same department to refine the domain knowledge and be grown as specialist generalists.

The promotion-linked transfers can be discouraged and can be linked with skill refinements.

Further, some of the departments where technical expertise is more important than generalists, managerial skills can be reserved to be headed by skilled professionals. This is followed in Commonwealth Public Service of Australia.

This can be done especially in the case of certain departments such as defence, coal, shipping, and civil aviation where the cultivation of specialist expertise among civil servants is not possible as the states where civil servants spend most of their early career do not deal with these subjects.

Lateral entry of the professionals is the need of the hour for Indian bureaucracy. Given the scarcity of senior-level IAS officers generally and that of professionals especially, the induction of few people is like a drop in the ocean and unable to bring any change in the functioning of the bureaucracy. As recommended by many reform commissions and committees, this exercise needs to be scaled up but with a foolproof system. Any ad hoc step will increase only the chances of its malfunctioning. And to be legitimate and constitutional, it must start at parliament, which is constitutionally assigned for this task. It will open it for a public debate, inviting proposals and objections publicly.

(Dr. Shraddha Rishi is a PhD holder on civil service of Pakistan and currently works as an Assistant Professor in Magadh University. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)