How many ias officers are there in india

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Abc Large. Last month, the Government of India appointed 20 joint secretaries JS in various ministries, in which the majority — 12 to be precise — belonged to services other than the elite Indian Administrative Service IAS. The new entrants included three officers from the income-tax department, three from the railways, two from the central secretariat service and one each from postal, audit and accounts, civil accounts and ordnance factories services, all considered rank and file in the hierarchy of Indian civil services.

This is not a new trend. But the pattern has become so consistent since that IAS officers holding critical JS rank have now become a minority in almost all central government offices. According to data available with the department of personnel and training DoPT , IAS officers in the rank of a GoI joint secretary are only one -third, a dramatic fall from five years ago when almost all posts of JS and above were unofficially reserved for the prestigious cadre.

These groups will become more assertive and pursue cases in the newspapers, indepent TV channels and courts thereby increasing pressure on the IAS.

Secondly the involvement of international donor agencies in development schemes has spiralled in 'sectors like health primary education and forests. On the one hand it means loss of sovereignty through increasing dependence on foreign finds, but on it has some positive aspects too, as such donors would demand greater professionalism and better results.

Already a handful of officers are seeking broader horizons in the international arena. These two forces have created an environment which is quite conducive to radical reforms which I have described in the second part of my paper.

These will result in greater accountability more transparency longer tenure open evaluation and stricter performance norms slimmer bureaucracy and drastic reduction in bureaucratic power and direction. The best way to speed them up is to discuss them continuously in different fora to create a favourable climate.

ANIL AGARWAL: Is this also one of the key reasons why you have often expressed another concern that though something may have happened at management levels in big industry yet very little has percolated to resource management at the government level? And this despite the government' sassurance to decentralise power and liberalise the system. But how to change the system and the minds that work at it?

It will be interesting to compare the work culture of young 1AS officers with those from the Indian Institutes of Management. Both are from the same social and educational back ground and- enter their reprieve organisation at senior positions while very young while their colleagues and subordinates are much older.

The young manager has to establish himself by proving his effectiveness and utility to the organisation by generating more sales or showing greater savings. The young administrator, on the other hand relies more on acquiring traditional and distinguishing ascriptive traits like alooffiess, greater use of English calling on seniors and trying to achieve social integration with them and at the same time enforcing symbols of subordination on others. In other words the latter tries to prove that he belongs toan exclusive club.

The fact that he has shorter tenures injunior positions helps to hide his mediocrity. To correct this one should start by retiring per cent of the officers at the age of as they do in the Army, so that the IAS deadwood is eliminated. De-regulation has made almost no impact at the state level. The systems of buying and selling land getting a ration card or your security backand rent control acts - all need a thorough revision.

One can set up an industry worth billions in India without any licence but the farmer can neither set upa brick kiln unit nor a rice shelling plant nor a cold storage- and not even cut a tree standing on his own private field without bribing officials. A simple operation of converting prosopis a shrub found abundantly in Gujarat and Tamil 'Nadu into charcoal - an employment generating activity - requires four different permissions: one to cut the tree the other to transport it the third to sit up the kiln which costs only a few thousands and the fourth one to transport charcoal!

A committee should identify specific laws and rules that hamper rural entrepreneurship. Areas in which the government must withdraw should be reviewed and departments which need to be wound up should be defined. I will also encourage officers to take mid-carrer sabbatical and live-in the rural areas to see for themselves how the various organs of administrations exploit the people. After all the IAS roots go back to the colonial period where the purpose of the service was to primarily help the foreign power.

Today the role has completely changed to handling development management taking sensitive decisions. But the majority within the service just go through various postings without much contribution.

You gradually gain seniority and you say, as the secretary of industries may have done nothing in developing a single industry and yet be more powerful than chairpersons of most Indian corporations. Therefore performance monitoring of promotions is very important. Why cannot all the jobs above the joint secretary level be made available through a competitive exam?

I can give reasons why this will be much better: a you will bring people from broader backgrounds - from the NGO sector academicians from the scientific and the managerial professions so that you get some experts who although unaware of administrative details could learn gradually; b this can also break the politician-bureaucrat nexus; c it will provide a broader range and exposure to that position.

Take water resources. The water resources secretary is normally a civil engineer. So water resources management in India has become totally dominated by civil engineers which is a tremendous loss because it is not just civil engineering, but hundreds of other things. Similarly, I had great respect for T N Seshan who built up the ministry of environment and forests MEF ; but again the WF is just into law and administration whereas it involves a lot of science, economics and other things.

If different people came to the same job at different points of time they would add new dimension to the institution.

To me it seems the best way also to bring in specialization in the IAS. After some time you will see great changes taking place: people interested in poverty alleviation will come to the government with a different attitude. How do you respond to that? How do you think the IAS would react? However an examination may not be the best way to attract talent and the best experts may not even appear in an examination. There could be a high level constitutional body represented by the Supreme Court and the Union Public Service Commission which should recommend the appointees' names to the Prime Minister.

By July , Mishra was reinstated , and made a district sub-collector. By February , Ranjan was also back in service and posted as an additional secretary in the revenue department. About a year earlier in August , another Kerala cadre IAS officer, Sriram Venkitaraman, was accused and subsequently suspended for fatally knocking down a journalist while allegedly driving in an inebriated state.

Venkitaraman was booked under Section punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and Section causing disappearance of evidence of an offence of the Indian Penal Code. The three cases are among the many instances in which the suspension of IAS officers for cases, ranging from financial fraud to drunken driving, made headlines across the country, but their gradual and quiet reinstatement into service by state governments went largely unnoticed.

Officers who spoke to ThePrint said that far from being the exception, such cases are the norm so long as the officer concerned enjoys the confidence of the political dispensation and the IAS lobby at large. While rules exist to thwart indiscipline by IAS officers, their use remains largely arbitrary and selective. Anupam Mishra is reinstated in service. The officer is posted as sub-collector, Alappuzha.

Venkitraman had argued that he was not driving the vehicle at all, and that it was Wafa Firoz, a woman accompanying him at the time, who was behind the wheels. While the cases for which officers are suspended may be grave in nature, the defences — presented and often accepted — remain flimsy, said a Kerala cadre IAS officer, who requested anonymity.

Also read: Centre vs states, rules vs convention — who really controls IAS officers.