8 highlights
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In 1922, British prime minister David Lloyd George called the Indian Civil Service the “steel frame” that held up the British Empire in India.
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On January 12, the Union government asked the states for their opinion on four proposed amendments to the Indian Administrative Service (Cadre) Rules 1954 which would allow the Centre to summon a bureaucrat from a state overriding any objections the state government or the bureaucrat might have. Under current rules, all three parties – state, Centre and babu – have to agree on being transferred.
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The reason for this tug o’ war is simple: the Centre is facing a genuine shortage of manpower. The Hindu reported that only 6.6% of IAS officers are now in deputation at the Centre, down from 14% in 2014. This when the ceiling of central deputation is as high as 40%.
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For 2019-‘20, states spent 66% more than the Centre – up from 46% just four years back. This is over and above the basic structure of Indian federalism, where state governments are tasked with the heavy lifting of implementation while the Union government has more of a planning oriented role.
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However, there is another more immediate reason for this attachment to the states: the bureaucracy is getting increasingly politicised.
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Backward caste politics in India has often, for example, pointed out that the elite bureaucracy in India is upper caste dominated and, as a result, has its own policy biases. One outcome of this tension is that politicians across the spectrum, from Lalu Yadav to Mamata Banerjee to Himanta Biswa Sarma, will often make it a point to push out public narratives of keeping the bureaucracy brusquely in check as a way to emphasise popular control over the permanent executive.
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Of course, this politicisation has a significant dark side as well: bureaucrats have increasingly started to attach themselves to the partisan aims of leaders over their larger governance duties. As a result, Indian politicians now prefer ruling through a pliant bureaucracy rather than through their own cabinet – a feature of Indian politics across the board.
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However, eventually the use of brute force by Delhi will make things worse for the idea of an all-India bureaucracy, incentivising states to follow in Tamil Nadu’s footsteps and depend increasingly on their state civil services, which aren’t under the Centre’s control.