Reform of the domestic civil service is desperately needed, as over the years, successive Governments have enhanced the age limit which has resulted in a sub-segment of India's youth being permanent aspirants
Last week in Parliament, Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Personnel, told MPs that the oldest age to appear for the civil service examination was “47 years, and at 50 years they are eligible for retirement.” The age limit for a “general” candidate — one who does not get additional benefits that are available to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, OBC and differently-abled candidates — is 32 years. He or she could be competing with somebody 10 or 11 years his junior, and in terms of lived experience and contemporariness, a generation removed.
The discussion in Parliament followed a recommendation by a committee set up by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) that the age limit be progressively reduced by five years, to 27 years for general candidates. Consequently, age limits for other categories will also decline.
Over the years, Governments have gradually enhanced the age limit. There was a time in the 1950s and early 1960s, when only a young 20-something could get into the civil service. Today, much older candidates, having worked for years in the private sector or simply sat the UPSC examination time after time, make it. Their reasons for joining, their motivation, their idealism, given their fairly advanced age, their spirit of public service, their ability to learn and adapt, all suffer in the process.
This has resulted in a sub-segment of India’s youth being permanent civil service aspirants. Those who fail to make it after several attempts — a general candidate can make six attempts — find their lives have been wasted. A 32-year-old who hasn’t made it after a sixth attempt has little to show for himself or herself, other than college and university degrees. By then, his or her peers would have worked elsewhere through their twenties and would be settling into middle management or even knocking at the doors of senior management.
Reform of the domestic civil service is desperately needed in India and is an issue the Narendra Modi Government has, most regrettably, only slightly touched in the past two years. True, it needs to be said that “reform” means different things to different people. Neither is it the case that merely reducing the upper age limit for those who can sit the UPSC examination is the be all and end all of such reform. Nevertheless it is an important ingredient.
A related issue is the strict, hidebound norm of “seniority.” Every system — whether a civil service, a private sector corporation or an academic institution — has a hierarchy; that is understandable. However, the best institutions make avenues for exceptional talent to be able to move up quicker, to get to key and appropriate positions quicker and to become part of an informal or even formal fast track. In the Indian Foreign Service, much smaller as a cadre, this is being slowly implemented. In the domestic civil service, it is much more difficult to do.
Recruiting younger civil servants, with greater motivation, is one option but it is not the only one. There needs to be a system where — say after 20 years of service or perhaps after a two-year stint at the joint secretary level — officers outgrow their batches and years of entry. At this point, all senior civil servants form a common pool and can be assigned any job. Theoretically a younger person could head a department and have an older person working under him.
Today, this can only happen if the older person is from a batch that is junior and entered the civil service — after successfully completing the UPSC examination and interview — a year or more after his boss (who may be chronologically younger). Frankly, in the final 10 odd years of a typical civil service career — which is the path from senior joint secretary rank to secretary rank and retirement — this “batch trap” should cease to matter. The intermediate rank of additional secretary should be abolished. Everybody in this common pool should have the same baseline seniority.
Next the Government should have the freedom to place anybody in this pool in any position Ministry/department, irrespective of age or (original) batch and after judging the person’s aptitude for and interest in a particular job. Positions that fall vacant in the upper echelons of the bureaucracy should be thrown open to applicants from this entire pool of civil servants who have outgrown their former batch identities. The positions should be of a three or five year duration, so that a 50-year-old and a 58-year-old can both apply, without fear of the retirement age of 60.
Selection should be overseen by the political executive but helped by a structure of vetting of applications and in-house job interviews. This could be run in conjunction with the UPSC but should ideally involve a variety of stakeholders, HR professionals and those institutions outside the Government concerned with the ministry or job in question. For example, aviation industry specialists should have a voice — but by no means a veto — in selecting the Civil Aviation Ministry Secretary. Ideally the interview panel should include at least one such specialist.
What will this system do? It will allow a capable 50 year old a role as head of a ministry or as the top policy driver for as long as 10 years (till retirement at 60) rather than for the two or three years (becoming secretary at 57 or 58 and retiring at 60) that he or she now gets.
Those who are losing out and not getting jobs or specialisations they want — an Economic Ministry, a trade negotiating agency, a social sector department, the Education Ministry or whatever — would be free to leave the government with a golden handshake. Otherwise, they could be kept in service till 60 and given a default role the Government chooses for them.
This commentary originally appeared in The Pioneer.
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