Background:-

In the process of governance, which involves several set of activities to deliver effective services to people, civil service plays a pivotal role in providing shape to policies that reflect people’s needs and put their suggestive, analytical and informative roles to implement the policies. It is recognized that civil service plays a crucial role in all societies whether developed or developing.

Importance of civil services for a democracy like India :-

Stability:-

• It is widely recognised that the civil services have contributed to stability in terms of maintenance of peace, the conduct of fair elections, managing disasters and the preservation of the unity of the nation, providing stability and maintaining order in a vast country prone to various conflicts ethnic, communal, regional etc.

Facilitating democracy:-

• The civil servants play a vital role in maintaining the democratic ideals by assisting their political heads (Ministers) in policy making function and in implementing the policies made.

Governance: –

• A necessary, but not sufficient, condition for good governance is a skilled, motivated and efficient civil service with a professional ethos. By contrast, a bad civil service is a sufficient condition to produce bad governance.

Public goods and services:-

• Access to public services and their quantity and quality largely depend on the skills and motivation of the public employees who provide the services or oversee their delivery.

Economic policy improvements:

• Whereas some reforms will require political will but little administrative support, others depend on competent and motivated government personnel. Well-formulated policies have failed without the right personnel to implement them.

Management of public expenditure and revenue:

• The civil service is critical for the responsible management of public expenditure and revenues. In its turn, such responsible management requires the provision of sustainable employment opportunities for competent and motivated personnel.

Fiscal sustainability:

• The civil service can help maintain the sustainability of public finances. A well-chosen combination of measures affecting the number of employees and their salaries can improve the effectiveness of the government apparatus while also reducing its cost.

The scientific and technological development:-

• They have led to revolutionary changes in transportation and communication system. The invention of telephone, telegraph, railways and airways has made big government and large scale administration possible.

Issues:-

• It has been pointed out that the Civil Service in India is more concerned with the internal processes than with results.
• The systemic rigidities, needless complexities and over centralization in the policy and management structures within which the civil service functions are too complex and often too constraining.
• Rigid organization structures and cumbersome procedures.
• Elitist, authoritarian, conservative outlook
• Bureaucrats fulfil segmental roles over which they have no control. Consequently, they have little or no opportunity to exercise individual judgment.
• The requirement that a bureaucrat should follow the principles of consistency and regularity automatically limits his capacity to adapt to changing circumstances.
• The general rules which may take for overall efficiency produce inefficiency and in justice in individual cases.
• Civil service difficulty to cope with uncertainty and change is a key limit on its efficiency

Reforms needed:-

• The development work needs some flexibility from a strict observance of rigid rules and regulations. Rigid rule bound bureaucracies should be changed into flexible and action oriented.
• Reforms are required in the field of recruitment of civil servants so that right people could be recruited who can ensure smooth functioning of democracy.
• Training of civil servants should be able to bring about behavioural and attitudinal changes.
• Administrative procedures, rules and regulations need to be simplified so that red tapism could be minimized
• Adoption of modern management techniques such as management by objectives to elimination of corruption so as to secure clean, honest, impartial and efficient administration creation of new work culture and encouraging creativity.