Essay on The Challenge before a Civil Servant Today

With the advancement of man’s knowledge of his environment and with the new scientific discoveries and researches the desires and aspirations of man are also constantly increasing.

He desires more and more material comforts to afford him enough time and leisure to make proper use of his latent potentialities and develop his personality.

Scientific advancement, industrial revolution, techno­logical development, and increase in population have made it necessary for the State to play a positive role in solving the complex problems of social life of the human being.

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The activities of the state are fast expanding and the modern States are performing functions which were previously the concern of private organizations or individuals.

Now, the state is no longer responsible merely for the mainte­nance of law and order, dispensation of justice, protection of private property and enforcement of contracts. Under the impact of science and technology, the negative concept of the ‘Police State’ has been replaced by the positive ‘Welfare concept of the State’.

The essence of the Welfare State is the promotion of common well-being. It has become the responsibility the State to care for the people who are unable to care for themselves and to help in who need personal help of a special nature.

It has become the State to guarantee social security to all individuals from birth till death. Thus, State control or regulation over the individual’s life is increasing. Government organs pervade our daily life, and its rules and regulations affect human actions in almost all walks of life.

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When the scope of the activities of the State increases, the role of its admin­istration assumes great importance. The success or failure of the activities of the state depends upon public administration. Efficiency of administration to a great extent depends on the efficiency of the personnel’s who manage it.

On the com­petence of the civil service depends the efficient administration, of any country? If the administration set up does not function with speed, efficiency and integrity, even the best policies and plans are bound to end in failure. Thus, the adminis­tration and the civil servants have a very important role to play in our modern age.

Who are these civil servants? All employees of the government are called government servants. There are two kinds of permanent” (or career) government servants: those in the Defense Services and those in the Civil Service.

There must be hundred, perhaps even a few thousand, kinds of civil services, if one takes into account the state government services and the smaller central cadres.

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But when we talk of the civil servants, we refer to the officers of the “higher” civil services who generally (but not always) occupy all the senior positions in the state government and in the non-technical departments of the central govern­ment.

Public bureaucracy plays a central and critical role in nation building in modern societies, and on its performance capacity depends the success or failure of various crucial programmes of socio – economic development. As a catalytic agent of change, civil servants tend to become a powerful social group in devel­oping countries.

Since the independence of India, the civil servants have been confronted with many challenges, and their responses have attracted scholarly investiga­tions.

According to these studies, India escaped the holocaust and anarchy of the post-colonial phase because of the resilience and flexibility shown by the colonial bureaucracy in its adjustment with the new political masters.

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After independence, the National Government took up the task of modernizing India through industrialization and undertook to provide all the amenities of modern life to the citizens. Keeping in mind the democratic values of life of freedom and consent, a new egalitarian society was to be established.

The ad­ministrative apparatus which was inherited from the old British regime was to be adapted, adjusted and renovated to fulfill the requirements of the new socialistic society.

Because of the democratic set-up of the Government, civil servants were called upon to work under the control of the representatives of the people bureaucracy which was fighting and arresting political leader in British days, was called upon to work under the same leaders.

It was a marvelous phenomenon human adjustment. Apart from administering the country, the civil server to undertake the gigantic task of reconstructing the Indian economy. For creating a socialistic pattern of society, the State has to take on heavy responsible the public sector has to expand rapidly.

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It has to play a dominant role in shaping the entire pattern of investments both private amid public in the economy has to initiate developments which the private sectors unwilling or unable undertake.

The civil servants have to take crucial decision regarding these developments. In new India, the civil service has been called upon to m; State-owned industrial and commercial projects. Civil servants have to advise Government on the problems of planning. The civil servants have to explaining.

But, with the opening up of Indian economy of late, the role of civil servants in the economic administration of the country has been redefined. The Government is shedding its regulatory role in favour of being a facilitator in the economic development of India.

The greatest challenge before the civil servants today is to adjust to this new role of the Government. Due to the over regulatory nature of the government, the administrative system has developed vested invest in the continuation of the old regime.

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To make the system free of this vested interest poses a new challenge for the bureaucracy. In carrying out the economy reform programmes successfully, the bureaucrats have a great role to play. Process of reform is not a cakewalk.

In the short run, the poorer section of society has to bear the brunt of the programmes. Protecting their interests a implementing the reforms with equal felicity is a daunting task for the civil servants today.

India is passing through a phase of political competition and acute social conflicts. This is the scenario of social context to which bureaucracy would be called upon to adjust. The first three decades of relationship between politic, leaders and bureaucratic elite were of a different kind than the recently emerging challenges.

Political stability and dominance of one political party on the political scene demanded a particular kind of adjustment by the bureaucracy; and the emerging political competition, the alternation of parties and the severity of social conflicts has thrown view challenges for the bureaucracy in India.

What should the bureaucracy do to meet the new challenges?

Indian bureaucracy should develop internal cohesion. Civil services like all careers oriented elite groups, is highly factionalized and fragmented.

Political leaders are well conversant with cleavages and divisions within the bureaucracy, and they fully exploit it. A minimum harmony in the bureaucracy would be essential to confront the challenge of the changing politics in the country.

Any crisis situation demands normative response, and the most important norm of bureaucracy is to protect the sanctity of procedures. Many challenges can be met by the bureaucracy if it follows the procedures of work.

Politics interferes in the function of bureaucracy and bureaucracy has to confront and contain it. A political system is based on support structure which legitimizes it. It politicians are using their support structure to ‘get things done’, civil servants, as a powerful social groups has its own support structure.

To resist political intervention, bureaucracy needs support from its clients, i.e., the citi­zens. Bureaucrats should become more conscious of its obligations towards its clients, i.e., citizens.

Many studies have found that general evaluation of public administration by Indian respondents was ‘negative’. This low evaluation and mistrust of admin­istration by the citizens has increased during the last decade with growing social tensions, and the gap between the administration and the people is widening. The Indian civil servants should consciously bridge this gap.