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| Govt readies to rope in private expertise from industry & academia for IAS | | |  Agencies
NEW DELHI, Oct 25: Narendra Modi pledged to break up the established order during his election campaign - among his targets were corruption, black money, crony capitalism and the freeze on development. While he's been busy ticking items on his to-do list, one more can be added to this - the lock that the Indian Administrative Service has on key appointments.
The Modi government is preparing a policy note on throwing its doors open to private expertise from industry and academia.
By March 15 next year, the department of personnel & training (DoPT), which comes under the direct charge of the Prime Minister, will draw up a framework on the process for getting candidates from "industry, academia and society" to compete for senior administrative posts. This could mean corporate executives as well as leading economists and academics joining the government.
Former cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian, himself a retired IAS officer, welcomed the move. "The government needs experts in the field of information technology and environment for certain posts - people who know water issues, air pollution and forests," he said.
"It is a multi-disciplinary government, which needs people from all disciplines - not just the civil service. We need administrators as well as managers," said Subramanian.
And what does he think of the resistance that is bound to come from the IAS lobby? "The country is larger than the IAS cadre," he added.
Only a prime minister with a clear political mandate, such as the one Modi has, can attempt to make headway on this, given the IAS lobby's influence. Key regulatory posts, such as the one for the telecom industry, have been filled by a succession of former IAS officers.
Reserve Bank of India governors were former IAS officers for many years until economist Raghuram Rajan was appointed last year amid stiff opposition from some in the top echelons of the civil service. A fresh Results Framework Document (RFD) released by DoPT on October 21 for 2014-15 incorporated the new target that it said was part of the BJP election manifesto.
ET was the first to report on June 29 that ministries were preparing fresh RFDs for 2014-15 to align these with the party's poll pledges.
The move could possibly break IAS' hegemony over the posts of joint secretary and additional secretary or even more senior designations, levels at which important decisions are taken.
The number of lateral entries into the government has nearly dried up in the past two decades, the previous notable ones being Manmohan Singh, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Vijay Kelkar. The personnel department's new RFD points out that the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) in 2008 as well as the Sixth Pay Commission in 2006, both during the previous government's tenure, had recommended widening the pool of candidates for selection to senior positions allowing people outside the government system to compete for them. The Second ARC proposed lateral entries by opening the senior management cadre of additional secretary to aspirants from the private sector who could bring new skills to the government.
"Additional secretary is a leadership position from which one can aspire to reach the rank of secretary," the Second ARC had said.
The government may consider the creation of a senior executive service (SES), as recommended by the Second ARC, which described it as a common theme in the countries that have embarked upon reform of the bureaucracy in the past three decades. Such SES cadres are in place in Australia, Belgium, New Zealand, the UK, Netherlands and the US. The idea is to pick a small group of people for SES from which high-level government appointments can be made.
This group is open to applicants from outside the civil service as well as to serving officials and is carefully chosen on the basis of open advertisements and well-publicised talent searches. Such people are employed on contract and at higher salary levels than would be the normal course. Career progression in SES is determined by performance, the Second ARC report said.
A top DoPT official told ET that the idea was to "look beyond the civil service for candidates from the private sector with domain competency and experience" and cited the work done by former Infosys chief Nandan Nilekani in setting up the Unique Identification Authority of India and making Aadhaar a reality. |
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