Towards a ‘National’ Civil Service – The ‘Bhawna Vriksha’ 21st April 2023
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Srinivas Katikithala, Director, LBSNAA
Civil Service Day, observed on April 21st every year, is a celebration of the idea of a National civil service. “Bapu inaugurated new service recruits’ school at Delhi”, observed Maniben Patel, in her diary. It was a poignant moment. Sardar Patel inaugurated the newly created Indian Administrative Service in 1947, “officered entirely by Indians and subjected completely, to Indian control… free to…adopt its true role of National service without being trammelled by traditions and habits of the past”. He added a credo that would motivate every civil servant: “We have a right to expect the best out of every civil servant in India, in whatever position of responsibility he may be. It is not for you to approach your task purely from a mercenary angle or entirely from self-interest, however enlightened it may be. Your foremost consideration should be how best to contribute to the well-being of India as a whole”. Hence, it is a travesty to attribute to Sardar Patel, the phrase ‘Steel Frame’ with its negative connotation of a rigid, restrictive, and rule-bound colonial bureaucracy. The ‘Steel Frame’, a description of the Imperial Civil Service (ICS) by British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, in a Commons debate in 1921, came to define both the popular culture and self-imagination of the Civil Service. Hence, the lamentations of the early Governments on their inability to craft a civil service rooted in the National ethos, distracted as they were by the turbulent partition times. It remained as an unfinished job.
This task of defining an Indian ethos for the civil service began in the 75th year of India’s independence, with Hon’ble Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi’s address, where he spelt out the country’s vision and the ‘Panch Pran’- the five pledges — to drive India’s transition from ‘Amrit Mahotsav’ to ‘Amrit Kaal’. The second pledge i.e. the removal of a colonial mindset demanded a revision of self-imagination and the shedding of colonial baggage among the civil services. The power of an image and the act of positive envisioning is both liberating and reifying. The Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) responded by visualising the Civil Service as a living entity — the ‘Peepul Tree’ which has animated our civilizational vision from times immemorial. The Civil Service, as ‘Bhawna Vriksha’, a tree of “service and empathy”, is thus, a positive reaffirmation of the spirit of self-assurance and decolonization.
(To be contd)
Civil Service Day, observed on April 21st every year, is a celebration of the idea of a National civil service. “Bapu inaugurated new service recruits’ school at Delhi”, observed Maniben Patel, in her diary. It was a poignant moment. Sardar Patel inaugurated the newly created Indian Administrative Service in 1947, “officered entirely by Indians and subjected completely, to Indian control… free to…adopt its true role of National service without being trammelled by traditions and habits of the past”. He added a credo that would motivate every civil servant: “We have a right to expect the best out of every civil servant in India, in whatever position of responsibility he may be. It is not for you to approach your task purely from a mercenary angle or entirely from self-interest, however enlightened it may be. Your foremost consideration should be how best to contribute to the well-being of India as a whole”. Hence, it is a travesty to attribute to Sardar Patel, the phrase ‘Steel Frame’ with its negative connotation of a rigid, restrictive, and rule-bound colonial bureaucracy. The ‘Steel Frame’, a description of the Imperial Civil Service (ICS) by British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, in a Commons debate in 1921, came to define both the popular culture and self-imagination of the Civil Service. Hence, the lamentations of the early Governments on their inability to craft a civil service rooted in the National ethos, distracted as they were by the turbulent partition times. It remained as an unfinished job.
This task of defining an Indian ethos for the civil service began in the 75th year of India’s independence, with Hon’ble Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi’s address, where he spelt out the country’s vision and the ‘Panch Pran’- the five pledges — to drive India’s transition from ‘Amrit Mahotsav’ to ‘Amrit Kaal’. The second pledge i.e. the removal of a colonial mindset demanded a revision of self-imagination and the shedding of colonial baggage among the civil services. The power of an image and the act of positive envisioning is both liberating and reifying. The Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) responded by visualising the Civil Service as a living entity — the ‘Peepul Tree’ which has animated our civilizational vision from times immemorial. The Civil Service, as ‘Bhawna Vriksha’, a tree of “service and empathy”, is thus, a positive reaffirmation of the spirit of self-assurance and decolonization.
(To be contd)