Despite challenges, Centre's 'lateral entry' programme gains traction

This recruitment programme has received enthusiastic responses from the private sector

In May, a list of 20 lateral recruitments to middle and senior levels of central government service was issued by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC). It created no stir, a reflection of how such recruitments appear to have become institutionalised.

Yet the process of regular lateral recruitments is fairly recent. In 2019, the Narendra Modi-led government had begun with fanfare the process of lateral recruitment to middle and senior levels of service. Ten posts of joint secretaries were advertised of whom seven have lasted their three-year term and were given extensions for another two years. In 2020, 30 posts were advertised of whom 28 joined.

The latest advertisements are pretty much on expected lines. A Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) official, who declined to speak on record, said the departments concerned now send in their vacancy positions each year. “Based on discussions with them and the expected intake from the various recruitment exams, a list of vacancies that need to be filled at the senior level immediately are arrived at,” the official said. The last date for applying this time is June 19.

Now that the initial brouhaha of 2019 is over, the DoPT is ambivalent about publicising the initiative. The department’s website lists lateral recruitment in its booklet from last year, “Reinventing Governance — Major Reforms and Initiatives from 2014-2022”. But given that government employment is a hot button issue in a poll-heavy year, last week when the department issued two booklets on “9 Years of Administrative Reforms (2014-2023)” that lists the government’s achievements in making the civil services at various levels respond to citizens’ demands, there is no mention of lateral recruitments anywhere. Both booklets were released by Jitendra Singh, minister of personnel, public grievances and pensions.

At least part of this ambivalence stems from the biggest challenge for these recruitments: the institutional opposition especially from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Central Secretariat Service (CSS). The nature of jobs being advertised through the three advertisements issued since 2019 are all for what is known as central staffing roles in the ministries. These are the posts typically reserved for the IAS and their feeder service, the CSS. The posts of specialist officers such as those in audit, the Railways or in tax (direct and indirect) have not yet been thrown open to lateral recruitments. This is also surprising given that the government was said to be short of specialists.

This is also one of the reasons the states have not asked the Centre to introduce a parallel system for them. Although states occasionally appoint people from outside the standard recruitment system, the process has not been institutionalised anywhere.

These two cadres, therefore, have reason to be concerned. Writing apparently on their behalf, former chairman of UPSC Deepak Gupta is clear that such recruitment can “degenerate into an uncontrollable spoils system” to benefit politicians. “Lateral entry of professionals is a simplistic solution seeking to remedy a very complex problem. Used selectively it could benefit in limited areas. Used liberally it could completely destroy the system,” he wrote in the book Transforming the Steel Frame, edited by former Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai.

To be sure, the new entrants are not designated as IAS or an equivalent service. In the rank- and status-conscious Indian bureaucracy, this has consequences. But recognising that lateral entry is here to stay the DoPT has now clearly designated officers, set up sections and so on to deal with lateral entrants instead of keeping the process ad hoc.

Still there are pain points of working within the government system. For instance, one of the latest to quit this year is Saurabh Mishra, a former private sector real estate and insurance industry professional. Mishra was joint secretary in the department of financial services in the finance ministry. He had been given an extension beyond three years and no one can argue that the tasks of reviving the state-run general insurers or of shepherding LIC after its market listing are over. But Mishra quit eight months into his new term. He did not comment for this article.

According to Manish Sabharwal, vice chairman and cofounder of TeamLease Services, India’s largest human capital firm, a good way to deal with the challenge is not to bring in lateral entrants on the basis of vacancies but to consider whether such a gap can be effectively filled by a lateral entrant. He identifies human resources roles as the key ones in this context. “Invest in HR capabilities that could be seeded with lateral entry for a bunch of senior people,” he advises.

This has started happening to some extent. The government has also set up the Capacity Building Commission and Mission Karmayogi to train government employees about their roles. However, both the institutions have not stepped in to deal with lateral entrants, per se. The job of weaning in the new officers has been strictly left to the secretary, DoPT, and the respective secretaries of the departments they join. The initial training of these officers, made formal from the second batch, is for a 15-day stint at the Indian Institute of Public Administration in New Delhi. Speaking with them, minister Jitendra Singh claimed the government has streamlined the lateral entry appointments to induct the best of the best talent for a particular task, coupled with expertise.

In terms of numbers, the 60 posts advertised so far are minuscule among the approximately 95,000 posts of government officers in the central government. This is the first time the government has got going in fairly sizable numbers. The large numbers of responses to these posts from people who are already employed for a number of years in equivalent posts in the private sector shows the experiment has enthusiastic backers from the citizens.

Tangential facts

• Lateral entrants supplement the current direct recruitments for IAS where annual intake has gone up to 180
• IAS vacancies are 20% plus. Both direct and lateral intake will reduce vacancies to single digits by about 2025
• Lateral entrants need to be inducted in HR functions
• 60 posts to be filled through lateral entrants — all in ministries at the Centre
• States have yet to start similar schemes