Experts call for civil service overhaul as govt pulls back on lateral hires

Panagariya said that the system would suffer and that there is a need to find alternative ways to reform the civil services

In a critique of the government’s latest move to withdraw the Union Public Service Commission’s (UPSC’s) notification on lateral entries, Arvind Panagariya, chairman of the 16th Finance Commission, said on Tuesday that the system would suffer and that there is a need to find alternative ways to reform the civil services.

“It is a pity because you will still need to bring in people as consultants, right? … The system will have to make do with bringing in the lateral entrants as consultants, where they would supply the specialised services without actually having decision-making power,” Panagariya said while speaking at a Business Today summit.

N K Singh, chairman of the 15th Finance Commission, echoing similar sentiment, said that the necessity of a permanent civil service needs to be put on the drawing board while ensuring that stability is not jeopardised.

“Why should we have a permanent civil service? It’s not an end in itself. The end must be improving the quality of life for people, pushing India into a growth trajectory,” Singh said.

He added that changes in a permanent civil service establishment should be brought about by opening it up, innovating, and adopting technology-friendly methods and systems.

Panagariya said that there are people on both sides — specialists who can acquire the necessary generalist skills to do things, and likewise, within the government, generalists who can acquire specialist skills.

Stressing the need for governance reforms, Panagariya said that the government was not moving quickly enough in bringing in lateral entrants, and the recent advertisement was only the second such effort to get non-bureaucrats into the positions of joint and deputy secretaries.

“We need governance reforms somewhere. It has to start. This was it… It was not a large number by any stretch of the imagination and even got thwarted by criticisms being made,” Panagariya said.

Citing the example of I G Patel as a lateral entrant who became the economic advisor in the finance ministry in 1954, Panagariya said, “These (lateral entries) happened obviously under the Congress government for many, many years. So the Congress government of today is very different from the Congress of the past,” Panagariya said.

The UPSC on Saturday advertised 45 posts, inviting applications from “talented and motivated Indian nationals for lateral recruitment” to the posts of joint secretary, director, and deputy secretary in 24 ministries of the Union government. This was seen as the biggest lateral hiring since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government initiated the process as part of a policy in 2018-19.

“In a democracy, these forces do play out, but those of us who believe in reforms will continue to push. We must find alternative ways to reform the civil service,” Panagariya added.