In the process of governance, which involves several sets of activities to deliver effective services to people, civil services play a pivotal role in providing shape to policies that reflect people’s needs and put their suggestive, analytical and informative roles to implement the
policies. It is recognized that civil services play a crucial role in all societies. In the modern administrative state, public administration has become so significant that our development, upliftment and progress depend mainly upon the efficient functioning of civil services that are
the bedrock of public administration. Civil services have assumed more important role in democracy to ensure good governance, both in developing and developed countries. Civil Services form a part of bureaucracy, wherein the roles of civil servants are determined by
written rules. It’s an impersonal system operating on the basis of calculable rules and staffed by full time appointed officials. Usually, the civil servants are selected on basis of their technical
qualifications, receive fixed salaries, have a defined sphere of competence and work under a clearly defined hierarchy of offices.

The role of Civil Servants across the domains of policy making and policy implementation is critical to the development process. They assist in identifying major policy areas such as preparing major policy proposals, analyzing various alternatives and solutions to societal problems requiring urgent attention, dividing the major policies into sub-policies, determining
program of action and suggesting modification in the existing policy on the basis of its experience on the implementation front.Civil services carry on the governance when governments change due to elections etc. Ramsay
Muir has remarked that while governments may come and go, ministers may rise and fall, the administration of a country goes on forever. It is needless to say that civil services form the backbone of administration. E.g. In India, when the President’s Rule is imposed in a state, the
Governor runs the state through the Chief Secretary and other civil servants.The civil servants are responsible to the ministers of the departments in which they serve. The ministers are accountable to the people through the Parliament or State Legislatures, and the civil servants are accountable to the ministers. They should ideally serve the elected government of the day, as government policies are the functions of the civil services. However, an impartial civil servant is also accountable to the Constitution of India on which he has taken an oath of allegiance.
In India, bureaucracy or civil services is permanent and does not change with the government. The recruitment is based on merit and through competitive exams. This is in contrast to the system followed in the US, where civil servants, especially in the higher echelons, change with the government. This is called the spoils system where people who are close to the government of the day get posts.

With bad laws and good civil servants it’s still possible to govern. But with bad civil servants even the best laws can’t help.
-Otto von Bismarck

























You must be logged in to post a comment.