Civil Service has become truly national, shedding its colonial baggage

Civil Service Day, observed on April 21 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 for civil servants: “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.”

It is, therefore, 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 were distracted as they were by the turbulent Partition times. It remained an unfinished job.

This task of defining an Indian ethos for the civil service began in the 75th year of India’s independence, with Prime Minister 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 — 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 civilisational vision from time immemorial. The civil service as Bhavna Vriksh, a tree of “service and empathy”, is thus a positive reaffirmation of the spirit of self-assurance and decolonisation.

The introspection at the Academy, set in the foreground of the mighty Swargarohini — the inspiring totem for seeking heavenly comfort in the welfare of citizens — visualises the Bhavna Vriksh as an emblem, representing the timeless virtues of selfless service and devotion to duty. The attributes and conception of an ideal civil servant for Amrit Kaal were first enunciated by the prime minister on October 31, 2019, at the Statue of Unity. They are, being proactive and polite; professional and progressive; energetic and enabling; transparent and tech-enabled; creative and constructive; and imaginative and innovative.

The idea of a future-ready civil service is a holistic one: A whole-of-government and de-siloed attitude, anticipating the future, collaborative in its method, participatory in its engagement, and innovative in its spirit. This is the nature of Bhavna Vriksh serving the people in the farthest corners.

The shaking off of a former colonial mindset, sharing a sense of pride in the Indian roots, and a duty-bound set of civil servants with a nation-first approach is the new ethic of civil servants who pass out of its hallowed doors as “Mussoorie wala karmayogis”. The ringing notes of the Academy song, Hao dharmete dheer, hao karomete bir, hao unnato shir — naahi bhay, is their spiritual call to action.

Commemorating the ethos of the Bhavna Vriksh is the Walkway of Service, built around the Academy’s hallowed Director’s Square. The walkway contains a series of hermetically-sealed time capsules, arranged chronologically, containing the statements of purpose of successive batches of civil service trainees, starting in 2021 and ending in 2047. These commitment statements are preserved for unveiling at the dawn of the Indian century, under Viksit Bharat, on August 15, 2047. The day for the Bhavna Vriksh to acquit itself as an able servant of its masters — the people of India.

Thus, defenestrating the erstwhile colonial “steel frame” paradigm and realising Sardar’s original exhortation, “…now, you are serving your own people. So now on, you can serve with your heart and mind and soul… you will be truly Indian by serving your own people”.

The writer is director, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration