Sir —We seem to be in hubris over the top three civil service positions this year being grabbed by women. While we may preen ourselves touching a sort of peak in the emancipation of women, we miss the current state of the service itself, after seven decades of Independence. The Raj had civil service officers in the first phase as Collectors. And by its very connotation, it meant to enforce compliance to sequester revenue for the Crown. The architecture of governance was thus largely built around ensuring that compliance. The laws too were framed accordingly.
Into this framework fresh service recruits are deputed ab initio to districts. Clearly, they are too raw for deeper insights of governing the State they are posted in. They tend to believe that compliance is governance and, soon enough, they are immune to voices of the people they are to serve, assist and uplift. The remedy must lie in their working first on the desks of varied Ministries long enough to grasp the larger picture. That should arm them with a far broader spectrum in the interplay between people’s aspirations and the Government’s limitations. This alone can seed innovative governance.