Back in the 1990s and the early years of the present century, December was usually the month in which civil services aspirants awaited Saturdays with anticipation. In times when the internet was yet to be widely used for accessing governmental communication, aspirants usually gathered at magazine stalls to grab their copies of the weekly Employment News.

That was the time of the year when the weekly used to publish, as it continues to do, the official notification for the civil services examination (CSE). A crucial detail that aspirants looked for was the number of vacancies advertised by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).

They had reasons to do so. The number of annual openings in the topmost bureaucratic services in the country (UPSC currently recruits for 24 such services through CSE, including the police service) had been fluctuating by the mid-90s, and plummeting significantly in the later part of the decade. The trend continued in the initial years of this century.

The period is important in the context of something more immediate. As the UPSC issued a notification for the civil services examination 2018 last week (February 7), there has been an alarmist response to the decline in the number of vacancies over the last four years (2015-2018). While feeding off, and even reinforcing, the anxieties of aspirants, such response is flawed and problematic on various counts.

One such response came from journalist Ravish Kumar (Executive Editor, NDTV India). In a social media post laced with his melancholic sense of sarcasm, he sought to link the obvious fact of fall in vacancies in recent years to a range of unrelated issues and an alarmist lament.

That not only misdirects and muddles up the larger discourse on unemployment but also reveals a rather naive understanding about the very nature of civil services recruitment, pattern of vacancies over a longer period and factors shaping it.

More significantly, such responses are oblivious to the real issue of reforms in hiring public administrators in India.

First, it would be interesting to have a longer time-frame, say the last 25 years, to analyse the data on vacancies filled in or advertised by the UPSC for civil services. A period of 1994-2018 would be useful, as it covers central governments run by different parties and coalitions (five in the period and six prime ministers heading them).

(Source: Data compiled from figures shown on the UPSC website, official notifications for the examination, and report of the Civil Services Examination Review Committee, 2001)

The above data has to be prefaced with the fact that the 1990s had begun with the approximate number of vacancies for the years 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993 as 940, 871,761 and 790, respectively.

There are a few things which can be clearly seen in the graph. First, the recent fall in the number of vacancies isn’t unprecedented. There have been intermittent phases of fluctuations, while the fall in vacancies was very pronounced in the 90s.

In fact, the 90s negate any idea or expectation of a cumulative increase in the number of posts. For the most part of the decade, the reverse was true with more number of years showing a fall in vacancies than years showing a rise.

There are various factors which determine such numbers, including the requirements sent by different ministries and state governments, which the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) considers.

Were the fluctuations and decline in vacancies regime-specific? It’s an interesting aspect to probe because 1991 onwards, we can look at a decade which had three different kinds of governments: PV Narasimha Rao-led Congress government (1991-1996), a United Front (UF) coalition government led by Janata Dal leader HD Deve Gowda (June 1996 to April 1997) and then by IK Gujral (April 1997 to March 1998), and by the end of the decade, BJP’s AB Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance government (March 1998 to May 2004).

While there were inconsistencies in the number of vacancies during the Rao government’s tenure, the number never went up to 940 — inherited from the start of the decade.

There was a decline in vacancies in three of the five years of his tenure: 1992 (went down to 761 from 871 notified the previous year), 1994 (went down to 707 from 790 notified the previous year) and 1995 (went down to 645 from 707 notified the previous year).

If you are inclined to see an institutionally determined process of hiring civil servants through the prism of political reasoning and policy direction, you would be surprised to see the sharp fall in vacancies during the two-year stint of the UF government.

It was a coalition government formed by avowedly socialist parties, and had the participation of Communist Party of India (CPI) leader Indrajit Gupta as home minister, while the Congress extended outside support.

During 1996-1998, the vacancies’ number went down drastically from 740 to 470 while it was 621 in 1997, the intervening year. It was a precursor to the slide which continued in vacancies notified during the two terms of the NDA government (1998-2004), a truncated one followed by a full-term.

In six years of NDA governance, except two years (2000 and 2003), the  number of vacancies kept sliding and reached its lowest in 2002, when only 310 vacancies were advertised for recruitment (the number, however, rose to 457 and 453 in 2003 and 2004, respectively).

What should also be remembered is that this was just two years after three new states – Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand (then known as Uttaranchal) – were created in 2000.

Contrary to a set of perceptions (including that of Ravish’s), cadre division of personnel between states had ensured that the creation of new states didn’t force an immediate rise in vacancies. More recently, the same argument could be extended to explain why the creation of Telangana in 2014 didn’t result in an increase in vacancies in subsequent years.

However, as a coincidence or as a sign of policy direction on recruitments, can the general dip in vacancies during two different periods of the NDA government (Vajpayee-led as well as the incumbent one led by Narendra Modi) be interpreted as adherence to the principle of “minimum government, maximum governance”?

Apart from other reasons, the fall in vacancies during Vajpayee’s tenure could be seen as persistence of the downward trend seen in the 90s. But the consistent fall in vacancies (around 40 per cent in the last four years) during the current government’s tenure seems more pronounced, as seven of 10 years of the preceding Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had seen a rise in vacancies.

While the UPA-1 period (2004-2009) saw marginal to substantive increase in vacancies in every year of the term, UPA-2 (2009-2014) was marked by three years of dip and two years of rise, ending with a high of 1,291 vacancies.

That rise can be seen with a range of explanations. The primary argument is that it was a period when the combined effect of more than a decade of dip in vacancies, starting from the early 90s, could only pave the way for a rise. Other explanations have also been offered.

One of them argues that legislations like the RTI Act entailed the need for higher recruitment, while the others pertain to policy arguments saying that limiting the size of the higher bureaucracy didn’t figure as one of the approaches to the austerity measures of the government of the period.

All of these are at best merely conjectures; one can’t be ever sure about the real reasons behind the sudden spike in vacancies.

Amid these speculations and reasoning, an interesting continuity can be noted through the UPA and incumbent NDA government. At different points of time, both governments have reported shortage of Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) officers (the UPA government stated so in 2012 and the NDA government in 2017).

However, even six years ago such shortage didn’t force the DoPT to opt for higher intake of officers in subsequent years. The government’s decision was based on a report submitted by the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) which had suggested that any such rise in recruitment would disturb the pyramidical structure and compromise the quality of the IAS and, to add to that, there were infrastructural and operational problems in imparting training to a larger batch at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie.

Most state governments, which were consulted by the central government, agreed with the IIPA’s report. Based on IIPA suggestions, the government also rejected the idea of a limited competitive examination for recruiting IAS officers urgently.

The home ministry had conducted such a limited examination in 2012 for recruiting 70 IPS officers but it was discontinued after objections were raised by state-cadre police officers, aspersions cast on qualitative aspects, observations made by the Central Administrative Tribunal and subsequent legal wrangles.

It seems the IIPA report’s reasoning continues to stop the current government from resorting to any sudden increase in vacancies to address the shortage, though a parliamentary standing committee has expressed concern over the crunch.

Now coming to the speculative reasoning being offered by observers for the fall in vacancies in the last four years, two important arguments have been articulated.

One is centred around the belief that the DoPT is following the government’s push for “minimum government, maximum governance”, while the other is rooted in the idea that the government is looking to hire a few specialists through the lateral entry system rather than filling every post with generalists hired through the CSE process.

If these assumed reasons are true, they are healthy signs. For a country trying to extricate itself from bureaucratic red-tape and usher in substantive democratic decentralisation, any move towards “minimum government, maximum government” has to be taken constructively. Ironically, the Modi government has been lacking the political will to achieve these objectives.

Contrary to what Ravish wants us to believe, attempting the civil services exam to get into a few hundred elite positions of higher bureaucracy has always been of aspirational value and can’t be seen as a mass employment solution in a country staring at millions of young men and women joining the already long queue of unemployed youth every year.

The larger discourse on unemployment shouldn’t be wasted in echoing the grouse of aspirants who get agitated at the thought of more intense competition for fewer vacancies.

The obvious failures of the government in generating employment are there, and they are to be seen in its dismal performance in facilitating and augmenting employment-generating productive and investment processes, especially in the manufacturing sector.

Vis-à-vis civil services recruitment, the real failures of the Modi government lie elsewhere – they emanate from lack of reforms in CSE and its aversion to bold steps needed for such reform.

Apart from getting cold feet on reforming the exam system, the promise of delivering a red tape-free, slimmer governmental set-up and attracting specialists through lateral entry has also not gone beyond rhetoric.

In a piece published on this website, the author had argued why failure to reform the bureaucracy is one of the key shortcomings of the Modi government.

Not just that the Modi government hasn’t done anything to restructure the recruitment process of civil servants, it has also persisted with the UPA legacy of making the CSE hostage to populist politics.

Sample this. Different expert committees and commissions – ranging from the YK Alagh Committee to the 10^th report of Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) to the latest Baswan Committee – have been suggesting lowering the upper age limit for applicants.

They have offered elaborate reasoning for the recommendation. After conducting a meticulous study of the recruitment process of public administrators, the 2^nd ARC said: “The permissible age for appearing in the civil services examination should be 21 to 25 years for general candidates, 21 to 28 years for candidates from the OBC and 21 to 29 years for candidates from the SC/STs, as also for those who are physically challenged.”

However, implementing such recommendations hasn’t found favour with both UPA and NDA governments. There are perceived political costs attached to it, the kind of backlash Ravish fell for when he vented anguish over the reported lowering of age limit for appearing in a different exam – the one conducted for hiring lower grade personnel by the Railway Recruitment Board (RRB).

It’s the fear of such costs that has held back two successive governments from initiating meaningful CSE reforms.

Surrendering to students demanding extra years to prepare for the newly introduced Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) by the UPSC at the preliminary stage, then UPA government made the expedient move in 2014. It amounted to undermining the thrust of expert recommendations and ended up extending the age by two more years, to make it 32 for general category candidates and proportionately more for the reserved category.

In a piece for media watchdog The Hoot four years ago, the author had reflected on how the imperatives of reforming a flawed system were subverted by populist agenda.

Faced with a fresh round of agitations by students from the Hindi heartland in Delhi against questions on basic English in a preliminary test, the Modi government made English the qualifying component, that is, it was not to be counted to determine the list of candidates eligible for writing the Main examination.

Subsequently, the government appointed the Baswan Committee to remodel the Main examination – recommendations of which are reportedly with the UPSC now. He may not realise it but Modi has squandered three years by not trying to revamp the recruitment process, which has always been plagued with all the ills of the Indian examination system – rote-learning incentivising an assembly line of cramming robots, discouraging originality and creativity.

A small number of economists and commentators, like Mihir S Sharma, have written perceptively about this basic limitation plaguing any vision of civil services reforms. Almost two years ago, Sharma correctly diagnosed: “We still have a tenured, generalist civil service, even as our economy and governance become fiendishly more complex.”

The remedy he suggested may sound radical but not off the mark. Advocating the scrapping of the IAS, he wrote: “You have a government machinery that is unaccountable, under-informed, and all-powerful. It lacks creativity. If PM Narendra Modi fails to live up to the expectations that he has raised, it will be entirely his fault. He should have started by ending the IAS.”

While the call for scrapping the IAS, even if well argued, may seem too ambitious now, the current government hasn’t been sincere enough in following even NITI Aayog’s recommendation of attracting talent from the private sector for specific roles in government.

Amid such perspectives on, and roadblocks to, restructuring public administration in India, it’s amusing to see how a section of opinion-makers in the media are falling for ill-informed alarmism and anxieties of the aspirants.

In the process, they are making the larger unemployment concerns subservient to aspirations for entry to the elite services. That’s a kind of aspiration which is often motivated by the safety of a towel-covered chair in a government office.

(The writer teaches civil services aspirants)