Civil servant enterprise can breach service and cadre hierarchy

The past few weeks have seen many unceremonious exits of officials — including some right into the waiting cells of investigating agencies. These have highlighted a little-known reality: the fungibility of government jobs. The thousands of ‘civil service aspirants’ who despaired that the loss of a few marks’ worth of English-biased questions would mean the difference between the coveted Indian Administrative Service and those of lesser import should rejoice therefore, that service allotments appear to be irrelevant when it comes to plum posts. Any government cadre will suffice; the rest is up to, well, opportunity and individual enterprise.

It is a testament to the democratisation of the bureaucracy that the suspended Central Board of Film Certification CEO is not from the IAS — whose exalted members are legendarily deemed to be prime candidates for any job irrespective of domain knowledge — but from the comparatively obscure Indian Railway Personnel Service. That the ousted chief vigilance officer of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences is from the Indian Forest Service — selected so that he would not miss the wood for the trees when it came to graft there, perhaps — and the repatriated registrar of Delhi University is from the Indian Defence Accounts Service, only underscore this heartening trend.