British India: Civil Services

The British are often credited with creating the civil services in India. Take a closer look at that institution, says Shashi Tharoor in An Era of Darkness. Indians were only recruited for the lower-level posts. Conversely, they were never allowed to rise above a certain rank.

 

While that was the practice, the British were careful to keep up the pretence that the locals could rise through the ranks. The reality, as the viceroy Lord Lytton wrote was very different:

“(Let them believe that they are) entitled to expect and claim appointment in the fair course of promotion to the highest posts of the service. We all know that these claims and expectations never can or will be fulfilled. We have had to choose between prohibiting them and cheating them, and we have chosen the least straight-forward course.”

 

Today, we know that many bureaucrats in independent India have the experience and capabilities of General Managers and CEO’s of corporations. No such human capability development occurred during British rule. How could it, if they were also kept at lower designations with little decision making power?

 

Along the same lines, Indians could only take low-level decisions on specific matters. This was no meritocracy, with all higher posts reserved for the British. Even worse, the British employees were paid higher salaries than Indians because they would eventually go back to more expensive Britain.

 

Even the roles and job titles convey the intent of the civil services. The role of “Collector” was to collect taxes, to maximize the money sent to Britain. “Local development” was not even a line item on the charter. (Sadly, this mindset has continued in the successor to the British civil services in post-independence India).

 

As Nehru rightly said, the ICS was neither Indian nor Civil nor a Service.

 

As always, it was World War I which changed things on this front. The war forced British youth to fight the war. That forced the British to recruit more Indians to the ICS. With fewer Britishers available, more Indians had to be allowed to rise higher. Fortunately for India, by the time of independence, this meant a lot bureaucrats had more work experience at more senior levels, but that was a consequence of necessity (the World Wars) than any British benevolence.

 

Along similar lines, Tharoor says many credit the professionalism of the Indian Army to the British. Really, he asks. If that were true, how come both the Pakistani and Bangladeshi armies have done coups while the Indian Army never did? It is an attribute of our army, not something instilled by the British.