NA KAHU SE BAIR: I Act Safe! I Play Safe!

THE LIGHT OF ANDAMANS | ISSUE 30 | 20 APRIL 2012

NA KAHU SE BAIR:

I Act Safe! I Play Safe!

By Ramta Jogi

The Indian Civil Service (ICS) during the British Raj was the backbone of administrative machinery with qualities like - efficiency, integrity, impartiality, equality, honesty and fairplay. Despite it being a foreign rule, the citizens of India fully trusted the service and openly acknowledged its value in terms of delivery of administrative justice with an efficient and impartial conduct of affairs of the State.

On the eve of India's independence the ICS was replaced by Indian Administrative Service (IAS), which is also considered to be the premier elite service in the government machinery. But does its privileged members really possess and display the standard of character, integrity, impartiality and honesty enjoined upon this Service, the same way and level it was possessed and displayed by the members of its predecessor 'ICS' during British rule? Rampant encroachments on government land, unregulated quarrying and mining, abrupt issuance of bar licenses most unethically reducing the distance between bars and educational as well as religious institutions, nepotism, illegal gratification and will-full inordinate delay in disposal of cases of general public by these stalwarts have almost helplessly been accepted by the society.

Any work of a poor citizen which is ultimately done when a powerful politician approaches and recommends the same can otherwise also be done without creating such a situation. But, then the nexus won't work.

In independent India there are two more such elite Service viz- Indian Police Service (IPS) and Indian Forest Service (IFS). Unfortunately in the process of so-called democratization in the country, severe deterioration has taken place in all these three elite Services. The privileged and powerful members of these Services are more often seen bending before the pressures and dancing to the tunes of politicians, compromising with criminals and shaking hands with power-groups than the members of any other subordinate service. Forgetting their prime duty to uphold the principles of good governance, peoples' welfare and justice as enunciated in the Constitution of India, they, in order to boost their self interest and enjoyment negotiates with the power-brokers and become Movers and Shakers in the society instead of custodians and guardians of the rule of law. That is why now the people have given new names to the three elite services - IAS (I Act Safe), IPS (I Play Safe) and IFS (I Function Safe).