Lateral entry will be a necessity in future: TV Somanathan

New Delhi: Cabinet Secretary TV Somanathan while backing specialisation among bureaucrats said on Monday that lateral entry in civil services will become a necessity in the future as the same set of generalist civil servants cannot perform every task at the apex level, while asserting that it was his "personal view" and not as the top official of the Union government.

In an interactive session with civil servants from across the country during the plenary session on Civil Services Day at Vigyan Bhawan here, Somanathan suggested several criteria on which civil servants should judge the effectiveness of the service, including protecting the constitutional order, impartial administration, translating the will of the elected government into policy, and promoting economic and social development.

Somanathan said that in his personal assessment, protecting constitutional order by civil services has been an "unqualified success" as India is "an island of constitutional democracy in a sea of non-constitutional developments." The services remain politically neutral in safeguarding the constitutional order.

However, he added that a politically neutral but inflexible and incapable civil service may do a lot of damage to economic development.

"There are some who think that the Indian civil service is guilty of this. We may be politically very neutral and all that, but we are not actually very flexible and capable of promoting development," Somanathan said.

Similarly, sharing his assessment of Indian civil services on impartial administration, Somanathan said the track record of civil services is "much less effective", ranging from "mixed to poor". On social and economic development, Somanathan said there is definitely a "need for greater competence and subject matter expertise" among civil servants, adding the era of good generalists is no longer going to be available to us.