Farook Ahmed :
A person who is a member of civil service is known as a civil servant and the civil service is defined as the permanent professional branches of a state administration, excluding the military, judicial branches and elected politicians. Civil servants act as a bridge between government and public. They implement policies, programs and vision of a political authority for the welfare of the people. They are dubbed civil because they are expected to be suave, accommodative, and benevolent and disposed to others’ good. They are called servant since they are obedient first to the people and then to the government. This is in view of the fact that in a democratic dispensation, peoples are the source of all political power. The civil service is rigidly hierarchical.
A civil servant has to go up the promotion ladder step by step. This conduces to him to gather experience, skill and expertise to do his assigned job perfectly. A civil servant is selected and appointed through competitive exam and after appointment; he has to undergo different types of training so that he can suit himself in any situation and cope with divergent difficulties. He is better-educated, better-trained and more knowledgeable in his domain than others.
They are the most sought-after prospective grooms to the parents of marriageable girls. The civil service that we have today owes its origin to the British administration when the sub-continent was under the British rule. The British evolved a well-knit civil service officered by highly competent and subserviently loyal persons who would never say “No”, argue or differ with their masters’ voice. These pliable civil servants were carefully selected by giving their loyalty and obeisance precedence over their skill, proficiency and talent.
The British needed a strong, reliable and trusted police force and highly dedicated and devoted civil servants to perpetuate their rule over their colonial subject-race. History tells us that the British could clamp their misrule over their alien subjects on account of the unethical and unqualified support of their civil servants who were fondly addressed by the rulers as their blue-eyed boys. Winston Churchill was prime minister of Britain during World War II who had pathological aversion to the British civil servants.
When he was asked to comment on the efficiency of the British civil servants, he famously remarked—“They are neither civil nor servants”. Churchill made such caustic observation because the British rulers and colonial Viceroys recklessly abused their malleable civil servants to exploit their alien subjects.
Even Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were mercilessly beaten by police on the order of an English district magistrate. The British rulers used their magistrates who were civil servants to detain many Indian leaders and thousands of innocent people without any tangible charges.
Pakistan was curved out from the belly of India in 1947. The newly independent Pakistan inherited its civil service from the British and aping the same British policy used their loyal civil servants to silence, incarcerate and exploit the people of the then East Pakistan who were predominantly Bengalis. We see that the civil servants were the effective tools during the British and Pakistan era to throttle any just opposition against the oppressive rulers. After independence, the Bangladesh civil service (BCS) was constituted almost on the same model of Pakistan civil service (CSP) which Pakistan inherited from British.
The first exam of Bangladesh civil service was held in 1973. Large numbers of officers in different cadres were recruited. These civil officers undertook relentless efforts to help and advise the government in rebuilding our war-torn motherland.
The country was steadily progressing towards achieving its long cherished goals when our father of the nation Bangobandhu was brutally martyred. The whole country was shocked and stunned and all progress halted irreparably.
This is our assessment that the standard of our civil service right from 1973 – 1988 was above par.
But gradually the standard started declining and now it has downgraded to below par. This decline happened because all previous and succeeding political authorities more or less politicized the recruitment procedures and policies of civil service for their interest and advantage. On the other hand, the standard of our higher education has nosedived to such an extent that required numbers of competent candidates for our civil service are hard to find.
It is essentially necessary that in order to maintain the steady standard of our civil service, all recruitments should be done on the basis of universal merit policy and no recruitment should be made on the basis of quota reservation method. The quota system should be abolished because the quota procedure opens the doors for incompetent candidates to be inducted into the civil service. Civil servants are called the jugular veins of a country’s body politic.
Governments have to rely upon them for implementation of their policies for the welfare of the people who have voted them to power. So governments need huge brigade of dexterous and businesslike civil servants to translate their vision into reality.
Hence civil servants have to be adroit, unbiased, impartial and patriot in discharging their entrusted duties and responsibilities. It is their moral obligation to give fair and good advice to the governments and not to be a part of any harmful and anti-people political adventurism that may deleteriously impinge upon the nation.
Civil servants must maintain and preserve their own dignity, honor and probity at any cost.
They should not succumb to any undue pressure and should not indulge in politicking to secure cozy postings and out-of-turn promotion. Governments should put a premium only upon civil servants’ neutrality, efficiency, professional knowledge and patriotism rather than his political subservience and blatant kowtowing.
It is very painful and disheartening to observe that some civil servants indulge themselves in establishing close political relationship with powerful coterie to safeguard their present and future interests.
Such unholy exercises largely ruin the reputation and credibility of civil service. On top of all, mad race for grasping speedy promotion through leapfrogging the seniors is another stigma for our civil service. It is our bitter experience that whenever a new government comes, some civil servants are made OSD and some other lose their jobs on flimsy or intangible grounds.
Most civil servants are obedient, trusted and they are habitually loyal to any government. It is of course true that there are a few overenthusiastic partisan civil servants whose unbecoming activities usually create doubts in the minds of any government. It gives us much anguish to see that our civil servants could not yet attain spontaneous acceptability and reliability of general people.
The service painfully lacks peoples’ trust and confidence. For a few strayed officers, so many have to suffer the ignominy of being sleazy. The service has no defined career, promotion and posting planning. These shortcomings needs to be removed urgently and the time-worn colonial structure of our civil service should immediately be remodeled and reconstituted. We should bear in mind that a viable and pro-people civil service is a sine qua non for durable democracy and good governance.
(The Writer is ex DIG of Police)
