In the mid- '60s or thereabout, The Illustrated Weekly of India once started a series of articles by retired or serving ICS officers with the title 'The ICS and I'. I, a school going boy then and not much into reading English just glanced through some of those, not fully comprehending what was written. The ICS fascinated all,though the successor service IAS was already in existence. We had read about Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose qualifying the ICS in 1920 and quitting it to play his role in the Indian freedom struggle.
During the '60s Newspapers and magazine carried the names of ICS officers like Kewal Singh, T.N.Kaul, B.K.Kaul, C.D.Deshmukh, L.K.Jha and the like who excelled in the various fields though belonging to a generalist service.
As of today, the charm of Civil Service remains in tact. Besides the IAS & the other Group A services , the Engineering Services and the Indian Forest Service attract a lot of young talent and thousands of aspirants appear in examination to compete for a fraction of vacancies every year.
One commonly hears of deterioration setting in these services, with reasons not far to seek. The political bosses rule the roost and civil servants are literally at their beck and call. We see a lot of fawning, cringing civil servants- bureaucrats and technocrats , a very few of them having the courage to have spine and put their foot down. Ironically the same fawning, cringing lot become arrogant while dealing with public.
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