ABSTRACT
The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers realise governing interactions through configuring information on developmental administration, activating mediation channels between the ‘governed’ and the ‘governor’, and through innovative actions. We examine the IAS as three interdependent layers: an institutional structural bridge in the federal polity; an innovative transformational structure in the informational conduit of governance, and an active mediational institution between interest groups and the political power centres. The careerist IAS progresses over three functional pillars: information, innovation, and mediation.
An officer’s performance drives sustained governance, maps innovative transformation of institutions, and discovers institutional ruptures and informational voids, making a bureaucratic career a history-laden path. The hope of progress along the path of this career and upward mobility motivates the incumbent bureaucrat to exhibit exemplary transformational, mediational, and innovational skills. The peerage of senior career bureaucrats and political executives generates benchmark criteria of performance, while an incumbent junior careerist has to navigate a complex pathway.
Mechanisms to measure IAS performance subsume the distinction between instantaneous appraisal and career progression. Annual Confidential Reports hold informational value, but because of their instantaneous nature and public availability, they become a qualified tool to assess bureaucratic performance adequately. A plausible way to measure an officer’s career progression is to assess the rise in administrative hierarchy, coupled with the time at which the rise was attained.
Using the insights and inputs from a 12-member expert panel and an iteration regarding 157 serving IAS officers, we demonstrate a Prototype Career Progression Index based on two reflectors of progress: the type of roles of an IAS officer and the duration of holding a particular role.
This way, we aim at laying a foundation to capture and quantify the progression of career bureaucrats in India over the functional pathways of transformation, information, and mediation.
