The “steel frame of India” is the phrase often used to describe the organised civil service of India, and has been in use since before independence. Although the civil service was a legacy of the British and Jawaharlal Nehru was sceptical of it in the beginning, he came to appreciate that a highly-qualified, professional and meritocratic civil service institution would, perhaps, be an important factor in India’s successful transition from a backward nation to a prosperous country. As it turns out, though this transition may not yet have been achieved even after seven decades of independence, the civil services, as a professionally-managed cadre of bureaucrats, has evolved into one of the pivotal institutions of democratic India. It has even been identified as one of the important factors in the deepening of democracy and consolidation of the idea of India (Guha 2007). In the parliamentary democracy of India, where the political executive come and go through regular general elections, the executive civil service is permanent, providing much needed continuity, knowledge pool, expertise and professionalism, to better manage a vast and diverse country. Though responsible and answerable to the political executive, the administrative and institutional structure of the civil service is not dependent on the whims and fancies of the political class, thus providing a fine system of checks and balances, together with the independent judiciary and free press.

This article, though placed within the larger framework of bureaucratic reforms, is focused on analysing the often-ignored issues arising out of the peculiar branching structure of the organised senior civil services of India—known popularly as the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS)—and other branches, the underlying debate of generalist vs specialist, and suggests ideas moving forward.