NGO run Rural and Family Planning Centres: A Valueless Suggestion for Population Control and Rural Employment Generation for India!

India is the world's second most populous country .Any time in the recent future it could overtake the present number one, China. The population growth in India is happening at a tremendous rate of about 20% every decade.

Ever since the aggressive population control misadventure of the government of India during the emergency rule during the 1970's , the successive governments apparently lost their courage and interest to include population control under any serious governmental agenda. As a result there has been an explosive growth of population from about 890 million (1981 census) to 1210 million (2011 census). That is more than 300 million additional people in three decades! Thus, the present day India is a country of youngsters and youths with more than 50 percent under the age 40!

Well-to-do Indians are more and more adopting the one-child-per-couple norm while average and below average Indians still follow the many-children norm. Thus, in the near future, the population of below average Indians would keep rising. This situation is potentially dangerous and could trigger envious enmities gripping the minds of the less privileged people.

Rise of population should  not be something that could be a worry for India, had India knew how to manage its resources efficiently. India is one of the best lands in the world with regard to natural resources. Unfortunately, its resource management systems and resource administration have not been very good. Thus, unprecedented rise in absolute population under poor administrative systems would naturally enhance the problems of the Indian people. Some may directly feel the pinch while many others may not directly feel it for quite some time until they themselves face some problems. 

Rising population and shrinking job opportunities are the two main problems of India. These two problems cause other problems to rise as well.

Considering the above, the first priority of all right thinking leaders (political, administrative, social and religious) of India should have been the following:

• How to bring down the population growth?
• How to enhance the opportunities for employment and jobs?

In my humble opinion, when the above two things are addressed, many of the ills of India would automatically get reduced to a great extent.

I have some suggestions to all leaders to think and act. I do not know whether they ever hear the words of people like me or not! Chances for that are very remote as the Indian leaders of all kinds are known for their impatience, arrogance and I-know-it-all attitudes! Over and above, once a leader, there are enough mundane things that keep them permanently occupied that they would not get any time to think and act of their own!

Now, let me discuss about the suggestions that I have. 

First, about population control. In my opinion, the governments need not become proactive or aggressive in this regard. Rather they should not. They should not do any thing that make the people becoming antagonistic just as what had happened during the emergency days with Mr Sanjay Gandhi's compulsory sterilization program or what had recently happened in Chhattisgarh state in a government sponsored women sterilization program.

The government should only be an educator and facilitator in this context. The government should not directly get involved with any family planning or population control program. But the government should be a dedicated facilitator.

How do they do it? The following could be a possible approach:

Let the government announce a program and guidelines for social groups, companies and religious organizations to set up non-profit non-governmental organizations (NGO) that are responsible for the promotion of family planning, health and hygiene, sanitation, women welfare, child care and other related areas. 

Let these NGO's be allowed to create physical infrastructure and trained welfare staff organizations under them for the said purpose.

Let them be registered with the government (state or central). 

Let them be provided with grants and be allowed to accept donations from the public and also charge nominal service charges for their services from those who can pay.

Let these NGO managed Rural and Family Planning Centers (RFPC) be treated as quasi-government organizations which are autonomous, but responsible to the public with regard to their functions.

Let their accounts be fully transparent and in the public domain through their own websites.

Let them be free to plan their action plans and implement them using their staff and volunteers. Let them also be free to appoint their staff and fix their remunerations. 

Let this be first tried for the rural areas as that is the priority sector for population growth and employment generation. 72% of Indian people live in the villages. Let each of these NGO managed RFPC's be responsible for at least 1000 families and let them be allowed to register families for the management of all governmental welfare schemes. Let these RFPC's also be allowed to interact with the rural folks regularly and also build up demographic information and data.

Every RFPC should have a staff strength of one for every 100 family. Thus, an RFPC that caters to a rural population of about 6000 (approximately 1000 families) should have a staff strength of 10 people besides its voluntary director board. At least one staff member of an RFPC should be a medically trained person.

There are over 600,000 villages in India with an average population of over 1000. If an RFPC caters to about one thousand families or about 6000 people, there could be over 100,000 RFPCs. 

With every RFPC employing at least 10 people, the rural employment generation through this would be 1,000,000 or one million.

Now let us see how much money is required to establish and run one RFPC. 

Ideally, an RFPC should have about 1000 square meters of land and about 200 sq.m of building space of its own. For any rural area, this would cost on the average the following:

• Land cost :      1000000 @ Rs. 1000/- per sq.m
• Building cost:  2000000 @ Rs. 10,000/- per sq.m
• Other:              1000000 

That is about 40 lakh rupees ( 4 million rupees) for the essential infrastructure to be created for each of the RFPC. Remember, these are not to be managed by the government departments. If the government ever tries to do it directly, the costs would be much higher and they would make a mess out of it. These RFPCs are to be managed by private NGOs registered under the Societies Act or by any separate act that the government may enact appropriately. 

Now let us see what is the essential employment cost for each RFPC employing 10 staff members. As the staff would be rural based, let us assume that they be paid a monthly gross salary of average Rs.8000 per month in the range 5,000- 12,000. That is about one million rupees yearly. It might require another about 3 million to carry out the family planning and family welfare measures to the families it serves per year taking about 3000 rupees average per family per year.

So, a fully functional RFPC needs about 4 million rupees as its initial capital cost and another 4 million per year as the recurring cost. To make the scheme to run without any financial difficulties, let us for a moment assume that the 4 million recurring cost of an RFPC is coming from a suitable endowment fund constituted and deposited in the treasury or any banks as long term fixed deposits. To gain an interest of 4 million per year, the endowment fund to be deposited as FD would be about 46 million rupees. The endowment fund should only be allowed for generating regular income for meeting the cost of running the organization.

Thus, a workable rural RFPC set up and made functional this way would require about 50 Million rupees- four million for its infrastructure and 46 million to be created as an endowment fund to be kept in government treasuries or with banks. For full funding of all the 100,000 RFPCs a total of 5000,000 million rupees may be required in case the RFPCs are to be made self sustainable perpetually with major incomes generated from their endowment funds. The more this kind of NGO run RFPCs the more the governments could do away with their own field staffing and unyielding staff costs. The governments can divert those activities to these NGO run RFPCs.

The scope and extent of these RFPCs could be further extended to include other developmental activities as well.

Now from where this money would come? Some years ago, the government of India began the Local Area Development (LAD) Scheme for the members of the parliament (MP) called the MPLADS. As per this scheme, every MP has been given a budgetary allocation of Rs.50 million per year to be spent on any scheme of his or her choice in their respective localities or constituencies. There are 776 MPs in India. In an year, they could get 776 x 50 = Rs. 38800 million as MPLAD. 

The members of the state legislative assemblies (MLA) also has their own LAD which is about 20 million per year. There are about 4120 MLAs in India. Their total allocation potential is 4120 x 20 = Rs. 82400 million per year. 

Both MP and MLAs together have been provided with 38800+82400 = Rs.121200 million per year of fund to be spend for their area development. For total cost for a sustainable RFPC as mentioned earlier which will give permanent employment to 10 rural people would be 50 million. Thus, the MPs and MLAs can either fund 30000 RFPCs in an year with regard to their infrastructure and finance all the RFPCs in about three year' time. They can also part finance the initial recurring costs till they become capable of self sustainable with regard to their own generation of funds through various means. 

As I have mentioned, the funds to set up and run these RFPCs can also come from other sources, such as the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds of the companies, transfer from surplus funded educational societies, individuals, etc.

What is essential is the policy and the statutory guidance of the government. The policies and the guidelines should not be too stringent in which case those volunteering to make it would find it a headache. On the other hand, it should not be a platform for some people to pilferage public money without proper accountability. The government could also consider the NGOs as purely non-profit and exempt their incomes from income tax and service taxes.

Such an initiative not only creates more than one million rural jobs, but also helps substantially in making the rural masses the necessary guidance in a variety of much needed actions such as:

• Awareness for population control
• Extending family planning facilities 
• Awareness on public health and disease control
• Awareness creation for sanitation
• Program implementation for sanitation
• Program implementation for drinking water
• Program implementation for rural area pollution control
• Program implementation for non-conventional energy use
• Program implementation for composting and bio-gas production
• Rural self employment generation
• Rural road development
• Adult literacy enhancement and informal education
• Agricultural product sourcing and marketing, etc 

It is not that the state and the central governments of India are not doing these. They are doing, but incurring perhaps a higher cost and also without much visible effects. There are also many NGOs in the work but there is little public awareness and visibility. Family planning and employment generation are apparently not in their priorities. There is much duplication of work without much coordination and accountability.

The time has come for the governments to get away from direct departmental actions and to assume the role of facilitators rather than actual doers in areas like these. At the same time, it is the governments' responsibility to ensure that long term actions do not break and sink midway!

Let the MPLADS and MLALADS funds be utilized efficiently which ensure more and more permanent job creation rather than spending it for improperly planned construction works here and there. 

Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has urged the MPs and MLAs to use their funds for Swacch Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Campaign). This too could be well managed if these funds are transferred to the NGOs for setting up and managing the RFPCs under proper policy guidance. 

The Rural and Family Planning Centers set up and managed by various NGOs could be monitored by the MPs and MLAs and also by national and state level bureaucratic coordination departments. However, such acts should not become over control acts by the government. Diversion of funds for private gains other than for the purpose of the NGO or the RFPC should be made a punishable act.

An NGO may be permitted to set up more than one RFPC under their management control. However, such an act should not cause a top heavy organization which eats away the funds for spending towards employing highly paid managers, some thing presently happens with many NGOs in India.

This is only a suggestion and as I have already stated, India does not work as per the ideas of ordinary citizens. It has several celebrity advisers who keep moving in the power corridors seeking to sell their advises for benefits!

You really need heavy and 'valuable' suggestions and advises for getting it implemented in India!

Autonomous Education Companies and Campuses: Something For Indian Government to Think and Act!

The following are some suggestions that the law makers and entrepreneurs of any country may consider implementing for making drastic improvements in existing school and college level education in their nations, especially my own country India.

1.Schools and colleges having high standards and facilities should be allowed to be set up also as profit making corporate entities with professional management. The profits of such corporate educational institutions should also be taxable under the law governing business entities. However, tax exemptions may be granted till such time that the institution becomes fully operational. 

(In India at present, there are indirect legal hindrances that do not permit educational institutions to be established under the Companies Act 2013 though the Act in itself does not categorically exclude it. So, one may not find a school or college or educational institution offering formal education having a name such as M/s ABC Education Services Pvt Limited or M/s ABC Education Services Limited. Presently the government allows educational institutions to be set up under the Societies Registration Act-1860 or the Indian Trusts Act-1882. This was something acceptable in olden days when education was considered as a purely non profit activity. However, post liberalization, the situation has clandestinely changed. The government while retaining the policy of maintaining education as a non profit activity allowed both government controlled and private societies and trusts to enhance the fees exorbitantly with no transparency whatsoever allowing many of the existing managements to amass huge funds at their disposal to be diverted illegally for other purposes. For example, a two year Post graduate management program in a government controlled institute which used to be less than Rs.10000/- two decades ago has sky rocketed to Rs.1,700,000/- at present! Yet, there is no transparency on the manner in which these funds are used. On the other hand, a company doing business is bound to publish their profit loss accounts and balance sheet to the public scrutiny and also pay taxes and and declare dividends  if there is any profit!) 

2. The education company should have full freedom to device its curriculum, its teaching system, admission procedures and the qualifications required for its teachers. It should also have freedom to advertise about its functions to draw clients (students and their parents) to avail its educational services. The parents and children should have the freedom to decide whether they would like to have their education in such institutions. However, the government should make laws in such a way that there is a level playing policy clarity with minimum governmental interference while ensuring essential  superintending controls. 

3. Such a corporate educational institution should admit boys and girls who have already completed their pre-primary and primary level schooling and the minimum age of admission to an institution should be ten.

4. Such an institution should have an integrated education system comprising of school and college education in the following manner:

-Middle school education of three years, 
-High school education of three years, 
-Senior school education of two years
-Integrated college level education of  five years. 

Thus a student entering the integrated study program finishes the entire course at an age of twenty three. 

The eight year long school learning provides the Integrated Residential School Diploma Certificate (IRSDC) and the subsequent five year integrated college education provides the Integrated Post Graduate Diploma Certificate (IPGDC) with a common curriculum with about 50% of study time reserved for specialized studies in any elective subjects of interests  from a number of elective courses in the field of physical sciences, applied sciences and engineering,  bio sciences and applied bio sciences, economics, commerce, business, law, etc. 

5. The entire education shall be residential and co-educational. However, the hostels should be separate for boys and girls and the young men and women. A few teachers and trainers shall reside in the hostels as local guardians and counselors.

6. The intake capacity of the lowest sized campus at entry level shall be 50 girls and 50 boys and this capacity should not be changed at any time. The batch strength shall not exceed 100 and the total student strength should not exceed 1300 in such a campus. However larger campuses with proportionately higher student strengths also may be planned. Students may be allowed mutual change of campus that follows similar education pattern.

7. The campus shall be set up at least 25 kilometers away from any urban or city limits and the campus area shall not be less than 25 acres for the lowest sized campus. The campus shall be fully secured to ensure full security to the residents. The campus shall have its own solar powered electric generation system with alternate power back ups. It should also have its own water treatment and supply system with rain water harvesting systems and waste water treatment systems and bio waste processing systems. At least five acres of the land shall be reserved as the campus horticulture farm to enable students to experience the basics of land management and essentials of agriculture.

10. The campus shall have its own medical clinic with medical staff, sports center with sports trainers and environmental practice center with agricultural trainers.

8. Two hours of study on all working days shall be exclusively reserved for language studies for the school level curriculum. Students completing the school level learning shall be fully capable of oral and written communication in one national and one international language. They should also have adequate competency in these languages so that they are capable of self learning in later years by reading and writing. They shall also be adequately computer literate at this stage.

9. All students shall attend 15 days study excursions to various cities, factories, hospitals, farms in the  every year compulsorily on all years of their campus stay, out of which two such trips shall be to foreign countries.

10. All students shall get one month compulsory holidays per year to spend their time with their families.

11. All students shall participate in some kind of games, physical work in the farms or workshops or in the gymnasiums on all working days for at least one hour.

12. Students shall normally pursue one subject of study other than the languages in a week of six working days, each day comprising of five hours of oral and experimental learning activity. They will learn the subject for five days in a language most common and most acceptable for five days, refresh it and complete an assignment on the sixth day of learning a particular learning module. For completing their test assignment they are allowed to use their study materials and references. The completed assignments shall be kept as records and shall be used as one of the means for evaluating the students' performances. 

13. Use of memory based examinations shall be minimal and shall have least weight-age in the evaluation process of the students.

14. Students who are not compatible to the residential campus education system and who are judged as physically or mentally unfit to pursue the education may be allowed to leave the campus after due completion of a process which shall be sympathetic to the student's future development. All other students pass out with just three passing out grades- Brilliant(B), Excellent(E) and Accomplished (A).  

15. The fee chargeable by the institute shall be based on the expenditure incurred and the audited account statements of the institute shall be published in their website. There shall be no government interference in as charged by the institution and the fee chargeable should be deemed as a service charge which could be taxable. The educational company may have more than one campus and they can declare dividends to their share holders in the event of profits just as any corporate business entity. They may not declare any profits even when there is a surplus in case they have immediate development plans. 

16. The education company may enter into agreements with corporate business entities for extended on the job training to the pass-outs and ensuring guaranteed employment opportunities to the graduates from the campus. However, the education and training program of the campus shall be such that every pass out from the campus is a youth who could be an example to all others in all respects.

17. The education service company may employ experienced doctors, engineers, lawyers, technocrats, academicians, trainers, artists or any one who possesses experience and wisdom as teachers and trainers of the students in addition to the permanent campus guide teachers who too are highly qualified and trained to do their duties in a very responsible manner. The campus shall have facilities for fine living and recreation for all its faculty and staff members.

18. The admission to the campus at entry level shall be based on the an Intelligence Quotient  Test (IQT) , Empathy Quotient Test (EQT) and a Preliminary Knowledge Test (PKT). The test and its evaluation shall be done by competent professionals. Students scoring below the average score of all applicants shall not be admitted and all students should have desirable levels of IQT,  EQT and PKT scores.

19. The IRSDC issued by such institutions should be statutorily recognized as equivalent to the conventional Senior Secondary School Certificate while the IPGDC should be equivalent to the conventional Post Graduate Degree.

20. The wholly residential educational institutions set up and run in this manner should be recognized as autonomous educational institutions. 

I know that there could be several additional ideas to fine tune the concept further so that our future generations should be transformed as perfected citizens who are capable of adapting to any situations with ease and are highly competent and honest. 

It is high time that the stereo typed education with least flexibility is discarded and students are benefited to learn from multiple fronts in a holistic manner. 

Examination based education needs to be thrown out and an education oriented to develop students in an all round manner should take its place. 

Creativity, curiosity, honesty and compassion should be encouraged while parroting should be discouraged. 

Our concepts of education need to change. New ideas and experiments should be allowed to happen. The laws and regulations that curtail that freedom of people with innovative ideas need to be reviewed and changed if needed.

In any case, the practice of education business in the guise of non-profit societies and trusts should end. No non-profit charities and trusts should be allowed to exploit the students, parents and the government and manage their enormous funds clandestinely without paying any taxes. In the event, the educational institution is run by non-profit societies and trusts, their income and expenditure statements should be made available in their websites and it should be mandatory for them to get it audited. No such institution should be allowed to enhance fees if they are already surplus with funds. It should be their prime duty to prove that they are really non-profit making organizations. If not they should be allowed to get themselves changed to education companies with profit motive.

It is just a suggestion from a common man of India for any people friendly democratic government of India to think and implement.  

No doubt, educational avenues for the wealthy people have increased many fold in the recent years in India. But employment opportunities commensurate with the cost of education have not increased. It is the government's duty to do research on this aspect and publish such information for the guidance of the people.

At least, the government of India should not be a facilitator for education exploitation by unscrupulous elements in various clandestine manners any more!

Let not our beloved nation to degrade year after year to be known as the mother of all corruptions by perpetuating an education system which nurtures corruption and dishonesty!

Some Unsolicited Suggestions to Capable Indians to Think and Initiate Improvements in the Indian Politics!

Indian democracy unfortunately has no system to receive feed backs from the individual citizens and to initiate some serious thinking about such individual suggestions. Perhaps, the privileged elites belonging to the media, connected NGOs and pampered institutes might poo-poo such ideas as non practical.

So for all those who want to be heard have to adopt some proven or novel techniques to come to the limelight to be heard by others. Unfortunately that is the prerequisite in any underdeveloped democracy.

I am fully aware of it and I know pretty well that my lone voices that I try to spread out through this platform would not make any effect any where!

So what I am writing here are obviously unsolicited suggestions only to sooth the hearts of a few others like me if ever they happen to read these!

So here are a few open suggestions that I want to tell our political parties today:

Firstly, let the Indian political parties make some changes for those elected to the parliament or the state assemblies using their party tickets. Let them allow these poor elected representatives of the people to vote and voice according to their inner consciousness and knowledge on various issues concerning the people to arrive at some true democratic decisions. Let the parties not use their whips on the MPs and MLAs to influence their voting decisions on common issues concerning the people. Let them use the whips only for those decisions that is concerning their support to the government to rule! Why I suggest this change is because the Indian political parties, none of them for that matter, truly follow any political ideologies any more. They are all the same having different individuals having different mindsets and egos sitting on their controlling positions! At least this way some of our MPs and MLAs who are sufficiently learned and sufficiently clean to be considered as good persons would be in a position to use their brains in a free and unbiased manner to think for the common good of the people!

Secondly, let all the political parties agree to make a law that enable the election commission to recognize only those political parties who get at least 5 % of the total assembly votes, parliament votes, assembly seats and parliament seats. Let the election expenses be made from an election fund controlled by an administrative authority under the supervision of the Election Commission of India . Let this authority refund the election expenses to those candidates of the recognized parties who have polled at least 5% of the total polled votes based on documentary evidences subject to a ceiling as fixed by the authority as per the availability of funds. Simultaneously, let there be a provision in the law describing the rules and regulations for setting up of political parties in India and their internal administration and finances. 

Thirdly, the law that governs setting up and administration of political parties in India should allow parties to have paid employees and managers to manage their political organization and such persons should not be allowed to contest elections so long as they are paid employees of the political organization. The political organization could be in the form of a registered society or non-profit company and the income of such political companies should not be subject to income tax. However, it should be mandatory for them to audit their accounts and publish their annual statements on properly maintained websites. Besides, the Election Commission of India shall be allowed to enhance their activities by having more man power and permanent offices in all Indian states. It should also be empowered to monitor the activities of the political companies! The political companies should have a governing board of elected or nominated directors to oversee its functions and policy making. The political companies should be allowed to set up their offices and political awareness centers across the country to propagate their ideas among the people and to train their party volunteers.

No political party should be allowed to field candidates to become future MPs or MLAs unless they have some desirable and specified educational qualifications and experience. This is because, they are the people who are required to frame and pass the legal frame work of the country. Unless they have the desired competency, they could lead the country to legal disaster. 

It is highly improbable that the existing political parties would favor such an idea. Because, they are mostly family fiefdoms. But it could be tried out by large business establishments who have the money and vision. They should think of making non profit societies and fund such societies to establish properly made political establishments who could make a difference in the future! Let them employ our youngsters with good intellectual capabilities to work for some years to make it a success. Indian public would come out of their prejudices when they are properly approached with some basic honesty and proven objectives. 

Let the business leaders of India think of it and pool their synergies to make it happen instead of funding the political parties in some clandestine manner.

If the Rajas and Ranis and their royal families could go forgotten from the minds of the people and pave the way to democracy in its infancy, it is possible for the same democracy to grow to its youthful vigor aspiring to experiment novelties!

After reading this much and if you agree with these ideas in principle, consider sharing it with your friends and followers as well. 

What Should Be Done To Improve Governance In India ? Some Suggestions !

Some Aspects of Complex Governance of Modern India!

How do you consider a man having a big head, large eyes, small hands, bent legs, long tongue, closed ears and a big belly? Perhaps he has a big brain and he is very intelligent. He can see well with his large eyes. He can talk well and taste well with his long tongue. But he cannot do any thing properly as he has small hands. With his bent legs he cannot run or walk properly. He cannot hear what others say because his ears are closed. Of course he eats well. 

No doubt no one would like to have such an individual in their home. The man is ugly and imperfect from our viewpoint. 

In a similar way, a government having various ministries and departments which are disproportionate to their normal functions, would obviously be a monstrous organization which would not do its functions in a balanced manner. Obviously, the people of the country with such a monster governing it could not expect anything good from it. In such governments some ministries would be placed at higher prominence than really required marring the other ministries to practical negligence and insignificance. It is like giving importance to one's mouth only always because it is the one which speaks!

In a family too, the parents often neglect their wise children who are more mature and harmless and give undue importance to the kids who are noisy and quarrelsome making the family ruin later. This is because of the human weakness of fear. Humans fear noisy fellows!

In politics too, such a situation prevail. The more noisy and illogical a leader is, the more he or she is likely to garner support and benefits. The wise advises of the less noisy ones often go unconsidered. This happens everywhere. 

If a country needs to progress, it needs to develop in all fronts in an equitable basis. The practice of pleasing the talking big mouth always need to be moderated. All parts of the administration should get equal importance and all should get the care and support they actually need to function. So if the defense ministry getting pampered more at the cost of the home ministry would make the country fail in some aspects of its security. If telecom ministry is pampered more than the postal ministry, the country would again fail to achieve progress in some areas. 

Unfortunately, this kind of a situation arises from the improper selection, training and placement of the officers who are supposed to man these departments. Though many wise people have pointed out to the flaws in the system of recruitment and placement of officers of the governmental systems of India, nothing has changed much from the pre-independence era. The system continues without much change.

The government officers in India are selected by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) at the central, all India level , by the various Public Service Commissions (PSC) of the states and the Staff Selection Boards (SSB). The UPSC selects fresh candidates for various all India services by a highly competitive examination. The top ranking candidates are normally absorbed in the so called elite services of India called the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and the Indian Foreign Service (IFS). Members of these three services are conventionally given higher prominence in the Indian governmental system and the IAS now has established their indisputable place as compared to all other services. This is because the manner in which the IAS officers are selected and placed to head any type of organization in India without any consideration to their expertise or knowledge in that field. It has now become an established practice in India that an IAS officer could be the chief executive or head of any field regardless of it being a ministry, an public sector industry, a government university, a training institute, a government department, a government sponsored society or any autonomous institution. 

Though the IPS officers are trained for law and order and policing, they too could be placed in a similar fashion in any non policing department or organization. However, they get such opportunities to head 'offices of profit' less than their IAS brothers and sisters. 

There are other services which the Indian public are less acquainted with. But that does not mean that they are unimportant. They too could be placed to head any organization at the will of their political and senior bureaucratic patrons even while they know pretty nothing about the functions of such organizations. Such services are called the Indian Forest Service, the Indian Audit and Accounts Service, the Indian Railway Service, the Indian Postal Service, the Indian Engineering Service, the Indian Telecom Service, etc. etc. It is not necessary that the UPSC conduct all India examinations for all these services always. The UPSC also inducts other specialists like geologists, doctors, etc to be posted as specialist government service officers in various departments and ministries. However, such officers often do not get opportunities to head top posts even while some of them might be much more suitable with respect to their knowledge and competency. They are often made subordinate to those from the elite cadres.

The military officers are selected by an entirely different procedure. Though the military officers are better trained, disciplined and with required managerial and functional skills, the services of their experienced senior levels are not very much used in the governmental organizations just as their counterparts from the elite administrative services. 

Often experienced experts in various governmental departments like doctors, engineers, etc find some not so trained generalist having much lower length of service from the so-called elite services becoming their bosses who are less capable of understanding certain aspects of their jobs. Consequently, such bosses would be miserable failures in making effective decisions for the good of the country in the long run or getting any long term policy decisions which are justified and correct. Since political bosses are not experienced experts, the inexperienced bureaucrats immediately below the levels of the political bosses would make up a system which is not competent to handle complex issues of governance in a knowledge driven manner.

It is also important to consider the educational qualifications of the candidates who are selected to the elite services. The direct recruits need only a bachelor's degree in any discipline to appear in the all India civil service examinations. Graduates , post graduates or even PhD holders in medicine, engineering , arts, science, etc are all treated at par. While writing their examinations, they are at liberty to chose options of subjects at their choice regardless of the formal educational qualifications. This makes the civil service examination a kind of screening test and not some thing to evaluate the specific field of knowledge of the candidate for a specific job. These candidates are selected for various cadres based on their choices based on the ranks they obtained in the civil service examination. Such choices essentially do not give much credence to the aptitude of a candidate for the job. For example, a person could become a senior police officer of the country, even if he or she does not possess some of the essential physical and mental attributes that are needed for such a job. Even the selected candidates have any common educational backgrounds in common! 

The freshers may get a few months' training for induction in to the elite cadre of officers of the government. But once the cadre is allotted they remain in that cadre till retirement. They cannot escape the brand once they are branded. 

In addition to the fresh candidates selected this manner, an equivalent numbers are promoted from the staff cadres. In short, the government officials of the class one government services of India do not have any commonality among them except their branding. This often creates interpersonal rivalries and envies. Superiority and inferiority complexes are generated among these people. While they are trained to treat themselves as superior to the common citizens, within their own class, they are either inferior or superior. The god-dog syndrome is highest among the government officers of India.

Unfortunately, the same class of people would not allow the system to be drastically changed. Democracy or no democracy, the government officials have a common mindset all over the world from time immemorial. It is too difficult to change it. Politicians, the so called people's representatives, are also scared of the officials because without the latter the former have no existence or no power!

I know that I am nobody to comment over the present system or to give any suggestions for improvements. Yet, I think there is a common logic that the present system of selection of government officers needs to be changed. The system of arbitrary postings of the all India service officers in any ministry or any department without the requisite understanding of the functions should stop. The background educational qualifications and experience also should be given equal importance while a person is posted to head an organization or department. 

It would be a good idea to have many all India services to serve various functional ministries and the persons for such services should be selected based on the specific knowledge that is needed for such ministries or departments. 

Some three and a half decades ago, the late Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi mooted such an idea. But she failed miserably, even though she was much more powerful politically than her later day political successors. This was because of the clever manner in which some of those elite class administrative service officers played against the idea.

The public sector is a big governmental function. Yet the government does not have any all India industrial management service. Even in such services, the functions of various disciplines vary widely and there is a need to look in to this aspect too. The practice of politicians occupying executive posts also needs reconsideration.

It is indeed a complex situation. A situation where power and service considerations go hand in hand with favoritism and performance requirements. A situation where priorities are difficult to be ascertained. Is it the country or is it the individual that is important? 

It is easy to declare the country as important in public, but it is too difficult to practice that in private.

Independent republic of India has survived more than a century now. It has become old. The old generation of people of India themselves are those born after independence. They are no more likely to be with the ideals of their parents. The youngsters of India are no more taught about civic responsibilities in the schools. No more they are taught about the importance of being honest and compassionate. The modern public schools of India set up by societies formed by clever elites with skills and tactics of garnering power and money have turned out to become factories that produce export oriented, stereotyped, human robots with much knowledge and least wisdom to work for multinational corporations (MNC) rather than improving their own nation! And the elitist administrators of modern India have helped out much to accomplish this.

There are millions of middle class people who think that they have benefited from such a progress that India has made. From their viewpoint they could be right. 

But in reality, the rich in India are getting richer and the poor are becoming poorer. The numbers of the latter are increasing. The affluence of the rich are not proportionately getting transmitted to the less affluent in a natural manner. And some ill conceived administrators think that they have done a big thing by subsidizing a few starchy food to the poor to maintain their lives to do all those menial jobs, the works which could be branded as essential services in the event they ever think of stopping their work!

Every officer belonging to the various governmental organizations is part of the executive branch of the government and they are all professional leaders who are responsible for assisting and guiding their elected political heads of the government in accordance with the constitutional framework of the country. The elected leaders in a democratic system as defined in its present constitution need not be any one who has the majority support of the people. The elected leaders are also not required to be with any well defined educational or other such competency qualifications to become the heads of the various governmental functions. But that is not the case with the professional leaders of the government. They have to have some competency qualifications.

It is very obvious that the Constitution of India  requires the professional leaders of the governmental systems (the officers of the government or the public servants) to be with proven competency. Had these officers with the right mix of the 4C's I wrote some time ago (Competency, Character, Courage and Compassion) there is absolutely nothing that could have prevented India from achieving the best administered and governed country in the world by now. But India is not such a country now. Transparency International and others in the world consider India as one of the poorly administered and badly governed country marred in corruption of all kinds.

I am not telling that all officers of the government are without the 4C's. I am also not telling that the Indian system of governance is bad every where. What I want to stress is about the importance that should be given in screening and selection of the professional leaders of the government so that they are all with the right kind of the 4C's. If some have the 4C's while others do not, then we get a system similar to a bullock cart that is pulled by one able bodied oxen and one one lame and lazy one. The cart is likely to move in a circle rather than moving forward. An administration manned by a mix of able officers and incompetent ones would most likely make it in a vicious circle!

Incompetent officers would allow their non-professional political leaders to assume and take over their functions. They would be too willing to oblige their non-professional political masters. That would cause the country to move towards collapse. It would be similar to the situation where the professional pilot of an aircraft allowing his employer and owner of the plane with no pilot licence to pilot the plane! A competent professional pilot would not allow his owner employer for such an experiment even when his employer commands him for compliance in abusive language! That is because the professional has enough courage and competence to face such situations. 

Regrettably such situations are happening in India for quite some time. That is causing the government machinery to under perform. Fortunately, the government machinery is not like an aircraft. Its failure to catastrophe may not happen in a few minutes. It would take some years!

The constitutional architects of India, while ensuring selection of people with higher Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and cleverness as a measure of their competencies did not place equal importance for the other three C's, character, courage and compassion.

The effect is a gradual slip and degradation of professionalism in the elite class officers of Indian government. Soon some of those kinds would find their positions in the selection boards to make things slip from bad to worse!

India is now a country of favoritism. True professionals are no more preferred to occupy the top professional posts of governance. 

Incompetent professionals due to their incompetence are afraid of competent juniors. Only competent ones can be mentors of competent subordinates. Hence, incompetent professionals who head top hierarchies would knowingly or unknowingly cause incompetency to perpetuate in the governmental organizations.

As time passes, the whole system would saturate with incompetent people.

And that would be the time when the system collapse totally.

A new republic with a new constitution would likely emerge! Else there could be emergence of many republics!

I am not telling this. That is what history teaches us. 

If that is not to happen, what is required to be done is not so difficult to understand.

Hope you could get what I meant.