Here at the interactive meeting with civil servants across the country during the National Civil Service Day meeting held by Vigyan Bhawan, Somanathan proposed several criteria that civil servants should judge the effectiveness of civil servants, including protecting constitutional order, public education administration, transforming the will of elected government into policies, and promoting economic and social development.
Somanathan said in his personal assessment, protecting the constitutional order of civil servants is “unlimited success” because India is “the island of constitutional democracy in the ocean of unconstitutional development.” These services remain politically neutral in maintaining constitutional order.
However, he added that politically neutral but inflexible and powerless civil servants could cause great damage to economic development.
“Some people think Indian civil servants are guilty of this. We may be very politically neutral, but we are not really flexible and have the ability to promote development,” Somanathan said.
Similarly, Somanathan shared an assessment of Indian civil servants, saying that civil servants’ trailblazing “was much worse”, from “mixed to poor.” Regarding social and economic development, Somanathan said that civil servants certainly have a need for “greater competence and subject matter expertise”, adding that the era of good generalist will no longer be available.
