Can Dinosaur learn to Dance?

I came across an intriguing article by Duvvuri Subbarao titled "Has IAS Failed The Nation?” made me reflect on the most interesting subject, bureaucracy in India, something very close to the heart of Indian governance and yet so far from its brain: the Civil Services. More specifically, why they began with the promise of nation-building and somehow evolved into glorified WhatsApp forwarding departments with fancy stationery and painfully slow Wi-Fi.

Post-Independence, we had dreams. Big ones. Dams, democracy, development. Nehru spoke like a poet, Patel acted like a surgeon, and somewhere in between, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) was born, our very own homegrown bureaucracy.

It was supposed to be the steel frame of India. Spoiler alert: today, it’s more mild steel—looks shiny but bends under pressure.

Let’s rewind and see how we got here.

When the British left, they bequeathed to us three things: tea addiction, cricket obsession, and the Indian Civil Service-an institution designed to rule, not serve. But we were in such a hurry to govern ourselves, we just took it, slapped a fresh coat of nationalism on it, renamed it the IAS, and called it a day.

Now, to be fair, this made sense at the time. You needed continuity. Also, nobody wanted to reinvent the wheel (or read the manual). So, we inherited a colonial bureaucracy for a democratic project and hoped it would somehow evolve.

It didn’t. I just learned to speak Hindi.

Back then, upto 70s, the District Collector was a cross between a demigod and Google Maps. Roads were built because he said so. Schools opened because he approved it. Cows moved aside because his jeep honked.

The bureaucracy had respect. It also had complete monopoly over decision-making. You couldn’t question them, because “Sir has twenty-five years of service, beta.”

But then came the reforms. Or as I like to call them: “Reforms: The Prequel to Nothing.”

Fact check: The First Administrative Reforms Commission (1966) recommended things like modernisation, citizen interface, performance audits. Very sexy stuff. But 90% of it was never implemented. Why? Because every reform was “under active consideration,” a bureaucratic euphemism for “shoved under the office carpet.”

1980s–90s: The Age of Nap and Nomenclature

By the ‘80s, bureaucracy was no longer about service; it was about survival. Officers were less “change agents” and more “damage controllers.” They’d mastered the art of doing nothing in such a sophisticated manner, it almost looked like policy work.

Rajiv Gandhi, frustrated with corruption, once said: “Only 15 paise of every rupee reaches the poor.” That should have been a national emergency. Instead, it became a quiz question in General Studies.

Meanwhile, reforms came and went like diet plans. There were buzzwords, committees, seminars (with buffet), and lots of circulars that nobody read.

Result? Bureaucracy began to look like an old Windows PC: slow, full of pop-ups, and stuck updating forever.

2000s: Ctrl + Alt + Del (But Nothing Rebooted)

Enter the new millennium. With RTI, e-Governance, and the Second ARC (2005), things were supposed to change. Suddenly, words like “transparency,” “efficiency,” and “citizen-centric” entered the bureaucratic lexicon.

But instead of actually transforming, bureaucracy simply upgraded its vocabulary. Same old inertia, now with better English.

360-degree feedback for promotions was introduced—intended to make bureaucrats more accountable. Instead, it made them more strategic. They started managing perceptions, not performance. File movement slowed down. Meetings multiplied. And PowerPoint became the new gospel.

Imagine evolving into a species that thrives on inertia. That’s not Darwinism—it’s desk-bound nihilism.

But Why Did It Really Fail?

Now, let’s get serious. The real reason civil services didn’t evolve is because they had no reason to.

• No extinction threat. Even the most incompetent officer gets promoted. Evolution requires selection. Bureaucracy just requires time served.
• Misaligned incentives. Innovation is punished with transfers. Mediocrity is rewarded with medals. Heroism gets you a news article. Survival gets you a pension.
• Colonial hangover. The system was never designed to serve people. It was designed to control them. And that DNA still lingers, dressed in khadi and quoting policy.
• Reforms without follow-through. We had brilliant commissions. But in typical Indian style, we treated them like wedding albums—admired briefly, then forgotten.
• No consequences. The bureaucrat who builds ten schools and the one who blocks every proposal for five years both retire with full benefits. Equality, at last.

Fast forward to today. You’ll still find brilliant officers—working in health, education, infrastructure, making a difference despite the odds. But they are the exceptions, not the system.

The system rewards compliance, not courage. It promotes silence over voice, protocol over initiative, and meetings over movement.

It’s a system where:

Innovation is writing a file note in Calibri instead of Times New Roman.

Leadership is measured by how many circulars you can issue in a day.

Performance reviews read like a eulogy written by a friend: glowing, vague, and entirely disconnected from reality.

Can We Still Evolve?

Absolutely. But first, we need to admit the truth: the civil services have not failed because of bad people. They’ve failed because of a bad design. A design that favours hierarchy over impact. Obedience over intelligence.

We need:

• Performance-linked promotions
• Real-time public accountability
• Training that goes beyond memorising the Constitution

And most importantly, the courage to admit that our steel frame has gone a bit rusty.

Until then, the IAS will remain what it is—India’s favourite dinosaur. Enormous, majestic, a little outdated, and utterly confused by the idea of rapid movement.

Now go ahead—share this with your favourite bureaucrat. If they forward it without reading, they’ve already proved the point.