NEW DELHI: It may have been renamed as NITI Aayog, but now the former Planning Commission has more or less turned into a hub of discussing the ‘niyati’ (intent) of officers of the esteemed Indian Economic Service (IES).
There are a total of 451 IES officers in service and as many as 100 of them are posted in the now-disbanded Planning Commission, the most sought after place among IES officers. The change in the structure of the panel has left most of them in the lurch.
As the new NITI Aayog has a trimmed structure, most of these IES officers will be repatriated to other ministries where they do not have much stakes or even may be sent to state services. The change from being part of the ‘prestigious Planning Commission’ to other ministries and states is seen as a ‘fall’ by many.
“We are facing a peculiar situation where we don’t know where we are heading towards or what future holds for us,’’ said a joint secretary-level officer with the now NITI Ayog. According to him, the entire IES cadre is facing this uncertainty as the once esteemed cadre is increasingly being seen as ‘outdated Nehruvian legacy’. Also, the fact that the new head of the NITI Aayog, Columbia University professor and economist Arvind Panagariya, is not a huge fan of the erstwhile plan model and prefers a trimmer set of economic hands to assist him, does not go well for the IES officers.
It seems that question marks are being raised against the fate of IES itself as this cadre was shaped up according to the Nehruvian model of development which does not figure a prominent space with the Modi-line of economics “It may be true that our cadre was created under Nehru’s initiative. But it is wrong to say that we all are votaries of Nehruvian model of development,’’ said an IES officer who had recently joined the Planning Commission.
“After the Modi government came into power, IES officials are rarely being invited for high-level meetings,” said an IES officer.
What is worse for them is the looming possibility of freezing IES recruitments for some time. “There is a strong rumour that there will be a freeze on new recruitments. If that happens we will not be surprised. But it will mean a slow death of the service,’’ said an IES officer who also blamed an ‘IAS lobby’ to be the reason behind this. The officer also feels that the UPA government had been the best period for them as the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself was an economist. Now there are five officers who have the designation at par with union secretaries—thanks to the special attention given to the IES by the Manmohan Singh-led government. Similarly, the previous government had increased the posts for economic advisers in central ministries from 52 to 92. “Our words carried much weight. But not any longer,’’ said an officer who holds a senior position in the agriculture ministry.
They are also staring at a possibility of delayed promotions which had been a regular affair before the UPA government. “IES officers rarely went beyond being directors in other ministries even at the end of their services. All these had changed in the last few years but now, it seems, we are back to the same situation,” said another IES officer.
But not all are in a panicky mode, especially the recent recruits. “The NITI Aayog has a specific time-bound mandate and direction for economic and social transformation, and the old school thinking and planning has no space in this new model,’’ said an IES officer of 2001 batch. According to him, the prospects of those recruited in the post-liberalisation era may not have to worry, but those old-timers who carry the backlog of Nehruvian vision have a thing or two to worry about.
Genesis of a Cadre
The Indian Economic Service (IES) cadre was started when the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in 1952, suggested a national statistical cadre to serve the general needs of different ministries. It was created on November 1, 1961. Three years later, officers were identified and inducted into the IES. Direct recruitment to this service was done through all-India competitive examinations that were conducted by the Union Public Service Commission in 1967.