Vastly different selection systems for service officers and civil servants are degrading the Military
If they have to be different, the one for civil service needs to be 98 times tougher
Col Alok Asthana (retired)
Last one month has been some incidents that cast immense light on how India selects its officers of the IAS, IPS, IFS etc. These are class 1 civil services, as are the Indian Armed Forces. The soldier bears the gun, and the IAS officer decide which gun he gets, and all other aspects that directly affect his effectiveness. However, totally different processes are applied for entry into both.
Indeed, these are two services with different qualities required, hence the exact same system must not be used in both. . However, both must use the same rigor and integrity of application. If at all, the services that provide more office bearers, at higher position, for longer period, should apply more rigor and integrity of process.
IAS, IPS and IFS are cadres that provide the future secretaries of ministries of Defence & Home, National Security Council Secretariat, as also all joint and under secretaries working under them. They also provide Directors of major public sector undertakings, that have job profiles as Chief Executive Officers of large corporations. All incumbents for these most important positions of the government of India, are selected by the UPSC system, of which we have just seen a glimpse in the Ms Pooja Khedekar case. The case has brought out several instances of inefficiency, opaqueness and possibly corruption. – here and here. In yet another article in the India Today, the headline is quite revraling of the state of affairs - ‘Certified to cheat: How civil service aspirants are gaming the system.’
(Image: Generative AI by Vani Gupta/IndiaToday)
The aspirants of civil service are vetted for cognitive ability in a written test. The better ones are called for an in-person interview in which several interviewers orally test them on qualities agreed among themselves. That decides who gets selected. It is noteworthy that the selection criterion or the selection process is not ratified by government approved psychologists. Good men and women sit in judgement and announce the results. In a face-to-face alone interview, there is obviously no scope of using approved psychometric techniques that alone can dig deep and expose behavioral traits.
The service officer, on the other hand, comes through UPSC, supplemented by the Services Selection Board (SSB). In an SSB, every aspiring candidate is put through a 5- day scrutiny by three selectors – a psychologist, a group testing officer, and an interviewing officer. All three selectors use different techniques, are independent of each other, and are specifically trained for the job. It relies on testing by officers in three separate profiles - the psychologist, the group testing officer or the interviewing officer. All officers of the SSB are trained in techniques used by all three profiles. This creates a unified structure of knowledge in their work. While the three work independently, they all look for the same 15 qualities in the candidate. These 15 are collectively known as Officer-Like-Qualities (OLQ). The OLQ factors are what the armed forces treat as essential job-related requirements for job success as officers. Some factors of OLQ has been covered a little ahead.
Cross-checking the same quality through three independent selectors, each using a different technique, has distinct advantages. Some methods are better suited for exposing a quality than others, but a single-agent search is never proper. Using more than one agent of search also cancels out biases.
The SSB approach is, at the same time, subjective and objective. The assessors assess subjectively, but their inputs are handled objectively. Understandably, inputs by three assessors will always throw up different situations. What if there is a 2:1 decision on a particular quality? What if there is a 2:1 decision overall? Are all 15 markers to be treated as equal, or are some treated as more critical than others, brooking no fail marks even by one assessor? All these scenarios have been worked out in detail, and the precise action to be taken in each is also set out. This leaves no discretion to the senior person.
The armed forces system has no scope for quotas and, there have been almost nil reports of different criterion being applied to different aspirants.
It seems clear that the system for selection of a service officer, is far more rigorous than that of an IAS, IPS, or IFS officer. The former has used a process to ascertain a valid system to decide upon success markers of the job, chosen different well known psychometric techniques to find these in aspirants, created a reliable and repeatable system for bias-proof application of same, and kept no scope for quotas etc. The civil services selection system is, on all counts, its very opposite.
The career profiles of officers in the two systems are quite different. One throws up much more officers at the top level that the other. In the services, about 30% of officers reach the rank of Commanding Officer (Colonel) and about 2 % reach rank of Major General. The Major General gets to that position in about 24 years of service. In the civil service, 100% reach the rank of Joint Secretary, which is equivalent of a Major General. The civil servant attains that responsible position in about 14 years.
Take 100 officers each in the civil services and the armed forces, selected by these two very disparate systems. All 100 of the civil services will reach the rank of a Joint Secretary, hence mistake in selection of even one wrong person will affect the system adversely up to the level of Joint Secretary. However, for Colonel rank in the army, even mistakes in 70 out of the 100 will not matter because they will, in any case, not reach that rank. For rank of Major General, selection mistakes in 98 instances will not matter.
The tolerance level difference and factor-sensitivity, is totally different in the two systems. Up to the level of Joint Secretary/ Major General, the tolerance in the civil service system must be 98 times higher than that of that in the military system. Yes, the difference is that stark - 1:98.
Moreover, the Joint Secretary (if posted in the NSA Secretariat, Min of Defence or Ministry of Home), and the Major General, do not have the same impact on Indian defence. The former directs the mega and macro factors of defence e.g. which weapon and equipment, what terms of service of Agniveer, soldier and officer, what area of deployment etc. The Major General will have to operate within these parameters and deliver. Indeed, he will have the power to make recommendations. Clearly, the impact of a mistake in initial selection is even greater than what becomes apparent from a mere comparison of tolerance levels of the two systems.
The aim here is not to lament the power structure, but to bring out that those having much less influence on military operations are chosen through a much more rigorous system.
The very strict SSB system, while much better than that of the civil service, is unnecessarily strict for the needs of combat, as it results in shortages of officers for combat. These have always been about 9% shortfalls, as against the authorized strength.
The SSB system, rejects hundreds because they don’t meet the SSB requirement of some of the OLQs – reasoning ability, organizing ability, liveliness, power of expression, dynamism and social adaptability – to name a few. However, till the rank of Colonels, armed forces merely require officers who will stand at the head of some troops and close in with the enemy. Most veterans, though not serving officers, will readily agree that there is no critical need of any of these traits till that rank. There is no shame in accepting. Armies the world over know that following this dictum at the overall level, alone gets success in battle. An average lad with a second class record in school, reasonable physique and a clean record with the local police, will be able to organize unit level actions - no doubt about it at all.
Indeed, if all officers have the 15 OLQ traits, its surely welcome, but to reject aspirants for want of these – in a situation where 70 of the 100 – can well do without it, seems inefficient. We are only harming ourselves.
The present system is completely upside down. Those who will need all the 15 traits from the very beginning of their careers, get through a dubious selection system. They then take critical decisions about the armed forces. On the other hand, several aspirants to the armed force lose out on the job purely for lack for those very traits, which they will not need in the first 6 ranks. As a result, units are made to conduct operations without adequate sub unit level, where there is almost no need of these 15 traits.
There is a case to ease up the SSB selection system and ratchet up that for the civil services.
The SSB system is already under review from a 5 day one to a 3 day one. They seem to have realized that for 75 years, they’ve been rejecting aspirants who could easily have led soldiers in Kargil or battled militants. By the rank of Colonel, 70 of the 100 initial candidates would have gone home. Even if there was zero filter for OLQ at the time of initial selection, it can be assumed that the remining 30 will have those OLQ traits. 30 percent of all samples will always have that. If that is doubted, there is a case to hold an SSB at the level of Colonels, for future promotions. Recommendations of this SSB can be supplemented with war records and peer review.
It also seems there is a very serious case to improve the initial selection system in the IAS, IFS and IPS. It is also time now for the civil services to start an SSB type system. Let the psychologists who created the psychometric tests for the SSB, create one specifically for the needs of the civil service.
The present system with two disparate selections systems, must have been conceived by some IAS officer.
We want our civil servants in ministries, public sector undertakings, NSA secretariat, and other advisors to the government to come through a tight filter mesh. One, which lets through only those that are able to create the right and macro environment for the soldier. Till that happens, we have the very strong statistical possibility of incompetent civil servants creating conditions in which brave soldiers die needlessly.
One country, one constitution, one flag. Also, one selection system for class 1 Central servants. If there just has to be different degrees of difficulty, then the one for the civil service needs to be about 98 times tougher.