SECTION V
PUBLIC SERVICES
I. Reorganisation of Services
- Separation of Services. —The present organisation of the public services in India is the outcome of the recommendations of the Aitchison Commission which inquired into the Public Service of India in 1886-87. Prior to the appointment of the Commission the great bulk of the civil posts of higher responsibility and emoluments were filled by recruits from Europe and that Commission was expressly directed to suggest measures which would “do full justice to the claims of natives of India to higher and more extensive employment in the Public Service” of their country. The Commission held the view that the Civil Service should be only “a Corps d’elite” and consequently recommended that the recruitment of officials in England should be substantially reduced and the higher appointments so set free transferred to a service locally recruited in India. As a result of these recommendations officers recruited in England formed Imperial Services and the officers locally recruited formed the Provincial Services. The conditions of appointments in regard to pay, leave and pension of officers belonging to the two services were to be fixed on independent grounds and were not necessarily to have any relation to each other. This division into Imperial and Provincial obtains in most of the Civil Services of the country which it is needless to detail. What is important to bear in mind is that the division was made to distinguish officers recruited in England and officers recruited in India and not as might be understood from the description, in order to distinguish officers placed under the Government of India and liable to serve all over India from officers placed under Local Governments and liable to serve only in specified provinces. For instance the officers belonging to the Provincial services in the Telegraph (Engineering) and the Survey of India are directly under the Government of India and not confined to any particular province while officers in the Imperial Service in the Education and the Police Departments are allotted to different provinces. In my opinion time has arrived when each Province should be free to organise its own civil service. For this the All-India character of the services must cease. There should be Central Civil Service recruited and maintained in response to its own needs by the Central Government to run various departments which are handed over