Contemporary Issues in Civil Service Management in South Asia: Principles and Practice in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

This chapter focuses on civil service management (CSM) in the three countries of South Asia - India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh - from a broad comparative perspective. The trajectory of the development of the civil services since colonial times is traced to illustrate how the structural, functional, and behavioral patterns were adopted or adapted after independence and to understand the impact of this inherited legacy on their CSM approaches. Premised on the social, cultural, and political context of CSM, differences and similarities among the three countries in terms of the politics-bureaucracy nexus, civil service classification, recruitment and selection, career management, and bureaucratic integrity are examined. The study shows that elitism, conservatism, and self-preservation that the colonial civil service had epitomized have endured, regardless of sporadic attempts towards reform. The emphasis on non-merit criteria in recruitment, promotion, postings, and transfer, the disconnect between training and promotion, and the cumbersome career management regulations along with politicization and venality adversely affect civil service performance and the delivery of public services.