Bureaucratic Appointments: Reservation Goes for A Toss

In this episode, senior journalist Urmilesh talks about the Modi government’s recent plan to reform the civil service by laterally recruiting scores of domain experts. While it is not clear when the modalities of the proposal — such as who will recruit these officers, what exactly will be their terms of recruitment etc. — will be fleshed out, the plan itself has led to serious concerns among serving civil servants. Urmilesh discusses the impact of this on ST, SC and OBCs, as there is no scope of reservation in this plan. Of the nine laterally recruited domain experts by UPSC this year, none belonged to the SC/ST communities.