Trending: CSS

Asim Manj

Cen­tral Supe­ri­or Ser­vices, com­mon­ly known as CSS, is the offi­cial title giv­en to high­er bureau­crat­ic jobs in Pak­istan. The orig­i­nal title called Civ­il Ser­vice of Pak­istan (CSP), a deriv­a­tive of Indi­an Civ­il Ser­vice, has been dis­card­ed since 1971. Cur­rent­ly man­aged by the Fed­er­al Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, CSS is the con­tin­u­a­tion of an age old sys­tem of colo­nial gov­er­nance. Owing to a num­ber of his­toric rea­sons and the cur­rent eco­nom­ic down­turn, CSS is the most sought after job for young edu­cat­ed Pak­ista­nis.

There are twelve dif­fer­ent occu­pa­tion­al groups of civ­il ser­vice, includ­ing Pak­istan Admin­is­tra­tive Ser­vices (PAS), Police Ser­vices of Pak­istan (PSP), For­eign Ser­vices of Pak­istan (FSP), Cus­toms Group, Inland Rev­enue Ser­vices, Pak­istan Audit and Accounts Ser­vices, Com­merce and Trade Group, Infor­ma­tion Group, Rail­ways Group, Postal Group, Office Man­age­ment Group, and Mil­i­tary Lands and Can­ton­ment Group; the sequence reflect­ing their respec­tive pres­tige. The induc­tion to civ­il ser­vice is made on a year­ly basis through a com­pet­i­tive exam. It is cal­cu­lat­ed that the ratio of those pass­ing the writ­ten exam and secur­ing the job allo­ca­tion is about 2% and 9% respec­tive­ly. Last year, around 10000 can­di­dates appeared, around 900 of them passed the writ­ten exam­i­na­tion but only 200 were lucky enough to get the allo­ca­tions in var­i­ous groups of the ser­vice. Ten per­cent of seats in Police and For­eign Ser­vice are reserved for inductees from the Armed Forces. This quo­ta, first intro­duced by Gen­er­al Zia ul Haq, is total­ly out of sync with the mer­i­to­crat­ic norms of CSS.

Treat­ed as blue-eyed chil­dren by soci­ety and the state, peo­ple hired through CSS are believed to be the most bril­liant of the avail­able lot. Apart from enor­mous author­i­ty and offi­cial pow­ers, civ­il ser­vants in Pak­istan enjoy per­haps the most pres­ti­gious sta­tus in soci­ety. The prospects of sta­tus and perks lure many hard­work­ing and bril­liant young peo­ple towards this field. It is com­mon­ly believed that if you want to be secure, pros­per­ous and respectable, you should opt for CSS.

How­ev­er, this leads to a sit­u­a­tion where young peo­ple become mere­ly result-ori­ent­ed and the only focus is to get good marks to secure a high­er posi­tion. To this end, CSS can­di­dates look for all sorts of notes, help­ing guides and gold­en rules. A whole mar­ket of CSS prepara­to­ry mate­r­i­al to make the exam eas­i­er is in vogue. It has there­fore become pos­si­ble for can­di­dates of aver­age IQ with ques­tion­able ana­lyt­i­cal and crit­i­cal fac­ul­ties to secure envi­able posi­tions in the Civ­il Ser­vice just by fol­low­ing some set pat­terns of pass­ing the exam. This trend has failed the very pur­pose of con­duct­ing a com­pet­i­tive exam. It is no sur­prise that gov­ern­ment author­i­ties are not quite dis­sat­is­fied with these dimin­ish­ing stan­dards. Resul­tant­ly, a major­i­ty of the peo­ple secur­ing high grades in CSS car­ry with them the same thought pat­terns and bias­es they have learned from poor pub­lic sec­tor edu­ca­tion.

When such can­di­dates land in the Civ­il Ser­vices Acad­e­my as ‘offi­cers’, they await a warm wel­come and grandeur of a new­ly achieved high sta­tus. They now aspire to make good con­tacts in bureau­crat­ic and polit­i­cal cir­cles. Offi­cers of Police Ser­vices of Pak­istan (PSP) and Pak­istan Admin­is­tra­tive Ser­vices (PAS) get bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties of pub­lic rela­tions due to the nature of their job. This also cre­ates a sense of resent­ment in offi­cers of oth­er depart­ments who think they are being mar­gin­al­ized and not giv­en deserved val­ue in the race for attrac­tive post­ings and pro­mo­tions. The sys­tem of pro­mo­tion in Civ­il Ser­vice is gen­er­al­ly well reg­u­lat­ed, but again, not for all the groups. Peo­ple in the Postal, Rail­way, Mil­i­tary Lands and Can­ton­ment Group, and now even in Cus­toms, do not seem hap­py in this regard.

From my per­son­al expe­ri­ence and obser­va­tion I dis­cov­ered some­thing unex­pect­ed. I have wit­nessed the shat­ter­ing of dreams of many young CSS offi­cers. When these offi­cers start their job after train­ing, they find the real­i­ty of day-to-day work too harsh. For exam­ple, offi­cers of the Inland Rev­enue Ser­vices and Pak­istan Audit and Accounts Ser­vices con­clude that against all their expec­ta­tions, the real nature of their work­ing is too cler­i­cal. As a result, frus­tra­tion starts kick­ing in. The aver­age salary of a start up Civ­il Ser­vant is not very com­pet­i­tive either. For most offi­cers, includ­ing an Assis­tant Super­in­ten­dent of Police, the aver­age month­ly salary is around 30,000 rupees. An offi­cer of the Office Man­age­ment Group, Infor­ma­tion Group, and Trade and Com­merce Group nor­mal­ly does not get an offi­cial vehi­cle and res­i­dence. It may sound strange, but many offi­cers of the above men­tioned ser­vices, who do not receive extra finan­cial sup­port from their fam­i­lies, use pub­lic trans­port and live hand-to-mouth in a city like Islam­abad.

The infra­struc­ture of the Civ­il Ser­vice fur­ther frus­trates the young blood. For exam­ple, there are no prop­er offices for the Inland Rev­enue Ser­vices (IRS). Such fac­tors come to serve as an excuse for the poor work stan­dards of the de-moti­vat­ed offi­cer cadre. It would be too much to expect that these pas­sion­less offi­cers, work­ing in small shab­by cab­ins, would be able to gen­er­ate enough rev­enue to meet the require­ments of the state. More­over the poor pay struc­ture and oth­er facil­i­ties serve as usu­al excus­es for legit­imiz­ing cor­rup­tion.

Despite its increas­ing demand, the Civ­il Ser­vice is rapid­ly los­ing its stan­dards. The supe­ri­or­i­ty claim of CSS is legit­i­mate most­ly because of the lega­cy it car­ries. Undoubt­ed­ly it used to be an effec­tive, effi­cient and pro­gres­sive insti­tu­tion in colo­nial India, but nowa­days the sit­u­a­tion is very dif­fer­ent.

Despite the dis­mal state of the Ser­vice, the wide­spread craze among young grad­u­ates hints at the height­en­ing inse­cu­ri­ty about career. To a CSS aspi­rant, I would say the fol­low­ing: hav­ing expe­ri­enced the so-called pres­tige of the Civ­il Ser­vice, I must admit that I find fields such as media, finance, man­age­ment and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy are bet­ter to be far bet­ter in terms of per­son­al growth and pro­fes­sion­al expo­sure. CSS is just a career choice among many oth­ers; it should not be giv­en a supe­ri­or sta­tus. You should ven­ture into this field only if you feel it is the one that suits your tem­pera­ment best.

(Pub­lished in The Laal­tain — Issue 8)