Code of Ethics for Civil Services

India has laid down civil services rules in a most comprehensive way, and this formal elaborate listing or codification of what the public officials are to do and what to abjure is an impressive feature of formally prescribed administrative ethics in India.

Administrative ethics may flow from three sources.

• The first is the profession itself, which necessarily articulates and upholds certain norms of conduct and action.
• The second, norms laid down by the civil service rules and regulations.
• The third, Personal beliefs and values which are highly individualised in nature but which nevertheless project themselves rather strongly in a civil servants action.

Various provisions are as follows:

Personal and Familial Virtues

In India, a public servant is asked to maintain absolute devotion to duty by being honest and impartial in his official duties. He is should maintain a responsible and decent standard of conduct in his private life and not to bring discredit to his service by his misdemeanours or other activities. He is expected to practise standards of decency and morality in his official life no less than in his private life. This was upheld in 1967 by the Supreme Court of India in the case of ‘Govind Menon versus Union of India‘.

Office-Related Behaviour

There are elaborate rules in operation to keep a civil servant to the straight and narrow path of virtue. He is instructed to avoid accepting hospitality from any individual having official dealings. There are restrictions on his acceptance of gifts and favours. A public servant should avoid the familiarity arising out of private hospitality. This restriction flows from the view that a government servant is devoted whole-heartedly to the performance of his duties.

Use of Discretionary Powers

Today’s administrators enjoy enormous discretionary powers which, it is possible, may be abused in furtherance of private goals. A civil servant must be able to account for satisfactorily the possession, of pecuniary resources or property disproportionate to his known sources of income, failing which he is held guilty of corruption.

Property Acquisition

There are detailed rules regulating the buying of immovable property. This means, that a public servant should report to, and seek the permission of, the Government before commencing the construction of, or addition to, buying any immovable property.

Conflict of Interest

The service rule, applying to the All India Services lays down as follows: “No member of the services shall, except with the previous sanction of the Government, permit his son, daughter or dependent to accept employment with private firms with which he has official dealings, or with other firms having official dealings with Government.” It is for these reasons that the High Court judges are prevented after retirement from practising before the same court, or the Supreme Court judges, from practising before any court or the Comptroller and Auditor- General of India from accepting any government post after retirement.

The Citizen Administration interface

In development administration of India, the target groups are identified as tribals, children and women, scheduled castes and other socially backward classes. Such differentiation increases the complexities of interaction between Administration and the public.

National projects are implemented by the state concerned and mainly through the district administration.

These implementers/bureaucracies treat the target groups as ‘beneficiaries’. In developing economies like India, the need for institutional innovation to deal with corruption and citizens’ grievances is always needed. The Santhanam Committee on Prevention of Corruption thought that it was necessary to devise adequate methods of control over exercise of discretion by different categories of government servants. Today, governance is all about efficient and effective provision of goods and services. There are different ways in which the public interacts with the public administrative agencies.

• Clients: Citizens seek to obtain benefits or services from governmental agencies.
• Regulatees: As a regulatee, the public interacts with many public agencies viz., police, income tax authorities, licensing authorities, etc
• Litigants: The harassed citizens turn litigants when they seek redressal of their grievances from the courts, tribunals and Lok Adalats.
• Participants: Democracy entails increased people’s participation in governance like community policing, beneficiary associations etc.
• Protesters: People interact with government agencies on public policy as protesters, critically opposing the injustice in government policy and action.