Indian Administrative Service: The Case For Reform

Experience has shown that the Indian Administrative Service could neither work like the Indian Civil Service nor define on ethos for itself even when in the same administrative pattern. After the enactment of the Constitution, the contradictions between the inherited colonial administrative pattern and the parliamentary system of government would become more sharply defined with the passage of time. Indian Administrative Services, The Case of Reform, analyses the inadequacies under which the Indian Administrative Service is expected to deliver today and contains suggestions for reforms needed to make it a more a positive instrument of executive administration.


B.K. Misra is an alumnus of Canning College, Lucknow University, where he read English Literature and Hinstory. He was appointed to the newly created Indian Administrative Service in March 1947, as a War Service entrant. Having held posts at the Centre and the state level, he demitted office as Chairman, Board of Revenue on superannuation on 30 June 1982. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy on his dissertation, 'The Indian Administrative Service: A Study in Erosion of the British Pottern of Administration in India'.