Civil Servants and Code of Conduct in India: Question of Raising Standards

Searching for compatibility between ethics and law in the terrain of human subjectivity is a perennial problem seen in the public sphere of democracy. It becomes almost an ideal of attaining a moral administrative community after prolonged failed endeavours of raising a political community. In the promiscuous public interest of the political realm, the rational sharing of accountability between the political executives and administrative executives has come to sharp resistance. Serving the public interest, customer-driven, benevolent political neutrality, and organizational humanism are increasingly contemplated. Constitutional provisions and code of conduct reflect inadequate schemes of accountability. Though various forms of control exist to resist the over-stretch of bureaucracy in a democratic set up, the idea of accountability is still highly linked with political executives. This paper examines the constitutional provisions and the code of conduct pertaining to higher civil service, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), in relation to problems of ethics and accountability and raising standards in India. It attempts to outline a code of conduct appropriate to tackle the situation of declining ethical standards. It specially focuses on the higher civil service in Tamil Nadu, a southern state of India, to examine the above issues. Since, more and more top civil servants in Tamil Nadu have been suspended, arrested or charged with cases, it is important to examine the accountability and ethics of civil servants, Constitutional protection, code of conduct, and the process of political victimization in a democratic set up.