Role of the Civil Service in our Parliamentary democracy?

 A permanent Civil Service is the s in e qua n on of a parliamentary democracy. In the midst of change of governments due to periodic elections, the Civil Service provides an element of stability and continuity without which orderly government would be impossible

Our Constitution vests the executive power of the Union and the State In the President and the Governor respectively and enjoins that this executive power shall be exercised by them directly or through officers subordinate to them in accordance with the Constitution. These officers bebng to our pennanent civil service. In effect, it Is the Council of Ministers with the Prime Minister or the Chief Minister at their head, who exercise the executive power of the State through officers of the Civil Service

The relationship between the Ministers and the Civil Servants in a parliamentary democracy such as ours is not amenable to any precise definition. However, some of the broad parameters of the relationship could be summed up as follows:

• Formulation of policy of the Government is the legitimate task o f the Minister. At the stage of fonnulation of policy, the civil servant is expected to give his free and frank advice but once the Minister, after giving due consideration to advice of the civil servant, gives the policy a final shape, it is the duty of the civil servant to carry out the policy diligently and faithfully though he may be having his own views about the soundness of the policy.

• The preservation of integrity, fearlessness and independence of the civil servant is an essential condition of a sound parliamentary system of Government. One of the important functions of the civil service is to 'speak truth to power’, as once asserted by a head of the Canadian Public Service.

• There must be trust and mutual respect between the Minister and the Civil Servant as without them unity of action in the higher echelons of government will be difficult to achieve.

• Both the Minister and the Civil Servant must perfonn their roles in accordance with the Constitution and the laws as even a minor transgression thereof can ultimately be subversive of good governance and rule of law.

In our country, the Ministers and the Civil Servants are more than mere major players of government. “They are the custodian of a nation’s ideals, of the belief it cherishes, of its permanent hopes, of the faith which makes the nation out of a mere aggregation of individuals