IT is the first day of training for the newly inducted civil servants. The bright boy who will one day become the first police officer from his village, the son who will be a diplomat par excellence, the daughter who has made her parents proud — everyone has gathered in the auditorium of the Civil Services Academy.

The director, a senior civil servant, gives an elaborate inaugural speech; the focus is on wishing the probationary officers well in their career in their respective groups. She concludes with a quote from Einstein “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value”. There is applause. And one can feel the waft of patriotism-driven ambition in the air.

The setting might be different on different occasions, but this is the beginning of the career of all civil servants, be they doctors, engineers, teachers or managers. The majority, if not all, do realise at the threshold of their careers, that the path they have chosen might not be easy. Nevertheless the penchant for public service and the promise of being a significant influence in governance decisions in due course prompts them to opt for this career.

These are all happy beginnings but then something takes over these spirits. Materialism, over-ambition or self-aggrandisement, no matter what term is used to describe it, the effect is the same. The once exuberant individual turns into an agitated one; patriotism and public service are replaced by discontent and dissatisfaction. Preoccupation with thoughts of how to become more successful taints all the success that the individual may already have achieved.

The focus moves from becoming ‘a man of value’ to ‘a man of success’; everything is measured in terms of better perks, better posting, more money, more authority, holidays in Dubai or summers in London. A small segment manages to achieve that by hook or crook and the rest keep aspiring for that and become embroiled in a never-ending cycle.

This mindset takes over our civil servants — not each one of them but enough of them. The vision that brought a civil servant this far, that made him the brightest among his university fellows starts to subside. The focus on lucrative postings, manipulation, promotions, comparisons with batch-mates, infighting and political affiliations affect not only the desire for a better governed Pakistan but also the little joys of life.

This mindset makes our civil servant think that devolution is bad because it dilutes the Pakistan Administrative Service’s powers. All efforts are made to worsen the system rather than to improve it, and the status quo prevails.

It is the same mindset that makes a civil servant believe that his colleague in the PAS is his worst enemy because in his tunnel vision, the PAS usurps the rights of those serving in the Secretariat Group.

Furthermore, it compels officers from the Police Service to ponder ways of blocking the formation of a new anti-terror force in Punjab rather than blocking suicide bombers, as the force would be under the home department which hurts the egos of the Police Service officers.

Not long ago, revenue officials were preoccupied with the impact that integration of Customs and Income Tax into one Inland Revenue Service would have on their promotion, when their focus should have been on checking losses to the national exchequer through under-invoicing and tax evasion. Doctors demand a service structure similar to the one enjoyed by the conceited bureaucrat and the Postal Service capitulates to private business because of this very mindset.

Corruption is just a byproduct of this philosophy — the philosophy that makes the cream of the nation fail to realise that it is about a better governed Pakistan and not about the clout of the Police Service, PAS, and other departments.

Life has various milestones; a civil servant becoming an agent of change is one. How this would contribute to his life in material terms is hard to say. But achieving milestones in public service is far more enriching than calculating when one will be promoted to Grade 22 or wasting time in figuring out who undermined him to land a better posting or thinking of ways to appease the unscrupulous politician.

Lastly, it is important to clarify that this discourse is not in favour of or against any group in the civil services; it is just a call to change a mindset, a call to utilise the potential of Pakistan’s civil servants. Einstein once said: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” It’s time to choose the way that serves Pakistan best.

The writer is a civil servant.

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