“Merit, capability and quality should matter more than mere seniority”. This is the message from the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, to the civil servants who were asked to be innovative to meet newer challenges.
“The need to re-fashion our Civil Services as effective instruments for delivery of services and as agents of improved governance is an ongoing process. The aim should be to evolve new and imaginative solutions for the problems facing us,” he told the senior bureaucrats assembled for the Civil Services Day here.
Observing that success would, to a large extent, depend upon a cultural change in the Civil Services, he added.
“Excessive caution, reliance on precedents and following the beaten path have to give way to innovation and inventiveness and to trying out new methods.”
Dr Singh said that the civil servants need to continuously update themselves to deal with the newer challenges.
People value the work done by honest and dedicated civil servants and look up to them, the Prime Minister said, adding the core of the Civil Services was sound and rooted in values of integrity and fair play.