Essay on the Promotion System in India | Public Administration

Here is an essay on the ‘Promotion System in India’ for class 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on the ‘Promotion System in India’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay on the Promotion System in India

Essay Contents:

1. Essay on the Introduction to Promotion System
2. Essay on the Flows of Promotion System
3. Essay on the Recommendations of Central Pay Commission
4. Essay on the Recommendations of 5th Pay Commission
5. Essay on the Recommendations of Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC)
6. Essay on the Recommendation Views of Indian 5th Pay Commission on Promotion

Essay # 1. Introduction to Promotion System:

The governing principles of promotion in India are seniority, and merit but they are not observed uniformly in all cases of promotion. In some administrative departments, seniority is given more weight and in others, merit. But seniority is the general rule.

As for the suitability of these two principles of promotion in the various departments, the recommendations of the Cen­tral Pay Commission are that “for many situations specially those in which long familiarity with office work is itself adequate training, the rule of seniority may generally be followed….In higher grades of service consideration fitness must have precedence over the claim of seniority.”

Technically speaking the promotion-making authority in our country is the Government or the Head of the Department concerned, but promotions to higher posts are generally made in consultation with Public Services Commission both at the Centre and in the States.

It is pro­vided in our Constitution that the Public Service Commission may be consulted on the prin­ciples to be followed in making promotions, transfers from one service to another and on the suitability of candidates for such appointments, promotions and transfers.

So far as promotions to other grades of service are concerned, there is no uniform procedure. In some cases, promo­tions are made by Departmental Heads themselves, in some the Public Services Commission has also to be consulted and still in some others, the approval of Finance Department is also needed.

The promotions to the highest administrative posts, viz., Secretary, Joint-Secretary, Deputy-Secretary are made from a “Pool” which consists of such candidates as have been selected by a Selection Committee appointed by the Government in consultation with the Public Service Com­mission.

These candidates are selected after they have undergone interview and their official-records have been examined. The Ministers make appointments to the top posts in their respec­tive departments from this pool the Ministers do not sometimes have a free hand in selecting the top-officers of their departments.

The Prime Minister or the Chief Minister of the State concerned approve such appointments on the advice of the Finance Ministry or the Home Min­istry at the Centre and the Chief-Secretary in the States for the obvious reasons that they are best judges of the needs of all the departments whereas the Ministers shall have no appreciation for the needs of the departments other than their own.

The system with regard to promotion to other posts in some departments is that the selec­tions are made by a departmental Promotion Committee or a Board comprising a member of the Public Service Commission as Chairman and Senior Officers of the ministry or department who have personal knowledge of the work of the officers out of whom the selection has to be made.

The recommendations of the Promotion Committee are sent to the Public Service Commission for ratification. The Departmental Head effects promotions according to the confirmed list and if he has to make any deviation from it, he has to apprise the Public Service Commission of the change and reasons thereof.

Sometimes, selection for promotions from State Civil Service to the IAS is also made. It is done by a Special Committee for each State which consists of a Chairman or a member of the UPSC and some IAS senior-most officers of the State as members.

The committee prepares a list of officers of the State Civil Service suitable for promotion to the IAS on the basis of merit and suitability in all respects with due regard to seniority. The list is then submitted to the Union Public Service Commission for approval and promotions are made from the approved list as vacancies occur.

Essay # 2. Flows of Promotion System:

The promotion system in India as mentioned above is partially defective. It has been criticized both by the services in particular and by the public in general.

First, it is argued that the Head of the Department has been given too much discretion in recommending names out of which selection is to be made. There have been many complaints by some claimants whose names were not forwarded to the Promotion Board by the Head of Department for reasons best known to him.

Second, the system of evaluating the efficiency of the employees is also not satisfactory; the entries made in their records by their immediate officers are not shown to them except when those are against them. Nor is there any appeal against adverse remarks.

Third, Promotion Boards or Committees do not exist in every administrative department and in the absence of such a machinery promotions so effected are haphazard and arbitrary. The aggrieved candidates have no proper means of appeal either.

Fourth, promotions are made within classes and often within cadres of a class which makes higher public service more or less a closed shop. Dr. Appleby rightly commented “Individual security is also effected by competition, but here not security of a job and an income, but security almost guaranteeing promotions in rank is achieved by limiting competition rather thor­oughly to very small number in a cadre, class or service, the relatively small number who are promoted over class barriers is enough to enlarge the competition slightly, but it leaves original membership in a very great special advantage and competition from outside not highly signifi­cant. Is the personal confidence of those thus protected worth the loss in governmental dyna­mism that comes from this minimization of competition?” The narrowing down of competition within services, in the opinion of Dr. Appleby, is “the basic deterrent to rapid improvement of the administrative grasp of government responsibilities”.

Fifth, there is no declared policy of the government regarding the basis on which regular promotions are to be made. Sometimes, promotions are made by the departments on the basis of length of service of seniority, sometimes, on the basis of merit as adjudged by a departmental committee and at other times, through selection by the Public Service Commissions.

Promotion policy is adjusted according to the whim and caprice of the high-ups and this results in undue favour to a few employees. This type of wrangling attitude of the government is certainly to be decried. It is, therefore, extremely desirable for the government to declare its promotion system and stick to it so that every fresh recruit is in a position to know his future career.

There is no doubt that it is difficult to evolve a promotion system which satisfies both the advocates of the seniority principle and the adherents of merit system. Anyhow, a suitable machinery and procedure is possible whereby chances of injustice should be minimized.

The Cen­tral Pay Commission has also recommended that the use of Promotion Boards or Committees should be widely made as it is the safest and most convenient method.

The staff representatives should also be associated with such boards. The official records and evaluation of efficiency reports of the employees should be maintained in a systematic way and the effective machinery for appeal against suspicious promotions should also be provided.

Some notable commissions like Central Pay Commission and Administrative Reforms Commission have made fairly useful recommendations which deserve mention here.

Essay # 3. Recommendations of the Central Pay Commission:

(a) Merit should continue to be the criterion in making promotions at higher levels. At lower levels, the principle of seniority-cum-fitness be adopted,

(b) For promotions to grades in which specialized knowledge is necessary, qualifying examinations designed to test working abilities may be useful but with this exception, examination may not be adopted as a general method of selection for promotion,

(c) There should be a system of promotion by a special limited competitive examination in order to pro­vide young officers in Class II and Class III services an additional opportunity to enter any of the Class I or Class II services to which there is a direct recruitment by a competitive examina­tion.

(d) The form in which confidential reports are drawn up should be concerned with the nature of the work of the particular class of employees but should otherwise be as uniform as possible and so designed as to provide for assessment under specified headings including po­tentialities of the employees for assuming higher responsibilities as well as a general summing up.

(e) A general grading of employees by the first reporting officer should not be compulsory; such grading should be done at a higher level preferably at the level at which a whole cadre is dealt with for the purpose of promotion,

(f) Confidential reports should be scrutinized at each higher level as soon as they are received to make sure that they had been prepared in accor­dance with the relevant instructions and should be returned for rectification where necessary,

(g) Unless it is proposed not to enter in his character role an irremediable or remediable defect should invariably be communicated to him.

(h) The present arrangement of the immediate supe­rior writing a confidential report should continue but the next higher officer should exercise a positive and independent judgment on the remarks of the reporting officer and should clearly express his agreement or disagreement with the remarks particularly if they are adverse.

Essay # 4. Recommendations of the 5th Pay Commission:

The 5th Central Pay Commission appointed in 1996 made certain board Recommendations regarding promotion viz:

(a) The flexibility complementing schemes of promotion be extended to all Research and Development Professionals functioning in Research and Development orga­nizations and Departments proclaimed as Scientific and Technical in Government of India,

(b) A comprehensive and coherent promotion scheme is to be evolved which could assure adequate career progression in a reasonable time frame to all categories of employees,

(c) The assured Career Progression scheme aims at providing a minimum of the promotions to Groups B, C, D employees and three promotions to each Group A employees in their career span after appoint­ment in a grade on direct recruitment basis,

(d) The proposed promotion under the scheme shall be restricted to financial up-gradation in the pay scale alone and shall not be linked to the availability of a post in a higher grades on promotional basis. The scheme will provide reason­able opportunity to move to higher grades within a stipulated time frame.”

Essay # 5. Recommendations of Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC):

The ARC recom­mended significant reforms in the promotion system as:

(a) They emphasized the importance of merit over seniority in promotion and suggested the elimination of the subjective element in determining merit of the eligible candidates for promotion;

(b) They also suggested the replace­ment of the existing system of confidential reports by that of Performance Records.

The procedure for preparing the Performance Records of each Government employee as suggested is as follows:

(i) At the end of each year, the official reported upon should submit a brief resume not exceeding 300 words of the work done by him bringing out any special achievement of his. The resume should be submitted to the reporting officer and should form a part of the Performance Record.

While assessing, the reporting officer should take due note of the resume and after making his own comments and assessments submit the entire record to the next higher officer —the receiving officer. The receiving officer should add his own comments if any and also do the grading,

(ii) There should be three grading’s for the purpose of assessment, viz.:

(a) Fit for promotion out of turn,

(b) Fit for promotion and

(c) Not yet fit for promotion.

Both the Report­ing Officer and Receiving Officer should assess the official according to these grades.

The fourth category in the existing grading system, i.e., unfit for promotion, should be deleted. In other words, nobody should be branded permanently unfit for promotion,

(iii) The grading “Fit for Promotion out of turn” should be supported by specific mention of outstanding work that has been done and only five to ten percent of officials engaged in work of a similar nature and at the same level in any office or organisation should be kept in the first grades,

(iv) Good work done during the year should receive prompt appreciation either on the file or in a tour or inspec­tion note. The officer concerned should quote this in his resume,

(v) Where merit is equal, seniority should be decisive for promotion. An analysis of these recommendations will make us conclude that promotion should be based on merit particularly in high posts. However if merit is equal in certain cases, seniority should be the deciding factor.

According to an Indian scholar, “Seniority is fact, merit a matter of opinion. It is not true that seniority and merit are dichotomous. As recruitment for public services is already made on the basis of merit, seniority is merit plus x years of service.”

Essay # 6. Recommendation Views of Indian 5th Pay Commission on Promotion:

The vital recommendations of the 5th Pay Commission are:

(a) A flexible complementing scheme of Promotion should be extended to all Research and Development Professionals employed in Research and Development organisations and De­partment—designated as Scientific and Technical by Government of India.

(b) For the rest of other Central Government employees a comprehensive and coherent promotion should be evolved which may assure adequate career progression to all categories of employees in reasonable time.

(c) The recommended Assured Career Progression Scheme provides a minimum of pro­motion to Groups B C and D employee and three promotions to each group A employees in their complete career span. The proposed promotion under the scheme will mean financial up-gradation in the pay scale but will not be linked to the availability of a post in a higher grade on functional basis.

This scheme will thus assure reasonable opportunity to all employees to attain higher grades within a stipulated time frame.

Upload and Share Your Article: