The statement, 'I want to join civil services to serve my country' ' I want to improve system' 'I want to help out my dear countrymen' etc, these are some of the words on the lips of many aspirants and remain there for some good months thn all fades away. These words are very good for talks and discussions, but in reality this is not the thing. We all are linked to many others, our families, friends, colleagues, batchmates etc etc and by will or by compulsion do many things which do not fully fall in the ambit of honesty.
No doubt, many good officers are there in civil services and many join each year, but after spending sometime, majority of them are bent in a way that they dont realize what is right and what is wrong, because everything becomes right either on the name of illness /hunger of children, orders of wife/family or requests/threats of friends or on the name of status..or it become justified on the simple thing of ,greater/wider national interests
.. Though a substantial part of bureaucracy comes from middle class, yet a good number of feudals also enters in it; for power, privileges, keeping/saving the interests of their families in power houses etc.
And the remaining lot, who still tries to keep up, are idiots and stubborn people and some of them use to have a level of contentment in their minds, this word is having very wide spread meanings and is greater thn mere satisfaction. Contentment is a God gifted thing and its boundaries also shrinks and expands..... Such people dont join power blocks and usually remain solitary and sometime dont get good postings, and remain at less lucrative /bad posts. They even dont marry with well off/rice/manipulative/feudal families and try to get a spouse (husband or wife), who could often be neglected by the society due to any reason, they try to give name and respect to that person by accepting him/her.
One should be mindful of the pros and cons of the civil services, its occupational groups are very good in some manners and very bad in some other manners. Pay/monetary/financial rewards are the driving force for any body, and the same is the case with the civil services. Some occupational groups compensate money with provision of pricks/fringe benefits etc. But money always remain an issue and a civil servant often remain in a fix to make his both ends meet, however, if his/her family is supportive, his /her spouse is an earning hand or he/she tries to do some part time job, thn he/she can easily survive, even if these things are not there, one can try to survive with limiting ones expenditures, but honestly, this is very pinching thing and extremely difficult and, time and again, one kills ones ego/individuality/identity ...... a sad thing indeed. Another survival factor is being industrious and pro-activeness. One can get good reputation at the dint of hard work, intellect and diligence..... Another thing, after getting some privileged job, one can easily get distant relatives at his/her periphery who tries to support him/her in any manner, off course having their own axes to grind
To tell you about a good friend, who is in one of the elite service, he got that by virtue of hard work and HIS blessing and he put in extra efforts having simple formula of serving the nation in befitting manners, it has paid to him so much so that he, within very less time in service, has secured very good reputation and he is considered as one of the best officer in his rank having more thn 150 officers. He also got one of the most important/lucrative posting of his rank and got more pricks and privileges. A God fearing, dead honest, damn hard worker (often works for very long hours) etc.... His distant relatives are near to him, and he got to know their agenda so he distanced himself and dont do their work
, he is God fearing and tries to follow the principle of justice, public service and fairplay in actual manners. But, as per his own words, he is not fully honest, he has not done any corruption of any type, but he told that he sometime abused his pricks/power/authority! and he told that he did that not for taking any benefit, but for helping others and in 95 % instances that abuse of power was in fact to help out some distressed person. But even in this case, we can see that he abused his power i.e. 5% for some ulterior /undefined motives, may be for his own interests...one can infer from this example that one should not have a rosy rosy, all set picture in ones mind while joining civil services and there is nothing 100% honesty in it.... ..