Previous Year Question
Who among the following Governor Generals created the Covenanted Civil Service of India which later came to be known as the Indian Civil Service?
Correct Answer: C
Detailed Solution
Option (c) is correct. The institutional creation of the Covenanted Civil Service is attributed to Lord Cornwallis. During 1786–1793, Cornwallis extensively reorganised the Company's civil administration and developed the higher administration into a more professional, salaried and rule-bound service. Academic history likewise associates the emergence of the Covenanted Civil Service as a distinct higher service with the Cornwallis administration.
However, the expression “created” requires an important qualification. The practice of East India Company servants signing a covenant or indenture existed before Cornwallis. According to IGNOU, Company writers were required to enter into covenants and were consequently known as covenanted servants. Reforms in Company administration and service conditions of covenanted servants had also begun under Warren Hastings. Therefore, it would be historically incorrect to suggest that no covenanted servants existed before Cornwallis.
Cornwallis's real significance lay in reorganising and institutionalising this arrangement as a structured higher civil service. He specified administrative responsibilities, separated revenue from judicial work, reserved the higher posts largely for British covenanted servants, and made promotion, responsibility and salary more regular. The Charter arrangements of 1793 further provided an institutional basis for the position of Company civil servants in higher civil offices.
To reduce corruption, he strictly restricted private trade and the acceptance of gifts/bribes and increased official salaries. Cornwallis's reforms therefore marked an important transition from the Company's trader-administrator model towards a more professional colonial bureaucracy.
It would also be incorrect to stop the evolution of the service with Cornwallis. Lord Wellesley attempted to systematise the training of young civil servants through Fort William College in 1800. Later, following the Charter Act of 1853 and the recommendations of the Macaulay Committee, recruitment began to move away from patronage towards open competition, and the first competitive examination was held in 1855. The later Indian Civil Service therefore evolved through several stages.
Company covenants/covenanted servants — existed before Cornwallis
Systematic institutionalisation of the covenanted higher civil service — Cornwallis
Important expansion of civil-service training — Wellesley
Open competitive recruitment — from 1855