Are engineers taking over India's civil services?

India Today

12 hours ago

Once the backbone of India's civil services, humanities graduates are now finding themselves edged out by engineers and technocrats. In the 1980s and '90s, subjects like history, political science, and sociology dominated the UPSC ranks. Fast forward to today, and the majority of recruits come from technical streams, with engineers alone making up nearly two-thirds of successful candidates. A recent parliamentary committee report has flagged this imbalance, warning that the nation's bureaucracy may be losing its diversity of thought and, along with it, the empathy and perspective that the humanities once brought to governance.advertisementA 2023 report by the Department-related Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice titled 'Review of Functioning of Recruitment Organisations of the Government of India' raised concerns over the growing dominance of candidates from technical backgrounds in the Civil Services Examination.Engineers: The share of successful candidates from engineering backgrounds rose sharply—from 46% in 2011 to 65% in 2020.Medical professionals: Their representation dropped from 14% to just 4% over the same period.Humanities: While fluctuating between 23–28%, the proportion decreased from 27% in 2011 to 23% in 2020.Combining engineers and medical professionals, over 70% of recruits in recent years came from technical streams raising concerns that the country may be losing 'exceptional doctors and engineers' to bureaucracy.
Further data from 2017 to 21 echoes this skew:76% of recommended candidates hail from the science stream (engineering, sciences, medicine).Only 23.6% came from the humanities.
INSIGHTS BEYOND NUMBERS: HISTORICAL CONTEXT & TRENDSHistorical shifts: Up until the 1980s, the Humanities and Social Sciences dominated the educational backgrounds of IAS recruits. But between 2000–2019, the trend reversed: disciplines such as engineering, medicine, and computer science became more prevalent. For instance, Electrical Engineering and Medicine emerged among the top entry-fields, while Economics and Political Science declined in share.CSAT's impact: The 2011 introduction of the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) recalibrated the landscape:Humanities candidates' IAS success dropped from ~30% in 2009 to 15% by 2012.Simultaneously, engineering representation surged to ~50%.Humanities aspirants argue CSAT's format disadvantaged non-technical and non–English-speaking candidates.Even though UPSC uses a normalization formula to level scores across optional subjects, the number of engineers remains high. Many engineers still choose humanities subjects (like political science, sociology, geography) as their options due to better familiarity with exam structure and 'model answers.'WHY IT MATTERSLoss of interdisciplinary richness: Humanities graduates often bring critical thinking, empathy, and nuanced analytical capacity—qualities crucial for public administration.Sectoral mismatch: The committee lamented that the increasing allure of civil services may be depriving sectors like healthcare and engineering of high-caliber professionals.Diversity in decision-making: A disproportionately technical bureaucracy risks underrepresenting social and cultural perspectives essential for inclusive governance.Summary Table
(Note: 2017–21 data shows 76% from science overall, and ~23.6% humanities, approx data)The parliamentary panel's warning is more than a statistical footnote it's a reminder that India's civil services must reflect the country's intellectual diversity. A bureaucracy dominated by technocrats may deliver efficiency, but risks losing the cultural, social, and ethical lenses that humanities graduates naturally bring to governance. Scholars and policy experts have suggested several reforms: revisiting the structure of the CSAT to reduce technical bias, creating differentiated service tracks for domain experts, and encouraging a balanced intake across disciplines.Globally, many countries nurture civil servants from social sciences and liberal arts, valuing their ability to question, contextualize, and connect policies with people. For India, a similar recalibration could ensure that the next generation of administrators are not just problem-solvers with technical acumen, but empathetic leaders who understand the social fabric they serve. After all, governance is not only about efficiency it is also about equity, context, and vision.- Ends