Ask any unemployed youth in India today, “What are you doing?” and chances are the reply will come pat, “Preparing for the IAS.” As if there’s only one sacred route left to serve the nation, by becoming a District Collector!

In some Delhi neighbourhoods, every street is lined with coaching centres, photocopy shops, and dreamers chasing this one big ticket to glory. A recent award-winning film even celebrated this fever.

Read in Hindi: जब ‘सेवा’ के नाम पर सत्ता की भूख पलने लगे…

But peel away the noble talk of ‘public service’, and you’ll find something else simmering underneath, a hunger for power, prestige, and selfies. The IAS is no longer just an administrative post; it’s a brand, a lifestyle, a status symbol. Millions burn their youth chasing entry into this elite club.

Yes, India has changed, but its bureaucracy remains trapped in the colonial time warp. The ghost of the old Imperial Civil Service still haunts its successor, the Indian Administrative Service. The name may have changed, but not the DNA. The attitude remains, “We command, the people obey.” Many officers now see themselves not as ‘public servants’, but as ‘public leaders’. Worse still, today’s bureaucracy often outdoes even its colonial ancestors in exploitation.

In 2022, an IAS officer in Jharkhand siphoned off ₹18 crore meant for poor MGNREGA workers, money that built his luxury, not their livelihoods. That same year, another IAS in Chhattisgarh accepted a ₹500 crore bribe for mining clearances, proof that land, forests, and rivers are all up for sale, for the right price.

In 2024, Jharkhand’s woman sarpanch Sonam Lakra was dismissed arbitrarily by an IAS officer, prompting the Supreme Court to condemn the act as ‘colonial mentality’. Even in independent India, bureaucrats still treat elected representatives like clerks. By 2025, the saga continued, an IAS in Tripura caught with ₹10 lakh cash in hand, and in Chhattisgarh, the now-infamous liquor scam saw a retired officer, Niranjan Das, running policy like his personal business. Bureaucrats today live off taxpayers’ money but behave like they are above it all. The arrogance is systemic, not an exception, but the culture itself.

So why does every bright young Indian, even an IIT graduate or a doctor, dream not of innovation or healing, but of being a Collector? Why this mad rush toward bureaucracy, not to reform it but to rule through it?

Because the goal has shifted. The desire now is not to change the system, but to control it. The IAS has turned into a power game, where transfers, tenders, and taxes all come with a price tag. Accountability, meanwhile, has gone missing in action.

If an officer errs, there’s an ‘inquiry’. If a citizen errs, there’s an ‘FIR’. This double standard is the rot eating away at Indian democracy. Files gather dust for months, yet when a job is finally done, it’s treated as a personal favour.

India needs a new administrative ethos, one that redefines service as humility, not hierarchy. Officers must remember, their chairs exist because of the public, not royal privilege. Annual disclosure of assets, strict timelines for disciplinary action, and transparent digital grievance systems are essential reforms.

And perhaps most crucially, the Mussoorie academy must teach not ‘how to rule’, but how to serve. Until ‘service’ is separated from ‘power’, the light of bureaucracy will continue to cast a long, colonial shadow over modern India.