Amidst the noise and chaos of the Assembly elections, lost were the results of the Civil Services Examination announced on May 17. The newspapers did not even publish the names of those selected to the IAS and other civil services. For some years now they have been ignoring for publication the list of successful candidates sent by the Union Public Service Commission. It shows the general lack of interest in the civil services in the State.

Going through the names of all the 734 candidates selected for the various services, one does not find a Kannada name among the top ten rank holders.  Neighbouring Andhra Pradesh has this time secured the first rank through Adappa Karthik. It is high time the parents especially in the Old Mysore region gave surnames to their children. Otherwise it would be difficult to say who is who.

The number of vacancies in the various services will be Indian Administrative Service 111, Indian Foreign Service 20, Indian Police Service 103, Central Services Group A 458 and Central Services Group B 42.

Going by the yardstick of the style of names in Karnataka, I could put the number of candidates from the State selected for the civil services this year at 26. It might be a guestimate what with deceptive names. However there is certainty that selected candidates like Shambulingappa Hakki (92^nd rank),  Gopinath Jatti (144), Kulkarni Anand Suresh Rao (177), Vijaya Mahantesh Danamannavar (199), M.B.Boralingaiah (213), Swamy Shanteshwar Ramaling (286),  Shivashankar Pujari (340),  Hiremath Basavaraj Mallappa (510) and  Gayatri Vidya Patil  are from Karnataka. Of them only Hakki will be appointed to the IAS, four will enter the IPS and the rest the Central services like Indian Revenue Service, Indian Audit and Accounts and Indian Defence Accounts.

In its annual reports, the UPSC does not provide Statewise statistics of selected candidates. It only gives university-wise figures. Moreover one has to wait for two years from now for the report from Dholpur House (where the UPSC offices are located in New Delhi) as to how candidates from universities in the State performed in this year's examination.

For many years now, the poor representation for Karnataka in the IAS, IFS and other civil services has been a matter of concern. In the 61 years since Independence, only one IAS officer of the Karnataka cadre, Zafar Saifullah, has become the Union Cabinet Secretary, the topmost civilian post. However Saifullah is a native of Hyderabad. Karnataka has not produced even a single Foreign Secretary whereas Kerala has produced a good many including the present head of Foreign Service, Shivashankar Menon. In contrast, princely Mysore had given the country its first Comptroller and Auditor General Vyakarna Narahari Rao. There was another CAG from the State C.G.Somaiya (Kodagu). At least one former chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes was from the State, Badami. Even in the Engineering services our representation is poor. We are yet to produce a Chairman of the Railway Board. This is not to speak of Chairman of the Union Public Service Commission itself and that of the University Grants Commission. There are very few IAS and IPS officers from Karnataka serving in the other States. Whereas a large number of them serving in the State (more than 50 per cent of the cadre strength) are from other States.

Peeping into the past and to the days of British Raj, the various regions that today form Karnataka had produced a respectable number of Indian Civil Service (ICS) officers. The first ICS officer from north Karnataka was Sir Gurunath Bewoor hailing from Bagalkot. He is remembered for developing the postal services and giving the slogan "Service before Self". Sir Gurunath was the father of Gen. Gopal Gurunath Bewoor who rose to become the Chief of the Army Staff .Not many know that he was from Karnataka.

ICS officers from Old Mysore were C.

The coastal districts could be proud that they gave the country ICS officers like Sir Benegal Narasing Rau, who was Adviser to the Constitutent Assembly and can rightly be called one of the architects of the Constitution of India, his brother Sir Benegal Ram Rau, who had headed the Reserve Bank, the ace parliamentarian Hande Vishnu Kamath who had quit the ICS in 1938 to be with Subashchandra Bose , the former Swatantra Party MP J.M.Lobo Prabhu, Justice N.D.Krishna Rao, K.N.Nagarkatti, Pongal Ranganath Nayak and V.N.Kudva.

One reason as to why not many from Old Mysore made it to the ICS was the existence of the prestigious Mysore Civil Service which attracted the cream of youth as engineering and medicine and some other fields are doing today in Karnataka as a whole. Unique was that civil service which had as its member the Jnanapith award winning Kannada literary giant Masti Venkatesha Iyengar. The MCS gave the State such illustrious officers as Sir N.Madhava Rau, who rose to be the Dewan of Mysore and a member of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution of India, K.V.Anantharaman, A.V.Ramanathan, M.A.Srinivasan, G.V.K.Rao, N.Lakshman Rau and N.Narasimha Rau.

However we should be proud that the State has produced atleast one IAS topper. Vijayalakshmi Bidari secured the first rank in 2001 and she is the daughter of the senior IPS officer Shankar Bidari. The previous best performance was in 1992 when Uma Mahadevan secured the second rank in the IAS examination.  The best performance in the ICS was in 1931 when three candidates who had passed out of the Central College , Bangalore in 1928 were selected .They were Vishwanathan, Raghavendra Rao and   Ramadhyani .

The main reason as to why Karnataka has inadequate representation in the IAS and other civil services is that not many candidates from the State are writing the examination. However it is a matter of satisfaction that the success ratio of candidates from the universities in the State is comparable to that of universities in other States. It has been a case of Karnataka losing out in the game of numbers. In contrast, universities in the north such as Delhi, Allahabad, Rajasthan, Patna, Jawaharlal Nehru, Punjab, Calcutta and Jadhavpur and the Indian Institutes of Technology continue to be major suppliers of civil servants as a large number of boys and girls from them take the examination. In some years the number of candidates from Delhi University alone has been five times the number taking the examinations from all the universities in Karnataka.

The option to write the examination in Kannada and reservation for other backward classes has come to the advantage of candidates from the State. It is a healthy augury that a good number of those selected from the State are from north Karnataka. One reason for it is the greater attraction of government service to boys and girls in that region. Sectors like Information Technology and private sector in general are the number one choice for candidates from other parts of the State. For decades the IAS examination culture was non-existent in Karnataka. In recent years, a few coaching institutions have been opened and they have been successful in getting candidates selected. Yet Karnataka has remained an underdog State when it comes to selection to the civil services. We should also strive to improve our presence in the various IITs, the IIMs and even the Indian Institute of Science. There should no more be the grumbling that IAS officers from other States do not evince interest in developing the State and that officers from other States are ruling Karnataka.