Is UP IAS Association turning into vanishing cream?

Is the Uttar Pradesh IAS Association losing its efficacy? This question is now being asked, as it has for all practical purposes been lying defunct at least since 2019. It has led many a bureaucrat to develop a feeling that the association is fast becoming like a vanishing cream.

There are sound reasons for this thinking, as the association has not been able to hold either the Annual General Meeting (AGM) or the Civil Service Week, to be held every year, since 2019. It has happened despite its resolution to hold the twin events every year being passed in 2013.

The purpose of the resolution was to serve as a reminder to the association’s members so that failure to hold civil service week did not arise again. Yet about seven years have elapsed since it was organized last.

Interestingly, even that resolution had come after a five-year hiatus from 2007 to 2012 when the twin programmes could not be organized for various reasons. The events could not be held in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid-19 and in 2022 due to the assembly elections. Since then too, there has been no AGM or Civil Service Week.

Now, as the state government is said to be contemplating holding a senior administrative officers’ conference early next month, there is still a question mark before the association being able to hold the much-awaited AGM and the Civil Service Week.

The association has often shown a perfunctory attitude. That is the reason why many bureaucrats in the state still remember the comment made by senior IAS officer G. B. Patnaik at the association’s AGM on January 19, 2013, saying IAS has become a vanishing cream. What had added credence to this comment was the fact that most officers present at the meeting then had shared Patnaik’s concern.

Though Patnaik’s comment had been made in a lighter vein, it virtually reflected the changing perception about the service from a “steel frame” to the “vanishing cream.”

One major reason behind the association’s failure to organize these events has been that these events generally coincided with the senior administrative officers’ conference. This conference provided an opportunity even to the junior officers to share their experiences and points on administrative issues with the state’s Chief Minister, who used to be the chief guest on the occasion. State Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had addressed the senior officers’ conference in 2019.

But there is no taker for the association’s programmes as a senior government official confirmed that there was no proposal as yet to hold the Civil Service Week.