Corporate India attracts IAS talent pool - a degree from IIT, IIM or ISB an added advantage

This is an article published in The Economic Times on September 02, 2007 regarding the reverse drain of talent from the Government's prestigious service IAS (Indian Administrative Service) to the private corporate sector. The main reason are high disaprity in pay between government and private sectors in recent years, low recognition and inability of the Government to encourage the talent, uniform rules for promotion independent of their ability and skills and last, but not the least, not enough job satisfaction.

In this reagrd, I want to tell my story. I have completed my B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Kharagpur in the year 1993, when the IT boom has just started. I got a campus offer in TCS, but I denied the offer and joined as Technical Officer in ECIL (another campus offer) in Hyderabad so that I can prepare for civil services. The salary offered at TCS was around Rs. 8,000 p.m., in ECIL I used to get around Rs. 5,500 p.m. in the year 1994 and when I joined as Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax (ACIT) in the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) in 1997, I used to get around Rs. 8,000 p.m i.e. the parity between the I.T. sector and government salary in late 90s was almost 1:1 or 1:2 at maximum. Now, if you take the reccent salaries of fresh graduates from IITs, they are hovering around Rs. 15 lakhs per year on an average, where as now the entry level salary for an IRS officer is around Rs. 2 lakh per annum, making the ratio at almost 1:15. Now, you see the glaring disparity between the government salary in All India and Central Services, recruited through a rigorous and year long process through Civil Services Examination, conducted by UPSC , followed by interview, attracting the best talent in India.

Indian corporates have started discovering a huge talent pool — the coveted Indian Administrative Service (IAS). In fact, more and more mid-career IAS officers have been abandoning their white ambassador cars to jump into the private sector bandwagon as companies such as Reliance Industries, GMR Group, DLF, McKinsey, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Infrastructure Development Finance Company(IDFC) etc. are wooing the government babus to handle key projects.

Unlike the earlier recruits, the officers who have recently been hired with fat pay packages of Rs 50 lakh to Rs 3 cr per year, are not assigned mere liaison work with the government, but are asked to carry out difficult project implementation tasks.

What’s more, the officers with IIT and IIM backgrounds, or those with specialised degrees from foreign universities have a clear edge to grab opportunities at the private sector.

Whereas Assam cadre IAS officer O P Agarwal of the 1979 batch joined IDFC in August this year, Dhiraj Mathur, an MP cadre officer, is joining PWC this September. Significantly, Mr Agarwal who served as a joint secretary in urban development ministry till recently, completed his masters in transport from MIT.

Rajkamal, a 1994 batch Chhattisgarh cadre IAS who completed his MBA from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, resigned from the service to join McKinsey. A Gujarat cadre IAS officer Jayant Parimal recently joined Reliance Industries. A 1986 batch West Bengal cadre Ravi Kant, who holds a degree in civil engineering from IIT Roorkee and masters degree in economics from University of Manchester, UK, joined Ramky Group. He is now the MD of one of the group companies — Ramky Enviro Engineers.

Significantly, the buzz is that many IAS officers who are either on deputation with private companies or on long leave, may quit the services soon, SundayET has learnt. It’s also learnt that Anil Kumar Kutty, a joint secretary in the ministry of power, has received an offer of Rs 1.5 cr per year from a power company. Mr Kutty, who has been on leave for the last two years, could not be contacted. Not all of them need to quit.

Some of them even go to private companies on deputation. A Kerala cadre IAS from 1992 batch Sanjeev Kaushik, who holds an MBA degree from London Business School, has taken leave from the government to work with Lehman Brothers.