The criticism that IAS officers are generalists will be addressed soon. Promotions within the IAS, IPS and the Indian Forest Service will soon be linked to performance and will nor depend entirely on seniority.

Work allocation in the civil services will no longer be arbitrary and will depend on specialisation.

The Surinder Nath committee, appointed by the government in December 2002 to suggest civil service reforms, is set to recommend a rational system of performance evaluation for the officers, a huge task considering that the Centre and the states together employ over 8 million in the civil services and, according to independent estimates, spend almost 3.5 per cent of the GDP on them.

Senior government officials told Business Standard that the committee had completed almost 70 per cent of its work and would submit its recommendations to Kamal Pande, the Cabinet secretary, by May 15. "To start with, the focus will be on all-India services of IAS, IPS and IFS," said a senior official, adding that in the second stage, the new system would be extended to all Class I officers.

No overnight or dramatic change could, however, be expected, officials said. The recommendations would not strictly address the concerns of an oversized bureaucracy, but would aim at improving the quality of work by signalling the importance of better qualifications and specialisation to the officers, they said.

"It has been recognised that evaluation of officers must be based on accomplishments," said an official. Further, it had been felt that officers with specialisation must concentrate on specific areas of policy-making. At present, there was no connection between the officers' qualifications and their areas of work, which required urgent attention, he added.

The committee is of the view that the system itself should prod officers to pay more attention to their careers. "There are many schemes in the government to help officers specialise and improve qualifications, but relatively few officers avail of these facilities," said an official involved in the exercise.