IAS or PAS?

I have always enjoyed the comments by T.R Ramaswami. It has been about five or six years now!! Here is his yesterday’s comment in the ET:

"This refers to your edit ‘No, Minister!’ (ET, Jun 28). You have stated that ideally civil servants owe their allegiance to the country and Constitution. But take a look at the history of our bureaucracy. Ever since independence they have been working not just for one party (except for a brief eight years — Janata Party and then BJP) but also literally for one family. The senior-most batches today joined in 1974-77 — i.e., bang in the middle of the Emergency and they have seen the merits in aligning themselves politically. That’s why we always hear of someone likely to get this or that seniormost appointment because he was Collector at Amethi or Rae Bareilly, etc. The entire bureaucracy has virtually become a PAS — Parivar Administrative Service. On the larger issue of regulators to be drawn from a larger pool, it is also imperative that even those in the lower levels of the regulators’ offices be drawn from the respective industry and not just recruited as regulators straight out of universities. That’s why today some of our regulators appear to be like virgins trying to redraft the Kama Sutra."