The Steel Frame: A History of the IAS

The development and role of the Indian Civil Service was one of the dominant features of the period of the East India Company, and later, British rule in India. It is extraordinary how people employed by a trading company in a foreign land transformed into the most powerful civil service in the world. It was also the first civil service in the modern world where recruitment was on the basis of open competition and not through patronage. Though much criticized, it developed its own character and