By Dilip Cherian
The next big change in India’s babudom may not come through another cadre reform or a new rulebook. It may come through the dashboard.
The Centre is steadily pushing the IAS towards AI-assisted, data-driven administration. In June, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told 183 IAS officer trainees that AI and data-driven governance would be key enablers of future administration. In August, he told senior secretaries that data is a national asset and called for greater interoperability, while stressing that AI must still be subject to human judgement.
This is no longer just rhetoric. LBSNAA’s 2026 programme for senior civil servants covers machine learning, computer vision, LLMs, generative AI, data governance and deployment. The Capacity Building Commission has now gone a step further, working towards “AI-native” public institutions whose workflows are AI-ready.
The scale is considerable. iGOT Karmayogi has more than 1.7 crore registered users and 218 AI and emerging-technology courses. Since 2025-26, prescribed annual courses for Central government employees and AIS officers are being captured in APARs.
For states, this could be transformative, and uncomfortable. MoSPI is already working with states on harmonising administrative data, common standards and interoperability. That could make governance faster and more measurable. It could also make babus increasingly answerable to numbers generated by systems they do not control.
The real challenge, therefore, is not teaching officers to use AI. It is ensuring that bad data does not become bad governance at machine speed. The IAS will still need judgement, but the difference is that, increasingly, it will have to exercise that judgement under the gaze of the dashboard.
The IFS generational shift
India’s diplomatic establishment is about to change hands—and with it, potentially, the balance of influence inside South Block. The 1988–90 generation that has occupied many of the most consequential diplomatic posts is giving way to the 1992–94 cohort. This is a transfer of institutional memory, relationships and strategic influence at a time when India’s foreign policy is being tested on multiple fronts.
The transition is already visible. Vikram Doraiswami, a 1992-batch officer, moved from London to Beijing in May, while Kumaran Periasamy, also from the 1992 batch, took charge in London. The 1994 cohort is moving up too, with Pranay Verma and Neeta Bhushan among those receiving important ambassadorial assignments.
The clear message is that extensions can stretch the careers of individual officers, but they cannot indefinitely postpone generational succession. The government’s one-year extension for Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, a 1989-batch officer, illustrates both the value of continuity and the limits of it. But this is unlikely to be a clean break. Mishra has received another year in office until July 2027. The overlap between the old guard and the emerging leadership could prove as consequential as the succession itself.
The message goes beyond the IFS: extensions can preserve continuity, but they also inevitably push succession down the line. When the baton finally moves, the next generation inherits not merely posts but accumulated networks and influence.
The IFS is changing guard. The more interesting question is who outside the IFS is prepared for it.
When the state gets it wrong, who pays?
When an official order is plainly illegal, should the State—and ultimately the taxpayer always foot the bill? The Allahabad High Court has put an uncomfortable question before babus.
In a recent case, the Court quashed proceedings under the UP Control of Goondas Act, holding that two criminal cases, separated by three years, could not by themselves justify branding someone a habitual offender. It awarded Rs 50,000 in damages and allowed the State to recover the amount from the salaries of the officials responsible.
The sum is hardly consequential. The principle is. The Court said it had repeatedly ruled against such use of the Act, yet officials continued to pass similar orders. An administration that does not absorb judicial correction is not merely making mistakes; it is imposing the cost of those mistakes on citizens and the courts.
For state governments, the warning is equally sharp. Legal compliance cannot be left to the individual officer’s interpretation. For babus, the old comfort zone may be narrowing. An official order carries the authority of the State, but that authority is not a licence to exercise statutory powers mechanically. If personal financial consequences become a judicial remedy in cases of arbitrary action, decision-making will inevitably become more cautious—and perhaps more legally literate.
Will governments treat this as an isolated reprimand or as a signal to fix the systems that allow unlawful orders to keep being issued in the first place?