Our society cannot function without the public servants today. Governance would be practically impossible without them and there would be chaos and disorder everywhere. As such, the role of public servants cannot be undermined.
Public servants, or government servants, are an essential element that is needed to address specific needs of general interest of members of the society, the public. As such, it can be said that a career in public service is more than a job. It means putting public interests first before personal interests.
Public servants have a lot of opportunities to give back to the community. Public servants are expected to be self-sacrificing, trustworthy, risk-taking, transparent, accountable, adaptable, creative, innovative, knowledgeable and skilled, persistent, empathetic, collaborative, and competent.
Above all, they are expected to have a high dose of humanness in their personality which makes them work for others, with a desire to make a difference in the lives of the common people, forfeiting their personal comforts in the service of the people, even at the risk of their own lives.
Public servants are expected to be committed to the highest degrees of integrity, committed to deliver the best service possible. They are expected to be committed to fair and transparent governance, to delivering high quality services, to a stewardship of public funds. They are expected to be committed to reflecting on their roles and responsibilities, to test and measure their values, ethics and actions as they serve the public.
Unfortunately, in Naga society today, public service has become a much sought after profession not because we want to give back to society or serve the people but because it entails greater job security and ‘prestige’. It is all about money. This misplaced obsession for employment in the public sector has reduced the profile of the public servant’s job.
It is no longer about serving the people but about wielding power and authority, engaging in misappropriation of public funds and discharging one’s duties as one pleases. Oftentimes, the person in the office becomes the cause of public grievance when he actually should be the medium of redressing public grievances.
It is saddening to see how almost all the services offered by the public sector are below par. Apart from the higher wages, public servants also enjoy certain intangible benefits which the common people can only envy; yet, there is so much inefficiency in almost all the public sector offices.
Most public servants have no qualms about the plight of the people, the woes of the ordinary citizens, whom they ought to serve. It is only when the people protest or resort to some sort of an agitation that the public sector momentarily awakens. Something is seriously wrong with our public servants.