(By Ashish*) Efficiency cannot be anyone's exclusive domain. Officers, who do not belong to the three All India Services, particularly to the IAS, can do a decent - sometimes better - job. And that's why all should get a fair chance of contributing to good governance and nation building. In a nutshell, this is what a representation submitted last week to the DoPT Secretary by officers of organized Group-A services (Confederation of Civil Service Associations or COCSA) says in the wake of Government constituting a Task Force for a comprehensive study on the Cadre Structure of organized Group-A Central Services. COCSA wants the DoPT Secretary to hear out its delegation. To recall, an Office Memorandum of DoPT (Cadre Review Division) issued on 22/08/2016 has constituted such a Task Force on the direction of the Appointments Committee of Cabinet (ACC). But the Task Force'sstructure and its manner of functioning have raised "very serious concerns". COCSA, no doubt, is in sync with the crux of the Task Force's Terms of Reference (ToR), which is to suggest a way forward to "mitigate stagnation". But that's just where the bonhomie seems to end, because the rest of the memorandum is an unwinding tale of what could go wrong with the effort if corrective steps are not taken. For starters, it points out a contradiction between the ToR of the Task Force and the detailed OM. The Task Force is expected to study the cadre structure of "all" organized Group-A Services in the "Government of India", including the three All India Services. But the "Subject" of the OM mentions only the Organized Group-A "Central Services" and excludes the All India Services. COCSA feels the exclusion of IAS from the study is "unjustified". "This action does not appear to be in accordance with the direction of the ACC, as gathered from the OM itself, nor is it in the interest of the Government or the various Services, as the lessons of cadre management of the All India Services would be lost to the Task Force," says the memorandum. COCSA has stressed that the IAS is way ahead in terms of promotional opportunities and has minimum stagnation. Since the IAS, too, is an "organized Group-A Service", its exclusion would make the exercise incomplete. The subtext is much too evident because COCSA feels that "a particular privileged Service" (read IAS) has been dominating the Government since colonial times (read ICS) and has not allowed the natural growth of other Services. The Confederation cites the Chairman of 7th Central Pay Commission from the panel's Report to buttress its argument: "That the main cause for resentment among services is that over a period of time IAS has arrogated to itself all power of governance and relegated all other services to secondary position. All posts covering majority of domains are today manned by IAS, be it a technical or administrative… If fair and equitable treatment is not given to all Services, then the gap between IAS and other ser