Who among the following is called the father of the civil services in India?
- A.Warren Hastings
- B.Lord Cornwallis
- C.Lord Wellesley
- D.Lord Dalhousie
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, Lord Cornwallis. Cornwallis, Governor General from 1786 to 1793, is called the father of the civil services in India because he fixed adequate salaries for the Company's servants, forbade them from carrying on private trade or taking presents, and made promotion depend on seniority instead of patronage, which together turned a trading staff into an administrative service. Option A, Warren Hastings, organised the revenue and judicial systems from 1772 but did not reform the service itself. Option C, Lord Wellesley, founded Fort William College at Calcutta in 1800 to train new recruits, an important step but a later one. Option D, Lord Dalhousie, is remembered for the doctrine of lapse, the railways, the telegraph and the postal reform, not for the civil service. The service remained closed to Indians in its higher grades until the Charter Act of 1853.
Read the full article: British Administration in India: Services, Police and Courts
Practice Questions
View allWhich Charter Act ended the patronage of the Company and introduced open competition for recruitment to the civil service?
- A.Charter Act of 1793
- B.Charter Act of 1813
- C.Charter Act of 1853
- D.Charter Act of 1833
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This Act took away the Company's right to nominate its civil servants and threw recruitment open to competition, after which the committee headed by Lord Macaulay in 1854 settled the syllabus and the first competitive examination was held in London in 1855.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first Indian to join the Indian Civil Service?
- A.Romesh Chunder Dutt
- B.Satyendranath Tagore
- C.Surendranath Banerjee
- D.Anandamohan Bose
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Satyendranath Tagore, an elder brother of Rabindranath Tagore, succeeded in the London examination and joined the Indian Civil Service in 1864, nine years after the first competitive examination was held, and served in the Bombay Presidency.
Read the full explanation →Which Act laid the foundation of the modern police system in India?
- A.The Government of India Act, 1858
- B.The Indian Police Act, 1861
- C.The Indian Evidence Act, 1872
- D.The Indian Councils Act, 1892
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Passed on the advice of the Police Commission of 1860, this Act gave every province an Inspector General, every range a Deputy Inspector General and every district a Superintendent of Police working under the district magistrate, with the village chowkidar at the base, and that structure is still recognisable in…
Read the full explanation →The Indian Police Commission of 1902-03, known as the Fraser Commission, recommended the creation of which body?
- A.A Department of Criminal Intelligence
- B.The Imperial Police Service
- C.A Federal Court of India
- D.A Public Service Commission
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The commission appointed in 1902 under Sir Andrew Fraser reported in 1903 and asked for better pay, training schools, the recruitment of Indians as officers and a central agency to collect and share criminal intelligence; the Department of Criminal Intelligence was created in 1903 and grew into the central intelligence…
Read the full explanation →Which commission recommended that recruitment to the higher civil services be shared equally between Indians and Europeans?
- A.The Aitchison Commission, 1886
- B.The Islington Commission, 1912
- C.The Lee Commission, 1924
- D.The Simon Commission, 1927
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The Royal Commission on the Superior Civil Services in India, headed by Lord Lee of Fareham, recommended that direct recruitment to the Indian Civil Service be divided equally between Indians and Europeans and that a Public Service Commission be set up without delay, and such a commission began work in…
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