74 SOCIAL SCIENTIST India has a written constitution, the product of the liberal tradition of the West. It has adopted the parliamentary system of government. The parliamentary system works at two levels, at the centre and in the states. According to Maheshwari, the Indian system fulfils the four usual tests for qualifying as a federation, though no specific mention has been made about it in the constitution. Really, arrangements are deliberately made for the centre to keep the states in a leash. First, the responsibilities for the maintenance of law and order and for economic and social development have been vested with the states. But they have been deprived of the main sources of revenue for the purpose. They have been placed at the mercy of the Finance Commission, appointed every five years by the centre, to fill the gaps in their revenue. And the Planning Commission keeps a tight control over the allocation of resources to various projects. Secondly, a peculiar feature of the Indian administration is that the central government recruits and trains administrative personnel for key posts in the states and lays down their conditions of service. The require^ ments of the centre for manning key posts are met on tenure basis from those allotted to the states. The practice of interchange of administrative personnel between the states and the centre is inherited from the colonial days. The Lee Commission on superior services had noticed its incompatibility after the transfer of executive responsibility for certain subjects to the elected representatives of the state assemblies under the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms. After independence, as the Congress government preferred a peaceful transition it decided to avail of the services of members of the Indian Civil Service (1C S) left behind by the British with all the privileges enjoyed by them and also to form an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) to dovetail it with the former. Higher Civil Service Initially, the Government of India constituted two all-India services, namely the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Police Service (IPS). Personnel for these services are recruited by the Union Public Service Commission after a written test and interview. Later they are given intensive training. After a spell of service, some of them are^ sent for training in special fields to Commonwealth countries and to the USA under the aid programmes. Numbering about 4000, they form the core of the administration. They are supposed to remain politically neutral, impartial and anonymous. And they are made to feel that they belong to a superior service. Such a complex and the lack of leadership alienate them from the mainstream of life. It percolates down to services at all levels making it difficult to create in people a real sense of their rights and obligations and to get them involved in the developmental activities of the government. The third characteristic of the Indian administration, an inhibition of the colonial days is that man by nature is dishonest. To counteract i4