‘False sense of being an expert administrator’: IAS officer calls out hollow bureaucratic grind

A senior IAS officer has taken aim at one of the civil service’s most entrenched myths that all administrative postings are equally demanding. 

Ajitabh Sharma, Principal Secretary (Energy), Government of Rajasthan, says the real test isn’t how busy the job is—it’s whether the work actually matters.

In a candid LinkedIn post, Sharma broke down the bureaucracy’s daily reality: “I have never been able to convince myself of the thought that all assignments are of the same difficulty level,” he wrote, challenging the notion that all governance roles carry the same weight.

Sharma offered a breakdown of what most IAS officers really spend their time doing: “More than 80% of our work is related to attending generic meetings… handling human resource issues, attending litigation matters, dealing with transparency and right to information laws, sending replies to news clippings, responding to mundane correspondence, and compiling all sorts of reports.”

He calls this “Non-Core Work”—necessary, but far removed from what drives real change. 

“These common-to-all-department tasks are important, though they leave you with little time for the Core Work,” Sharma wrote.

That core, he said, varies by department—be it energy, health, water, or social justice—and requires deep, sector-specific focus. “Getting overwhelmed by the non-core work… would not only give you a false sense of being an ‘Expert Administrator’, but also take your department on a downward slide in service delivery.”

Using his own post as an example, Sharma added: “The Energy Department is one of those places that essentially needs a greater emphasis on the Core Work.”