“When can we have a zero paper office?” a newly recruited tax officer asked the tech savvy Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha. The Minister replied that while he followed the ‘paperless’ principle for the 10 years that he spent in the private sector, it is not possible any time soon in the Government. The question, from one of the officers from the latest batch of the Indian Revenue Service (Custom & Central Excise), reflects a change in mindset as well as composition of the service.

For one, the average age of the 178 male and female IRS officers in this batch is 25 years. Among them are 21 IITians, six from the IIMs and one a graduate from Stanford University, US.

The officers, who began their 18-month training on Friday, will be the first direct recruits to the IRS to face the new Goods & Services Tax (GST) regime.

This was probably why one of them wanted to know the role of their parent organisation, the Central Board of Excise and Custom (CBEC), in the GST regime and was told that CBEC will play a central role in the Central Goods & Services Tax (CGST) and Integrated Goods & Services Tax (IGST). “This shows that these officers are not just interested in government service, but also in better and progressive government service,” said a senior official.

For the first time, a Finance Minister was present during the inauguration of the training of these probationers. Taking note of the changing composition of officers, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said “This indicates the diversity of the background from which various candidates are getting into the services. And this trend of mid-career change in course is catching up all over the world. It was little slow in India. The background which all of you represent indicates that….This is also about the transformation of your life and career.”

Terming Government service as a challenging one, Jaitley asked the newly recruits to “adjust and accustom yourself to a changed tax regime”, which will rely heavily on an information technology backbone.

The latest IRS batch has 93 probationers with an engineering background; 30 have a medical background. Only five have an Arts background.

The latest batch represents 20 States and one Union Territory (Chandigarh), defying the perception that technocrats are mostly from the non-Hindi belt. In fact, one out of two officers is from the Hindi belt. Uttar Pradesh leads the race with 20 officers, followed by Rajasthan with 18. Maharashtra has 16 officers, Tamil Nadu 13, while 12 are from Bihar.

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