India, Jan. 26 -- The Union government's decision to do away with the zone system for allocation of state cadres to officers of the three all-India services - IAS, IPS, and IFoS - is a welcome step towards making these services truly national in scope and character. The zone system of grouping state cadres allowed officers to get assigned to their home-state or a neighbouring one. The new system of grouping under the 2026 UPSC Cadre Allocation Policy that will replace the 2017 iteration will see states grouped by name instead of proximity; so, an officer from Gujarat can now be assigned to the Haryana or Jharkhand cadre if she doesn't get Gujarat, while, earlier, she could have joined the cadre in neighbouring Maharashtra. There are several potential benefits of the move. First, it can help make the services more integrated to the national cause - by forcing officers out of their home and neighbouring states and to distant, unfamiliar states, it engenders better understanding of diverse cultures, governance contexts, population mixes, local economies, and other factors that are important for an efficient bureaucracy. Second, it can address the problem of uneven allocation vis-a-vis vacancies among states, especially in conjunction with the new rule on time-bound filling of vacancies. This way, all states are likely to receive a fair allocation of personnel, instead of most of them being cornered by a handful of states preferred by the officers. Equitable distribution can facilitate a clutch of states in overcoming governance and development deficits with their better-off counterparts. Third, this will keep regional concentration in check, thereby decreasing the chances of parochial lobbies getting formed. This can make the bureaucracy more transparent and geared towards efficiency, especially as top ranked entrants to the services get allocated to cadres across the breadth of the country . Ending segmentation of the services will help them become truly all-India....