Civil Service Reforms (CSR) mean different things to different stakeholders in India. There has been a dearth of studies on CSR from a holistic perspective. This study attempts to fill this gap by ascertaining views of stakeholders on CSR in India. It adopted purposive and convenient sampling. Primary data was collected from a sample of 27 respondents that includes civil servants, civil service aspirants, member of a Civil Society Organisation (CSO), member of Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), former member of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) and policy expert. Secondary data was collected from the relevant books on CSR, articles in peer reviewed journals and web sources. Thematic analysis was adopted for data analysis through Axial Coding. Major findings of the study: Civil service in India came under the increasing pressure to adapt itself from being a ‘commander’ of the public services to that of ‘partner’ with CSOs and private sector;  and from being ‘generalist’ to that of ‘specialist’. Yet, it is not able to cope with these demands. On the other hand, State’s policy on CSR has been incremental. The study finds gaps between policy on CSR and expectations of stakeholders.

 Keywords: Civil service reforms; Stakeholders; Perspective; Thematic analysis; Transformative.