Why I Am Not A Civil Servant

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Copyright © Ajay Singh Yadav 2001

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 Contents

Why I Wrote this Book

Introduction

1. First Steps in the Civil Service

2. My Experience as Collector

3. Life as a Senior Civil Servant

4. The Character of the Average Civil Servant

5. The Civil Servant as a Ruler

6. The Civil Servant as an Agent

7. An Agenda for Change

8. Why I Am Not a Civil Servant

9. Postcript-Life Outside the Civil Service

 Why I Wrote this Book

I realize that the title of this book may call for some kind of explanation.
When Bertrand Russell wrote - Why I am not a Christian, he meant his
book to be a systematic refutation of a creed which claimed that it could be
proved by unaided reason alone without reference to revealed dogma. I
have a similar polemical purpose. My purpose in writing this book is to
debunk civil service elitism. Russell was of course a famous philosopher
and I am only an unknown citizen, but I do think my two decades long
experience of the civil service and the intrinsic importance of the subject
gives me a right to divagate into print.
When I announced my decision to leave the civil service my friends
and colleagues all had one question for me: "What are you going to do
now? How are you going to fill your days?" This was said variously in
tones of exasperation, commiseration and incomprehension. So persistent
did the questioning grow and so obvious was their bafflement at something
which appeared to them to be an act of pure folly that I was forced to tell
them finally, "I shall live on until I die." The humour of this remark was not
appreciated but I quote this here because the words are not my own but
were uttered by a famous statesman in circumstances that deserve to be
retold here.
Everyone has heard of Clemenceau, the great French statesman and
Prime Minister who led his country to victory in the First World War, after
tremendous suffering and sacrifice. Clemenceau was known as 'The Tiger',
because of his fierce pride, honesty and intolerance of humbug. After
winning the war, Clemenceau retired from public life, to live out his old age
in a modest rented apartment. He was offered a state pension and other
honours, but true to character, he scorned the trappings of authority as mere
baubles, unworthy of a great statesman. He was proud of his poverty and
apt to come down heavily on those who came to commiserate with him on
this account. When one officious French journalist asked him the same
question, "What are you going to do now," he answered testily, "Why, I am
going to live on until I die. "
I cite this incident, not because I put myself on the same footing as
Clemenceau, but because his perfect contempt for those worldly people
who hang on to power like leeches is really splendid. His pride in his status
as a free citizen, not dependent on handouts from the state is the very basis
of civic virtue so essential in the creation of a civil society. I cannot attempt
to disguise from the reader of this truthful chronicle the fact that I feel the
same contempt for those of my former colleagues who make this their main
objective in life. I think this degrading lust for the plums of office has been
the undoing of the civil service. The social consequences of this attitude
deserve to be put down in plain words, for it has had a disastrous effect on
the quality of governance in this country. In this book I have done so.
The reader will therefore come across many strictures on the civil
service in the course of this book and all of them are well deserved and to
the point. Indeed, I have if anything been too mild in chronicling this story
of decline and decadence. But I do not want to give the impression that the
civil service does not have men and women of honour and integrity. It has
people of the highest calibre, but my regret is these people are still too small
a minority. They do not set the moral tone of the civil service, they are
tolerated rather than admired, and they retain their character and values
only as a heroic commitment to a personal code of honour, which has
neither any official sanction nor any general approbation. Indeed, the clever
careerist looks upon these honourable exceptions as irrelevant and out of
date fossils. All of which makes me sad. That is why I have written this
book. Read on.
 Introduction

When I left the Indian Administrative Service in 1998, I still had more than
sixteen years of service left before superannuation. I was in fact only
slightly past the half way mark in my career. Although I did not possess that
mixture of moderate ability and immoderate ambition that leads on to
success in the civil service, I was not entirely unsuccessful. I had been
Collector for a reasonable length of time, had been head of many
departments and when I retired voluntarily from service, was Secretary to
Government. My career had therefore followed the usual course, and I
could look forward to another two decades, more or less, of time bound
promotions, time scale pay rises and comfortable mediocrity, had I stuck it
out. After retirement, had I been like the average civil servant, I could have
wangled an extension of service, or sought some other sinecure. For your
true civil servant never retires, he just becomes a governor, or an
ambassador, or chairman of some statutory body, commission, tribunal or
committee; if nothing else, he becomes the administrative head of the local
chapter of the Boy Scouts or the Red Cross. Life without the trappings of
office seems to be inconceivable for all but the few.
I was not, however, like the average officer. I say this in all humility,
as a confession rather than a claim. What distinguished me from others was
not, however, superior ability. It was rather an inability to obey orders
without examining their rationale, to take things on sufferance, to accept
conventional wisdom without question. I think if you do not have an
instinctive veneration for authority, you are not really cut out to be a civil
servant. The civil servant accepts certain loss of personal freedom and
independence, in return for a certain measure of authority. Most people in
fact do not know what to do with their freedom, all that they crave is
authority. They think the exchange well worth their while. I did not think
so. I had no regard for authority as such, and I valued my freedom a great
deal. This was my problem. Allied to this was a restless intellect, a vein of
irreverent humour and a habit of putting across my views in a blunt and
unvarnished manner, without the usual circumlocutions and qualifications.
As a result of these temperamental angularities, I found myself in almost
perpetual revolt against the norms and conventions of the civil service. In
every gathering I was the outsider. In every meeting I was the devil's
advocate. I felt I was in an organization whose values I did not accept, and
which in turn had little use for my peculiar abilities and talents. It was thus
a formal acceptance of this natural parting of the ways, which led to my
retirement.
This is not, however, a book of reminiscences. This is in fact a
philosophical work. I have included biographical details in this narrative
only when they throw some light upon the character and texture of life in
the service. This is relevant to my purpose. These details will show the
reader why I failed to fit into the ethos of the civil service. I have used the
civil service as a metaphor to symbolise the general reverence for power
and authority which is sapping away the vitals of our society.
This is not, therefore, an indictment of the civil service. It is an
indictment of civil service elitism; symbolised by the Indian Administrative
Service. Elitism is of course a well known historical phenomenon. In the
civil service context this is characterized by a hierarchical organizational
structure, restriction of lateral entry into the elite cadre, thus making it a
closed caste, and the cult of the generalist. Elites have their uses of course.
Elitism is justified when it leads to a high standard of conduct and when the
elite is required for the attainment of some overwhelming purpose. This is
the case when an empire needs a select band of officials to maintain its
authority over a large territory. Or when an organization threatened with
mortal danger, needs a Praetorian guard to defeat the hostile forces. The
Chinese mandarins fall into the first category. The Society of Jesus, brought
into being to protect the Catholic church from the forces of the
Reformation, falls into the second category. The Indian Civil Service falls
into the first category. The Indian Administrative Service does not fall into
any category because it does not have this larger purpose.
All elites stand in danger of losing their elan and becoming mere
guardians of the status quo once this purpose is lost. In order to maintain
morale and to give the rank and file something to live for, elites disguise
their real purpose. They formulate a morally elevating creed to provide
them with a sense of mission. In the case of the Chinese mandarins, this
was provided by the Confucian creed, in the case of the Indian Civil Service
it was provided by the notion of the 'White man's burden'. This creed is
really only a smoke screen to hide the real purpose of the elite which is
always a conservative one, but the rank and file believe in the mission in
spite of themselves. The best members of the civil service are always too
intelligent to be taken in by any comforting illusions, but these members are
too high minded to behave with anything but complete commitment and
dedication. It is the behaviour of the average member which determines the
official ethos of the service. The greatness of the Indian Civil Service was
that the average members of the service, in spite of notions of racial
arrogance, still maintained a high level of conduct and integrity. Its
greatness is increased by the fact that it was also able to produce a large
number of people who were willing to jeopardize their career prospects but
unwilling to compromise with their principles.
However, even these self-willed individuals were able to achieve
something only because their authority was unchallenged. This is the point
to be remembered. They were successful because their word was law.
Therefore those rare beings who were uncorrupted by power or unmindful
of the policy objectives of the central government were able to impose their
own will on the course of events and translate their own good intentions
into reality. Perhaps if the same autocratic power is granted to members of
the IAS, some of them may be able to do as good a job. Indeed those few
officers who have been able to do some good work in the field, are again
opinionated characters who have generally followed their own inclinations
rather than looked to the state governments for guidance. When I reflect on
my own career, I realize that my own achievements, such as they are, have
been due to my disregard for any authority other than my own conscience
and convictions. However when I acted as if I was an autonomous centre of
authority, I was over-reaching myself. In a democracy an unelected official
has no right to act in this manner. My behaviour was therefore quite
inexcusable. The irony is that there is no other way to make use of civil
service elitism. It works only when an official is willing to use power
creatively, but such use of power is outside the scope of his legitimate
authority. This is the existentialist dilemma of elitist civil services.
Therefore civil service elitism can work only when the civil service
enjoys unchallenged political dominance, and has sufficient number of men
willing to defy authority, to satisfy their own cravings of conscience. Such a
combination of circumstances is rare. For the most part, elitism in practice
boils down to a sterile obsession with rank, status and the trappings of
power. This is specially true in cases where, the overriding purpose or
mission has been attained, and the political authority that stands behind the
civil service is no longer seriously threatened. Having attained this purpose,
the civil service does not wither away, as one might think. It becomes a
self-perpetuating organism, and its central purpose becomes, the
preservation of its own privileges. This is the fate of all elitist civil services.
But the situation is even worse in democratic countries, because here civil
service elitism does not have the same sense of mission even at the very
beginning. Deprived of this larger political purpose, here the civil service
becomes a conservative enterprise right from the start, obsessed with
niggling details of rank and status. It ends up as a collection of small
minded snobs.
The philosophical justification for civil service elitism is provided by
Cardinal Newman, in a famous essay on the nature of the so-called liberal
education. This education is defined by Newman as: "It (the liberal
education) teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to
disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and to discard
what is irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master
any subject with facility. "
This system of education according to Newman, "does not make
physicians, surgeons, or engineers or soldiers, or bankers, or merchants, but
it makes men. "
We have to ask ourselves if this romantic idealization of a defunct
system of education is really to the point. A system that believes that a
person who has acquired the benefits of this so-called liberal education can
really come to grips with any job, however complex, is out of touch with
the complexities of the modern world. It is based on a distrust of the
professional and a denigration of the specialist. This is again at bottom a
snobbish attitude. There is no reason why an amateur should be better than
a professional at the same job, except that this attitude appealed to the class
prejudices of the British ruling class which shunned and looked down on all
useful work and idolized the gentlemanly idler. Civil service elitism is
based on caste feeling and has the same drawbacks as caste. Both deserve to
be overthrown for the same reason.
The antidote to caste is castelessness, the antithesis of hierarchy is to
throw public service open to all comers and to find the right man for the job
at all levels. Why should all jobs of joint secretary and above not be open to
all suitable candidates. This would at least provide an opportunity to all
those generals and police officers and doctors and engineers to reach the top
of their profession, who are told at present that they do not know their own
jobs well enough to be really put in charge. It would in fact do more. To the
more enterprising professionals it would provide an opportunity to prove
their mettle in other jobs as well. This would prove the maxim that it is only
when you can do your own job well that you can do any other job properly.
This would be a fitting rejoinder to the banal snobbery symbolized by the
cult of the generalist.
Such a rejoinder is necessary because the attitudes behind the cult of
the generalist have important social consequences. The glorification of the
amateur at the expense of the specialist means in practice the disparagement
of all intellectual attainment and scholarship. It means the downgrading of
science and technology, because science and technology depend on
specialised knowledge. It is not surprising that India's academic institutions
are in terminal decline because of the wholesale adoption of the civil
service culture of petty intrigue and jockeying for power. No wonder little
original research is done anywhere and no Indian has won the Nobel Prize
for science since C. V. Raman. A civilization where the impulse for
innovation and enterprise has atrophied and where the search for knowledge
is not actively encouraged, is without the means of progress and
advancement. It is a society doomed to stagnation and decline.
It is also a society which lacks the means for economic growth and
innovation. The preference for the civil service means that young men and
women put security above all things. It means that no one is willing to
strike out on his own, to make his fortune, to build an empire, to found a
new sect or create a new utopia. Economic growth thrives on the spirit of
enterprise. A society where it is the dream of every young man to secure
salaried employment with the government, is a society which looks down
on trade and enterprise as second rate occupations. In such a society no one
dreams of founding his fortune on innovation or creativity. What people
dream of is rising to the top after a lifetime's deference to the culture of
conformity. Such a society is again without dynamism and is headed for
economic catastrophe.
But this is not to say that the business of governance is not important.
It is. That is why I argue that the high minded generalist who is really
inspired with the ethic of public service should join politics. This is the area
which desperately needs men of faith and conviction. As long as the
summits of public life are occupied by smugglers and bootleggers, no civil
service in the world can improve matters. That is why we should give up
our fascination with number two jobs like the civil service and start opting
for the number one job, that is politics. That is the message of this book.
 First Steps in the Civil Service

I should like to set down here a bare factual account of my experience of

the civil service. Unlike other authors of reminiscences I shall resist the
temptation to dwell on my own achievements, such as they are. I am
restrained not merely by innate modesty, but by regard for the sound
juridical principle that 'no man should be a judge in his own cause'. Unlike
many other memoirists, I also wish to avoid being anecdotal, I think I have
not yet declined into that state of mind called anecdotage, into which so
many of my former colleagues, rendered prematurely senile by their
lifelong subordination, descend betimes. My concern is simply to isolate
those general propositions, which can be inferred from the incidents and
happenings, that occurred in the course of a fairly typical career. I am aware
of course, that though my career was fairly typical, as a person, in terms of
character and temperament I was really a misfit in the service. But then I
was not the only square peg in a round hole. There are many others who
start out in a similar fashion but lose their 'squareness' by the time they
reach the end of their innings. Where I differed from the others was in the
fact that I did not lose my angularity with the passage of time and remained
uncompromisingly square till the very end. In this I was certainly not
typical, but for that very reason, my observations about the civil service
may have a certain value.
To begin at the beginning then, let me go back to the year 1976. I was
a post-graduate student of English literature at Delhi university doing rather
poorly in studies. Like most other young men I had other things on my
mind. It is not that I did not have scholastic aptitude, but that I spent my
time in reading Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore and other philosophers when
I should have been reading the critical works on Yeats and Eliot. There was
thus every chance that I would not be able to improve upon my
performance in the final examination. If you want to answer examination
questions on literature, it is better not to be too fond of it. I thus found that I
had been too busy reading Shakespeare to take much note of the various
textual variations in the folio editions, or the seven types of ambiguity
found in the Metaphysical poets. This is how matters stood when my father
summoned me to a fateful interview, one May morning in 1975.
My father was an officer in the Indian Police Service. Being a police
officer, he had often been at the receiving end of the arrogant presumption
of the IAS officers and had probably come to believe in the myth of their
superiority. I mention this as background information which may serve to
explain the conversation that followed.
My father told me that my academic performance had been less than
impressive and my future prospects were not very bright. I was forced to
concede that this was indeed the case. My father then said that considering
my poor academic record and the lack of any particular professional
aptitude there were really only two options before me – I could either
become a clerk or become a civil servant. Both these jobs did not require
any particular technical accomplishment. All that was needed was the
ability to get through the entrance examination. The examination itself was
a bit of a gamble and the system of evaluation was not really based on
academic ability. In fact the duffers stood as good a chance as the brilliant
students. Once selected the rest was smooth sailing. He might have added
that a civil servant was only a sort of glorified clerk, but did not. He left me
to discover that at my own cost.
I took my father's advice, took the civil services examination in
October 1975 and was selected. I also eventually passed my M A
examination in the third division as foreseen by my father. But by then I had
already become a civil servant.
My career in the civil service started with a long training course at the
National Academy of Administration at Mussoorie. I should like to narrate
this experience, because it is of interest on two counts. First, it gives one an
insight into the minds of a large number of young men and women about to
set forth on their voyage of life and as yet uncorrupted by the influence of
power. Second, it gives one a chance to observe all the men and women
selected for the civil service in a given year, one whole batch as it is called
in civil service parlance, as a collective entity. Once the period of training is
over, the officers proceed to their places of posting scattered all over the
country, and never come together again to live a corporate life under a
single roof. The sociologist who wants to observe the civil service, not as a
group of individuals but as a class, can do no better than to start his enquiry
at Mussoorie, where in the cloisters of the Academy, the newly selected
candidates come together to form a new sodality, as exclusive as a monastic
order, ostensibly dedicated to a life of public service.
There are two other reasons why this matter is interesting. First there
is the historical interest. After the old Academy building burned down in
the early 1980s, the old way of life, of which the quaint old structure was a
symbol, has disappeared for ever. The concrete and stucco of the modern
building which has replaced the old wooden structure, is in a way more
impressive, but it isn't the same thing. Of course the director's lodge and the
old office block has survived and the reader can gather some idea of the old
structure from these relics. But the old library, with its wonderful collection
of books on the Himalayas, among other things, and the old lounge with its
old world graciousness and the panoramic view of the eternal snows to the
north is gone, and it may not be out of place to say a few words by way of a
personal tribute in remembrance of times past. The second reason is that the
National Academy of Administration is the nearest thing the IAS has to an
alma mater. It should, therefore, be a repository of the traditions and values
of the service and for this reason alone deserves some space in a book on
the civil service. What I offer here is however, a personal and perhaps
idiosyncratic recollection and the reader should turn to other sources to
supplement his knowledge, if he finds his curiosity aroused.
The journey to Mussoorie begins at Dehradun, a town with a park-like
ambience, nestling in the verdurous Doon valley. Dehradun has many old
buildings, many of them are rambling colonial structures which stand in
huge compounds. Dehradun itself is surrounded by a thick forest and the
road from Delhi winds through a particularly attractive section of the
Shivalik mountains, before reaching Deharadun. The Shivaliks are clad in
an evergreen forest of Sal and other trees, and the road criss-crosses the
broad bed of a mountain stream; dry, except in the rains, when it turns into a
raging torrent. After climbing for about an hour through this charming
landscape, the road descends into a wooded valley, where Dehradun is
glimpsed for the first time. Reaching the town, one has the feeling of
reaching a safe haven after a perilous journey.
It was in Dehradun that I arrived on my way to Mussoorie one
morning in July 1976. I have always been a lover of hills and it was with a
pleasant sense of anticipation that I boarded the bus to Mussoorie. Nor was
I disappointed. The road to Mussoorie is a steep ghat road, that twists and
turns over green pine clad hills while climbing all the time. The gradient is
steep and a climb of almost five thousand feet is accomplished in a little
over two hours. A little more than half way up, the town of Barlowgunj
appears over the brow of a hill. Thereafter, the character of the scenery
changes a little, the typical oak forest of Mussoorie interspersed with the
Deodar and fir makes its appearance. To someone visiting the Himalayas
for the first time, the 'mountains seems' impossibly large and steep. Their
summits remote and distant, piercing the heavens. All this naturally
heightened my sense of anticipation.
On arrival in Mussoorie, one alights at the Library Square, so named
after the old municipal library, a venerable old colonial building, standing
on tall cast iron pillars over a shopping arcade, and approached by a rickety
winding staircase. The building is frail but picturesque, melancholy, yet
with an oddly defiant and jaunty air. A note typical of Mussoorie. The
Library Square is no larger than a couple of tennis courts joined together,
yet it has a sense of being a meeting place where roads converge and
journeys end and begin. From here one follows the mall road, keeping close
to the winding hillside, with the green moss encrusted cliffs on one side and
a deep valley on the other. This road, like most of the roads in Mussoorie, is
in places overhung by the gnarled mountain oak, which grows abundantly
all over the hills. About a kilometre west of the library, after rounding a
bend, one sees for the first time a truly unforgettable prospect. A vast
valley, whose floor is shrouded in impenetrable shadow lies before one, and
at the far end of the valley, rising fold upon fold till they merge into the
summit of Nag Tibba are the middle Himalayas, and above and beyond
towering over the whole scene and covering the entire horizon from west to
east are lofty summits covered in eternal snows, the incredible panorama of
the Garhwal and Kumaon Himalayas. It is a scene of wondrous beauty, of
awesome grandeur, and timeless serenity. Any one coming up from the hot
and dusty plains and casting his eyes upon such a scene cannot fail to be
impressed. I was naturally enraptured.
A short distance from this is the entrance to the Academy itself, an
oddly prosaic cement and concrete gateway, surmounted by a steel arch
which identifies the place. Going past the gateway, and after a moderate
climb, one arrives at the Academy. This is a group of buildings forming a
small quadrangle. In the centre of this quadrangle is a large expanse of
lawn, with a clump of noble deodar trees standing on it. The buildings are
all made of timber and cast iron, embellished with gables and steeples and
all painted a dull green. These buildings are unlike any other official
building in India, they merge quietly into the beauty of the landscape and do
not call attention to themselves. Their low outlines reveal rather than hide
the landscape, their dull green colour matches the green and tranquil beauty
of the surroundings, and their conical roofs seem an extension of the
surrounding conifers.
The southern side of the quadrangle is taken up by the office block
which still stands, but it was the northern side of the quadrangle which
housed the most romantic buildings, the old library, the lounge and the old
dining hall. The lounge was the focal point of the place. This was a large
hall, cavernous yet cosy, with old Victorian furniture, overstuffed sofas and
so on, whose most remarkable feature was the balcony on the north side,
which looked out on the panoramic view which I have just described. The
balcony seemed to hang over the valley which fell away below one, in a
steep gorge.
The topography of the place was equally interesting and deserves a
brief description. The main buildings are situated at the end of an elevated
promontory of land, on three sides of which the ground slopes downwards.
On the northern side the slopes are steep, the escarpment forming one side
of the deep valley described above. On the southern side the land falls away
sharply for about a hundred feet to end in a small valley, which is aptly
named the 'Happy Valley'. On the western side the promontory continues
after a gradual decline and ends abruptly in a narrow island connected to the
promontory by a thin strip of land. This island has vertiginous sides and is
crowned by a small shrine dedicated to some local divinity. On the eastern
side is the approach to the Academy which I have just described above. The
approach road is bordered by the 'Happy Valley' on one side and a small hill
on the other side, which is surmounted by a real castle, known as Katesar
castle after the chief of Katesar, who built it. This castle is built of grey
sandstone, has turrets and battlements like a real castle, and a coat of arms
over the portals. From the windows in the tower one can see far over the
north, towards the panorama of snows. Katesar castle is like a gingerbread
castle, a piece of pure fantasy. All the hills and the valley described herein
are covered in a forest of oak and deodar.
The residential blocks, where the probationers have their rooms are
situated on the slopes over the 'Happy Valley.' A fortunate few also get to
stay in Katesar castle. There are also several large houses scattered about
the eastern entrance, which have been acquired by the Academy and serve
as residences. They have evocative names like Stapleton, Pleasance and so
forth.
From the road there are small bridle paths leading down into the
valley, or trails wandering off into the forest or leading up to the various
summits. The hillside in Mussoorie is dotted with old bungalows, chalets,
mock castles and gothic structures and other picturesque dwellings, but
none have a better situation or a more pleasing aspect than the Academy
buildings. These buildings and the bustling bazar, restaurants, theatres and
cinemas add an air of civilized amenity to the grand romantic scenery and
the touch of Himalayan wilderness that one experiences in Mussoorie. In
short the place is as close as you can get to an earthly paradise.
It may be interesting to describe the daily routine that I followed in
this place. My lifestyle and habits were quite different from most other
probationers, who spent most of the daytime in attending the officially
scheduled lectures and other programmes laid out by the Academy staff.
As far as I was concerned, any time not spent out of doors, was time
wasted. Accordingly after breakfast, I set out with a particular friend of
mine, from whom alas I have not heard since then; and wandered out over
the many trails. Our peregrinations usually ended up in a place called the
Company Gardens. This is a small garden, nestling into the hill side at the
south-western end of Mussoorie. Here over countless cups of coffee and
cigarettes, we debated the various problems of life and exchanged notes
about our experiences. About noon we set forth again and usually visited a
café called Waverly, that stood at the top of the hill. This café had a
delightful collection of old songs as well as a delightful menu of snacks,
and another hour was passed in eating, and pleasant rumination. About
lunch time, after having spent the entire morning and early afternoon in
these mild dissipations, we retraced our steps to the Academy. On the way
back we usually ran into our Course Director, coming back after a hard
day's work. But this great man never asked us how we had spent our day.
All that we received was a knowing smile. This tolerance of minor
delinquencies is rare in senior civil servants. This Course Director was a
man of rare mettle and later proved himself in various more responsible
positions.
My afternoons I spent in the library. This had an excellent collection
of works about the Himalayas. There were accounts of expeditions to all the
major peaks in the Hindukush, the Karakorams, as well as the Garhwal and
Kumaon Himalayas. It was particularly thrilling to read these works within
sight of many of the great peaks described by them. But the travel book
which impressed me most deeply was Doughty's Arabia Deserta. This book
has a romance all its own. There was also a good collection of books on
literary criticism, as well as philosophy, politics and history. Enough to
afford several months of absorbing reading. The instruction that one got
here was more edifying than that provided in the classrooms; and I do not
regret the many hours that I spent in the library at Mussoorie.
The evening was another round of civilized pleasures. I did not
frequent the fashionable places in Landour or Library Square, where most
of my colleagues spent their evenings. My favourite haunts were some
small dives in 'Happy Valley,' run by Tibetans. Their traditional rice beer,
called chhang is a mild brew, and has to be taken in gallons to induce even
mild intoxication, but there is no better way to pass a long evening when
you are young and in congenial company. Many a pleasant evening have I
passed there, consuming not glasses or bottles but whole jerry cans of
chhang. The propensity of this drink to intoxicate without inebriation, and
to leave the intellect unclouded by the swinish stupor induced by grosser
spirits, is wonderful.
Dinner, taken in the large hall over the library, was usually a
sumptuous affair, but the focal point of the evening were the after-dinner
gatherings in the lounge. Most people were in a mellow mood, induced by a
good dinner if nothing else; and in no time the room was echoing with the
lively hum of animated conversation. In one corner the gramophone played
old numbers, sentimental gazals, or mournful melodies, it hardly mattered
what. Outside on moonlit nights one could see the great snowy peaks to the
north. There was youth and romance in the air. Most young men and
women, then looking forward to the future with such bright and cheerful
faces, hardly realized that most of them would soon be parted, perhaps
never to meet again. These were moments of poetry, that one recollects with
pure nostalgia.
So the days passed pleasantly. There were several remarkable things
that happened to me in Mussoorie, but no one will believe them, therefore it
is better to pass over them in silence. Before I come to more mundane
things however, let me narrate one incident.
At the south-western end of Mussoorie is a rather singular peak,
known as Benog. This peak is separated from 'Happy Valley' by a deep
gorge and stands about five miles distant from the Academy, as the crow
flies, to the south west. This is certainly the loftiest peak in the vicinity of
the Academy, it is probably higher than Lal Tibba, which is popularly
known as the highest peak in Mussoorie. This peak is densely covered with
forest upto about three fourths of the way up, but the last quarter of the
peak, the highest portion, sports only a light growth of stalwart trees, mostly
oak. On the northern slope near a small saddle, stands a white dome like
building, no bigger than a roq's egg, which is said to be an observatory.
Except for this remarkable structure, there is no sign of human habitation on
the peak. It is clearly visible from the Academy, rising up in lonely
eminence, with an indefinable air of mystery about it. I do not think any one
of my colleagues spared so much as a moment's thought to this peak, but to
me it seemed to throw a challenge which seemed irresistible. But to climb a
few thousand feet of a comparatively gentle slope, is hardly a heroic
undertaking. To make this task interesting, I decided to do the climb, on a
moonlit night, alone and unaccompanied.
Benog is approached from the east over a narrow ridge, which
connects it to Vincent hill, the hill where the Company Gardens are
situated. The last house on the way is a large rambling structure, with the
evocative name of 'Clouds End'. It was already quite late when I set out on
my quest, one night in late September. The moon was up and lighting up the
peaks, though the valley was still deep in shadow. A little past Cloud's End,
on the narrow ridge, just mentioned above, is a small forest. Just as I had
entered this forest, I saw an indistinct form, standing over the path. On
coming closer, I saw that it was a woman, who stood on a small knoll by the
side of the road. As I came nearer, this woman beckoned to me, telling me
that it was not safe to go on and I could spend the night in her hut which
was nearby and find shelter if I so desired. There was no man anywhere in
sight. This woman wore the dress of a hill woman, and was obviously a
local person. However, her presence at this lonely spot, was a little strange
and I decided to ignore her offer of hospitality and continue on my way. A
little while later, I came across another strange phenomenon. Deep in the
woods, but clearly visible nonetheless, was the intense red glow of a fire
which seemed to be burning within a hollow in the forest floor. On getting
closer I saw that this came, not from the eye of some cyclopean creature,
but from a small furnace or kiln built by charcoal makers who seemed to
frequent this part of the forest. As I climbed higher the forest thinned out,
the moonlight seemed to grow more intense, the silence deeper. Large trees
cast enormous shadows on the turf. As I gained the top of the hill I came
upon a strange and moving memorial. Here were three Christian graves,
simply three grassy mounds, each with a wooden cross standing at the head.
One cross was smaller than the other two, signifying that this was the grave
of a child. There was an ineffable pathos and mystery about these graves.
Who was it who had sought to be buried in this benighted place in this
unconsecrated earth? I felt like an intruder, disturbing an inviolate
sanctuary. Some large animal seemed to dash off into the forest just a few
hundred yards away, one could hear the undergrowth rustling for a while.
As I set off for the return journey, I felt considerably more nervous than
before. I remembered Wordsworth's lines:
I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistiriguishable motion, steps
Almost as silent as the turf they trod.
I hurried back, looking back over my shoulder frequently. The return
journey, however, was without any singular event. To this date I have no
satisfactory explanation for the presence of the woman in that lonely place,
in the dead of night. I narrate this incident to show that even the most
humdrum and uneventful life has its moments of mystery, provided one has
the inclination to wander off the beaten track.
I did not find my colleagues over eager to follow my example. When I
narrated this story to some friends they looked upon me as a dangerous
crank. I did not mind this accolade. In my eyes it is better to be a crank than
a cynic. Cynicism, I found was the besetting sin of my friends and
colleagues. They all seemed to be very worldly wise and well informed
about official matters. Their dreams were already of official success, of
plum postings and career advancement. They knew how the system worked,
and who should be approached for securing the desired posting, etc. Even
those few who seemed to show intellectual brilliance of a superficial kind
seemed to know how to put their abilities to the best use. Few if any seemed
inspired by dreams where their own advantage did not figure largely.
These are serious faults, but to this let me add an even more serious
flaw. This was their indifference to the glorious scenery of Mussoorie.
Many of them felt that the Academy should have been situated at Delhi.
Imagine preferring the heat and dust of Delhi to the heavenly ambience of
Mussoorie. The indifference to the beauty of nature is more than a want of
sensibility. It shows a spiritual torpor, an atrophy of the soul; a moral
deadness, that in my eyes is the mother of all other crimes.
Let me now return to more serious matters. Going by what I have
described so far, the reader may well imagine that I led a completely lotus
eater existence and had absolutely no interest in what went on in the
classrooms of the academy. But this would not be true. I took just sufficient
interest in the official curriculum to ensure that, I would be able to pass the
required examinations. I did not consider that the course of study followed
in the academy justified more serious application on my part. Too serious
an attitude to study in a young man argues a want of spirit. But quite apart
from this, I did not think there was anything in the course content that was
intellectually challenging or stimulating. On the other hand, it seemed to
suffer from a curious confusion and lack of direction.
I believe this confusion came about because the authorities at the
academy were not clear whether the training should focus on purely
professional matters, or whether it should also include some moral
instruction. By moral instruction I mean some instruction about strategic
and long term issues including the goal and mission of the civil service. It is
this which builds up espirit de corps, required to sustain morale and to
induce a high standard of conduct in an elite cadre.
As far as professional instruction went this was of a very general
nature. As the land tenure systems, the Revenue Codes and other laws are
different in every state, this was perhaps inevitable. What could have been
done was to include in depth studies of selected states. This would have
given the probationers some standards of comparison when they arrived in
their own states. The states of India are like sovereign countries without
diplomatic relations with each other. We know less about the systems of
governance and the official policies of our neighbouring state, than perhaps
we know about our neighbouring country. Once an officer is allotted to a
particular state cadre, there is very little chance for him to visit other states,
albeit he may occasionally spend time at the Central Government. This
being the case, a comparative study of different states would have provided
useful information. This training could also include some content about the
systems in vogue in different countries. This would offer a corrective to the
insularity and egocentric world view from which all elitist organizations
suffer.
However the actual course content includes only a general study of the
Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure. A very general
study of bureaucracy based on the theories of Max Weber. Almost nothing
on public finance and theories of economic growth. In short the
professional and academic part of the training tended to be of undergraduate
level and rather amateurish.
As far as moral instruction was concerned, there was nothing of this
beyond a few pious platitudes about the ethic of service and so on. An elitist
civil service should be a sort of secular priesthood, inspired with an
evangelical zeal for public service. But for this to happen, they must have a
proper conception of their role and its importance. They must have before
them some overriding purpose which transcends small aspirations based on
career and personal advancement. They should moreover be completely
unapologetic about their elite status.
Of course, it has to be said, that no kind of training or any other
system devised to foster talent can ever be really successful. In the civil
service, excellence is really a matter of character, not intelligence. The
really first rate civil servant is also a first rate human being. There is a
definite ethical dimension involved here and no system, and no hierarchy
certainly; can nurture excellence of this kind. It should be understood that
these qualities are ultimately imponderable and the number of men of
character that the system can throw up is an index of the quality, not merely
of that system, but also of that culture and that civilization.
What a system of training can do, however, is to foster a collective
ethos that puts a premium on certain norms of behaviour. That builds up
good traditions and establishes a code of honour that makes it difficult for
members of the service to stray from the straight and narrow path. But all
this can be done only when one has a certain sense of vocation, a sense of
mission, of being involved in a momentous collective enterprise. The IAS
lacks this sense of vocation. It is not surprising therefore that the course of
training is also an aimless exercise.
It follows therefore that the Academy is not a real alma mater, a place
that houses the holy grail of sacred traditions but simply a pleasant place
which provides a lovely setting for a thoroughly enjoyable sojourn at an
impressionable age.
 My Experience as Collector

T hey say a man has three personalities; that which he tries to project
before others, that which he thinks he is, and that which he really is.
No man can really know what he appears to others, because the view from
the outside is always different from the view from the inside. It always
surprised me therefore when I was told by my respondents, that the emotion
I chiefly inspired as an administrator, was fear. I have always believed that
if I have a fault, it is that I am too kind hearted and loath to punish people.
But there is no rationality in these matters and analysis is useless. Let me
therefore take you to the high point of my official career, my tenure as
Collector, without further ado, and leave this matter to your judgement.
The post of Collector is a legacy of colonial rule. It still evokes visions
of a pucca sahib in a pith helmet astride a horse and surrounded by
supplicating ryots. There is no doubt that this post epitomizes a paternalistic
vision, a certain view of themselves which the British had. The trappings
that go with the post leave one in no doubt that it has an imperialist
background and history. But it would be a mistake to regard it merely as a
colonial imposition. The British merely grafted their own notions of
governance upon existing practices and institutions. They also brought to
the business of governance a certain moral earnestness and evangelical
fervour. This too is now a part of the history of the post. It is not therefore a
case of one type of despotism superimposed upon another. It is rather a
view of despotism tempered with a regard for the rule of law and the
welfare of the governed.
 I think this moral leaven makes the post unique. It is as close as you
can get to Plato's Guardians, without bringing in the less benign aspects of
his system. There is no other post which offers such opportunities for doing
good. The people used to look upon the Collector as the Mai Baap. Literally
as their mother and father. While this undiluted paternalism may be
offensive to liberal sentiments, this is how things stood when I was
Collector. The people had total faith in the power of the Collector to redress
their wrongs. Whether one was a victim of the tyranny of petty officials or
of the local landlord, whether one had a land dispute or some other problem
of a personal nature, it often came before the Collector for solution. The
authority of the Collector has now been weakened greatly and the balance
of power has shifted in favour of politicians. This is all to the good. I
support these developments wholeheartedly. However, I speak of days when
the Mai Baap Sarkar was still a reality. No officer with a conscience could
let down such touching faith. I was certainly resolved to uphold it to the
fullest extent.
In my opinion there are three types of Collectors. The first type is the
conscientious civil servant, keen to do good, but strictly within the narrow
bounds of official propriety and without rocking the boat in any way. This
officer likes to play by the rules, he would not be a party to wrongdoing, but
nor would he be willing to go out of the way to help some one in distress.
His good Samaritan instincts are kept well in check by a scrupulous regard
for official decorum and by an unwillingness to risk his own career in any
way. The civil service is a hierarchy where the opinions of senior officers
have more impact on the career of a civil servant than the sentiments of the
people whom one is supposed to serve. Hierarchies favour conformity with
conventional wisdom. This being the case, the conscientious civil servant is
forced to circumscribe his finer feelings within pretty narrow boundaries.
The second officer is the outright cynic who dismisses all moral
considerations and agrees to be a total stooge of politicians, in return for the
favours which they alone can bestow. In the civil service, an officer is only
as good as the post he holds. No account is taken of a man's ability and
character. It is a completely amoral system where personal advancement is
the only ethical creed. In spite of all rhetoric and pious platitudes, this is the
sad truth. Now there is a vast difference between different posts which are
nominally in the same grade. For instance, the Chief Secretary and the
President of the Board of Revenue are nominally in the same grade, but
while the Chief Secretary wields a lot of power, the PBR is only a
figurehead. The politicians know this, and as all postings are in their hands,
they have been quick to exploit this weakness to manipulate the civil
service. The irony of the situation is that independence and political
neutrality are still considered the core values of the civil service, and a
bogus pretence of neutrality is still sought to be kept up. The politicians
enjoy this irony. They are not taken in by the pretence – they laugh at it. It
only provides a convenient cloak for official complicity in ministerial
malfeasance. All this applies with even more force to the post of Collector.
The second type then agrees to sell his soul to the politicians for forty
pieces of silver, or whatever we consider its modern equivalent. He ignores
the tradition of political neutrality. He is not only blatantly partisan, he is
often corrupt as well. He obviously enjoys the trappings of power. In fact
vulgar ostentation is his forte. The sad truth is not that this type of officer is
increasingly coming to dominate the service, but that people are so resigned
to their lot that they do not expect anything better.
This brings me to the third type – this is the benevolent despot, the
original archetypal Collector during the days of the Raj, but now a
vanishing breed. This is a man (or woman) who lives by his own rules. He
is often eccentric, wayward and prone to megalomania, but he is
nonetheless the best representative of the bureaucrat as a ruler. It would
seem the easiest thing in the world to be a despot but this particular type
needs more courage of conviction and moral integrity than any other type.
The reason is not difficult to see. To be worth your salt as Collector you are
required to act independently and not be seen as an agent of the state
government. This is unlikely to endear you to your political masters or the
senior civil servant who run the bureaucracy. As the career prospects of a
civil servants depend entirely on the opinion of his seniors and politicians in
power, it would require an unusual degree of commitment to an ideal to risk
one's career for the sake of some belief. There are however still many civil
servants who are driven by their own inner convictions and who do not
mind incurring the displeasure of the powers that be, for the sake of making
the most of the opportunity that is provided by this office.
Let me however add a clarification. I do not want to give the
impression that the word 'despot' which I have used in this context, signifies
some hidden craving for power. Those who are driven by a desire for power
are always willing to make compromises for its own sake. The possession
of power requires a certain submission. Submission – not only to those who
are nominally in superior positions, but also to popular prejudice and
rulings conventions. But an officer of this type never makes compromises
for the sake of expediency. He is a despot only in the sense that he uses his
authority, his very considerable authority to the fullest extent, in order to
deliver justice. What this means in practice, I shall explain presently.
As far I am concerned, I was lucky in the sense that I did not have to
face any moral dilemmas. I had made up my mind to quit the service as
soon as I was eligible for a pension. My career did not interest me. In any
case, given my temperamental angularities I did not have any career
prospects. I did not aspire to be the Chief Secretary. I was without
ambitions of this kind. Consequently it was easy for me to decide the issue.
My decision was to use my authority in the widest possible way. I had also
decided to keep as little contact with the state government as possible and
not to cede any of my influence and authority to politicians.
To those of you who are not familiar with this office it may be
interesting to know the kind of life a Collector leads. As I have already said
it is an imperial legacy and outwardly the most obvious signs are the
trappings of this colonial heritage. My official residence for example, was a
rambling old bungalow that had once been occupied by the political agent.
It stood in a compound that was several acres in size. In the front was a
large lawn, fringed by several noble old trees and clumps of giant bamboo
that formed a small wilderness. At the back of the house were fields which
stretched away as far as the small river which flowed through the town. By
the side of the river was a jetty where a paddle boat was permanently
moored. The house itself was the usual colonial affair, with cavernous high
ceiling rooms and large verandahs in front. Although it was kept in good
repair, its splendour was rather faded. The ballroom had been converted into
a meeting hall. The parquet flooring had lost its shine. The yellow plaster
was flaking off here and there from the walls. The liveried servants, the
bowing and the scraping, were still there but the grandiose pose seemed to
have lost its meaning.
I should like to set down my recollection of how a Collector's time is
apportioned between various activities. My own estimate of my work
schedule would be as follows:
Meeting people 50 per cent
Case Work 10 per cent
Disposal of files 10 per cent
Touring 20 per cent
Meetings 10 per cent
My chief recollection of my tenure as Collector is of being surrounded
by people all the time. These people were not the local grandees, or the
important people of the district. Nor were they the hangers on and the
power brokers who surround those in authority. They were by and large the
common people of the district – the farmers, the labourers, the mechanics
and factory workers who constituted the bulk of the population. They came
as usual with all kinds of problems and they expected me to solve them.
Many of them came from far corners of the district, some brought their own
bundles of firewood with them, knowing that they would not be able to
return the same day and prepared for an overnight stay. Many came
clutching bundles of papers yellowed with age, dog-eared and begrimed
with much use. These papers were usually orders passed in their favour by
some court or authority, orders which had perhaps still not been
implemented. The sight of old limbs burdened with such a weight of woe,
old eyes clouded with so much despair was enough to touch any heart,
however hardened.
However, I do not want to give the impression that a sentimental
regard for the people is all that is needed to make a success of the job.
There is much more to it than that. The people of India are as shrewd and
canny as people anywhere. They are good judges of character and have an
acute political consciousness. They can see through humbug and cant quite
easily and appreciate firmness and the capacity to enforce tough decisions.
What they look up to is the strong arm of the state to protect them, but it
still has to be a strong arm.
The other important thing about the job is that it is a territorial charge.
One is conscious of the large size of the territory in one's jurisdiction and
the sheer length and breadth of the geographical area which forms the
testing ground of one's ability. This large size of most districts means
touring is indispensable if an officer is to keep abreast of developments in
his district. Luckily for me I enjoy touring. I much prefer it to sitting in an
office, however comfortable that office might be. I like the feeling of being
on the open road, out in the country, with a long way to cover and 'miles to
go before I sleep'. I like the sights and sounds of the Indian countryside, and
its changing hues that change with the seasons. The sight of teak trees in
flower in the winter, when the clouds of dust coloured blossoms envelop the
trees or the fragrance of the myriads of Sal flowers in the summer season
when the evergreen Sal tree is bedecked with panicles of fragrant flowers in
glorious profusion, when all else is withered with the heat. I have a cast of
mind that is peculiarly susceptible to the romance of strange places and the
beauty of nature. And though I have trouble remembering faces, my
memory is peculiarly tenacious when it comes to geographical features. I
can still remember the names of the innumerable rivers and streams and
rivulets that one encounters on a given stretch of country. I also remember
the names of most of the villages that I have visited even once, and many of
these names have the evocative power to recreate the original sensations
which one felt on first visiting them.
However, touring is not only about covering terrain and geographical
distance. It is about people. Even in the remotest forest one finds some
settlement, whose denizens require your attention. And there are
innumerable administrative problems which are solved simply by virtue of
your being on the spot. It is the only way to a deeper involvement with the
people of the district. It is therefore this combination of purposeful activity
and innocent enjoyment which makes touring so pleasant.
Touring can come in useful in unexpected ways. To give you some
idea of how this can happen let me tell you an incident that happened when
I was Collector of Sehore district. The year was 1985. The month was
November. I had just returned to the district after attending a training
course, when I received news that a child had been killed by a strange
animal in Ashta Tehsil. This incident occurred in broad daylight. A man and
his wife were working in a field on the edge of a forest. Their only son, a
boy of about eight, was playing a little distance away. It was a little after
midday and the man and his wife had just opened their afternoon repast
when they heard a strangled cry and on looking up saw an animal carrying
off their boy into the forest. They ran after the animal shouting and
brandishing their laathi, but they were already too late. When they reached
their boy they saw that he was already in the throes of death. His stomach
had been torn open and the entrails were hanging out. An animal which
looked like a hyena, scampered off into the forest at their approach. The
agony of parents losing their child in this ghastly way, before their very
eyes, can be imagined. The news of this incident travelled all over the tehsil
like wild fire but before the authorities had any time to react another
incident occurred a little over twenty kilometres from this village. A woman
was working in field in front of her house, which was a little distance away
from the village. Her small child was sleeping in a makeshift hammock
slung between two trees. When the woman returned from her work to pick
up her child, she found the hammock empty. There was a small splash of
blood nearby, apart from this there was no other sign to indicate what had
happened. However the news of the first incident had reached the village
and the same animal or animals were suspected to be behind this incident.
A search party was soon organized, but apart from finding the garment
which the boy had been wearing, they had no other success. The boy's body
was never found.
These incidents naturally led to the whole area being put in a state of
panic. An undeclared curfew was observed over the entire Ashta tehsil. As
soon as evening fell people locked themselves indoors. Mothers did not
leave their children alone, keeping watch over them. However, as the
strange animals only attacked during the hours of daylight and as children
can never be tied down completely, these precautions did not seem to work
and in a space of a little over two months, seventeen children were killed
over an area of roughly four hundred square miles.
I should like to give the reader some idea of the area in which these
incidents took place. Those of you who have travelled from Bhopal to
Indore will remember Ashta. It is a small tehsil town about mid way
between Bhopal and Indore. A few miles further south west of Ashta, the
road comes across a small plateau. This plateau extends for about ten
kilometres along the road. As one descends from the far side a vast
panorama of rolling hills and a wide valley lying between them opens out to
the west and the south. This broad valley is drained by the Dudhi river, a
seasonal torrent with a wide rocky bed which is dry after the rainy season.
The valley is roughly bisected by the Indore-Bhopal highway running east
to west. To the north and south are low hills of the kind already described.
On the far western side the road ascends very gradually, till it enters the
forests of Dewas district. This vast amphitheatre, roughly twenty kilometres
across, on either side was the scene of the tragedies which I have just
mentioned.
Investigations by the forest department revealed that the killer animal
was a wolf. At this stage it was not suspected that a whole pack of wolves,
rather than a single animal was involved. This fact emerged later. Initially
our suspicions were confined to a single wolf of giant size whose pug marks
were found near the site of one incident. The whole story of how this pack
was eliminated is an interesting narrative, but here I only wish to show how
my intimate knowledge of the geography of the area played a part in
accounting for one of the animals. A few miles to the south-east of the
small village of Dodi there is a bend in the Dudhi river which contains a
deep pool of water. This pool serves as a water hole for various animals
during the dry season. Further south of the river are fields of jowar and a
little beyond is a small hill at the foot of which runs a dirt track much
frequented by animals as well humans. I suspected that the wolf we were
looking for used the water hole for drinking and must therefore sooner or
later turn up at this spot. As the dirt track was much used by animals it was
reasonable to suppose that this wolf would also use it.
The little hill I have spoken of commanded a good view of the dirt
track and any animal using it could not escape notice if there was enough
light to see it. However it was quite possible that the wolf being a man-eater
would use the cover of darkness to quench its thirst. It was necessary
therefore to set a little trap. Our plan was to use a small dummy of a human
child to bait the wolf. As the wolf was used to hunting during day light it
was quite possible that it would approach the dummy while there was
enough light to shoot by. In order to confuse the wolf the dummy was clad
in clothes recently used by a child. This would ensure that the clothes had
the human smell which would entice the wolf. To complete the deception
we also recorded the crying of a child and used the tape recorder to create
the impression of a child crying his head off. Having thus completed the
trap we took our station behind some bushes a little distance from the
dummy. There were three of us, sitting over the dummy. There was the
district judge who, apart from his legal acumen also possessed a keen
interest in shikar, and there was the Assistant Conservator of Forest who
was there in the call of duty. The three of us sat in a wide semicircle. All of
us were armed with. 12 bore shot guns and flashlights.
Imagine the scene then. The dirt track passing at the foot of the hill
and being lost to sight beyond a bend that took it behind us. Fields of jowar,
standing as tall as a man, stretching away to the west and the sun setting
beyond them over the brow of another low hill. It was a tranquil scene. As
the twilight deepened, the silence became deeper. Suddenly the tranquillity
was shattered by the eerie long drawn out wail of a wolf. There is
something uncanny about the cry of a wolf, it is like the tortured wailing of
a human soul in agony. I think all of us felt a little tremor of anticipation as
well as apprehension at this cry.
This cry was, however, followed by silence. By now it was completely
dark. I switched on the tape recorder to set up the crying of the child. After
a while, I switched off the machine so that we could hear the animal, should
it fall into our trap. But we heard nothing. The silence was by now palpable.
Just to relieve the tension I switched on the flashlight and shone it on the
dummy. It was well that I did so, for there was the wolf, practically in the
act of springing on the dummy. Two guns to my right and left spoke
simultaneously. The animal was hit twice and was thrown off its feet by the
force of the discharge. As it lay writhing, the ACF fired again. After he had
emptied both the barrels he ran down and started hitting the animal with the
butt of his gun. The wooden butt was soon broken, but the animal was dead.
Later a post-mortem confirmed our suspicions. Human remains were found
in the stomach of the wolf. Pieces of cloth, as well as hair and bone
fragments, confirmed that we had indeed killed the man-eating wolf of
Ashta.
The point of the story is that it was due to my familiarity with the
terrain that we were able to choose the right spot to set our ambush. That
was the reason why we were able to succeed where many shikaris had
failed.
I have recounted this incident to give the reader an idea of the flavour
and texture of the life of a Collector. It is a life spent mostly out of doors, on
the open road, or in upcountry rest houses. It is a life which is subject to
periods of inactivity, followed by bouts of feverish activity. But above all it
is a life whose meaning and purpose depends on the incumbent. Everything
depends on his personality and this dependence on personal factors shows
that there is something seriously wrong with the way we have defined this
job.
Conventional wisdom holds that the Collector is an agent of the state
government. The historical antecedents of the post confirm this and the
constitutional position of an unelected official in a democratic polity can
not be otherwise. Yet the people expect the Collector to be an independent
authority, above party politics and quite detached from the political agenda
of a government, which after all is formed by a political party. During the
British Raj the government was a remote entity which did not have any
political rivals. The Collector was therefore the government of the district.
He could afford to be neutral when adjudicating between people who did
not pose any challenge to the political position of the government. But in
these democratic days governments in power have political rivals who also
expect to be treated fairly. The demand for neutrality has therefore grown,
while the scope of a Collector's discretion and his ability to distance himself
from his political masters has declined. This has set up a conflict of
expectations. The people expect the Collector to function in a neutral
manner, but the government expects him to toe the line. On the other hand,
where the Collector is expected to take sides and the throw the weight of his
authority and influence into the scales – he is often unable to do so because
he does not have a proper conception of his role.
As all the cards are in the government's hands and as the people have
no influence on a civil servant's career, it is only natural that most
Collectors accept the conventional view and act as agents of the state
government. This is a pity, because by doing so, they abandon their basic
role, which is to deliver justice. By justice I do not mean the sort of justice
that is provided in the courts of law. The sort of justice that follows after a
lengthy and expensive course of litigation is usually beyond the reach of the
poor man. By justice I mean a deliberate attempt to redress the balance of
power in favour of the underdog. By justice I mean a pro-active use of state
power to help those who are the victims of oppression. This may mean
setting aside the involved legal procedures of institutional justice, it may
also mean taking recourse to rough and ready means sometimes. But this to
my mind is the only way to help those who are often too poor, too ignorant,
or simply too weak to help themselves.
 Let me illustrate what I mean by referring to some true incidents. One
day as I sat in my court receiving petitions, a man appeared before me,
bowed down with the weight of woe. His face seemed prematurely
wrinkled and aged; and his eyes were clouded with some secret sorrow. He
clutched a sheaf of papers in his hand which he thrust at me. On going
through his papers, I saw that he had a judgement passed in his favour by
the High Court directing the respondent to pay damages to the petitioner for
the death of his son; caused by rash and negligent driving by one of the
respondent's trucks. The judgement was more than two years old. On
talking to the man, I learnt that although he had won damages from the
High Court, the local authorities were loath to recover this amount from the
respondent, because he was a powerful man with a dangerous reputation.
The Tehsildar had been issuing recovery warrants against the respondent,
but every time the notices were brought back without service with the
endorsement that the respondent was not to be found at his given address.
Finally, when the respondent was forced to appear in court, his plea was
that he had no property with which to pay the decreed amount, and this
statement was found to be quite true. Though obviously a rich man, with a
fleet of trucks, the respondent owned nothing in his own name.
Here was a nice question for the legal pundits. The poor old man worn
down by his grief, had gone from pillar to post, petitioning all the
authorities, including the Collector, but no one had listened to him. He had
neither the money, nor the energy to start another round of litigation. He
had come to me, not indeed with hope, but out of sheer desperation. At the
same time the respondent; who was a local grandee, held court everyday
and walked about with a swagger. Any one of his fleet of trucks would have
yielded more than the amount required, but legally he could not be touched.
Here is a case which called for administrative justice in the sense that I have
described. What actually happened in this case is another story which, for
the sake of modesty, I will not recount here.
Let me rather tell another story of political interference which I
suspect must have happened to many individual in my situation. In the town
of 'S 'was a gentleman who was notorious for his skill as a forger. He had
managed to forge a 'patta' dating back to state times, in his favour and by
virtue of the forged instrument had obtained possession of some prime land
in the heart of the town. All this was well known to everyone, including the
authorities, yet no one did anything, because as normally happens in such
cases, this person had powerful connections in the ruling party. The man
was also a professional litigant, that is, he was able to use the law to his
own advantage and to the disadvantage of his adversaries by involving the
whole issue in a complex web of law suits. This man had a large circle of
friends, and held court every day on the encroached piece of land. This land
was so situated that I had to pass it every time I left my office, and thus had
to witness the spectacle. In short, it was a standing affront to the rule of law
and I resolved to do something about it.
I knew that the affair had already been through a long course of
litigation, having gone right up to the Board of Revenue, and the last order
in the case was passed by the local Tehsildar, confirming the title of the said
gentleman. Undaunted, I took up the case in suo motu revision and after a
brief hearing posted the case for final judgement. This date I fixed on a
Friday, the reason being that Saturday and Sunday being holidays, the
respondent would be prevented from getting a stay order from any court of
law. This was essential, because as I have already mentioned, the
respondent was a past master at using the law to delay matters. Things went
according to plan and I announced the final judgement on Friday, rather late
in the day, directing the respondent to remove his encroachment within
twenty four-hours, failing which he was to be evicted by force.
Needless to say, the encroachment was not removed and the
demolition was accordingly fixed for Sunday morning. A large contingent
of police was kept ready, because the respondent was expected to mobilise
his supporters and create trouble. I was all ready to set out when my home
guard jawan whose task it was to attend the phone appeared before me, all
in a flutter, and said, "Sir! The Chief Minister is on the line". This too was
not unexpected, and I had specifically told the man not to take any calls
from the state capital, but he had been so overawed by the mention of the
Chief Minister's name that he had forgotten his instructions. I told him to
tell the person at the other end that the line was very bad and I would call
later.
Needless to say, I did not call back. There would have been no point.
There was trouble as expected, but a major part of the encroachment was
removed. I have narrated this story to illustrate how administrative justice
differs from the justice that is purely legalistic in orientation. Let me add, as
a postscript, that the respondent was able again to use the law to his own
advantage, and by dint of court orders, albeit from a revenue court this time,
he was gradually able to re-establish himself. Today, I am told, he is back to
his original position.
It is satisfying to be able to do justice, even in one case. It leaves one
with an abiding satisfaction to help out someone who really needs help. Yet
many officers who have been Collectors and have paused to reflect on their
job will agree with me that most officers complete their tenure with a sense
of dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction comes about partly from the conflict
of expectations that I have already mentioned, and partly from the way
things are organized in the field. As is only natural in a democracy, the
substance of power has now passed on to politicians, but formal authority
still remains with the Collector. This effort to maintain a bogus pretence is
responsible for many of the distortions and falsities that have crept into the
system.
This system of make believe is maintained because it suits politicians.
Politicians like a system which allows them be to the de facto rulers while
keeping up the pretence of government by officials because it gives them
power without responsibility. Power without responsibility has always been,
as Churchill said, the prerogative of the harlot down the ages. It is attractive
but ultimately fatal. At the same time, the civil servants who jump on the
bandwagon, are able to exercise authority without accountability. Their
political godfathers ensure that they do not come to any harm for any sins
of omission or commission. We thus have the worst of both the worlds.
The politicians like this system for another reason, and that is that it
enables them to project their power in the same manner as an autocratic
government while keeping up the pretence of democracy. The Collector's
office is after all a relic of colonialism. We have to ask ourselves why the
state governments need an agent, whereas most democratic governments
are able to manage their affairs quite well enough without an unelected
official acting as their plenipotentiary. By using the prescriptive authority of
this office, the politicians are able to project their power into the far corners
of the state in an autocratic manner. No wonder the most vehement
supporters of this office are the Chief Ministers.
The second reason why this system of pretence and humbug survives
is due to civil service elitism. It is one of the basic tenets of elitism that a
member of the elite is good enough to do any job, whatever the
qualifications needed. The demands of functional efficiency and public
interest are not taken into account. Consequently, the job of Collector
combines widely divergent functions which should be really quite separate.
Broadly speaking the Collector has two different kinds of responsibilities.
First come his statutory responsibilities, conferred on him by the various
statutes and regulations that have multiplied over the course of time. Then
come the various powers and responsibilities that have devolved on him by
virtue of his position as an agent of the state government. This includes his
coordinating role in district administration and his status as the repository of
the residual powers of the state. These two powers were combined in the
same person by the British for a good reason. The British Raj was an
autocracy tempered with legalism, and the Collector was therefore a despot
who maintained a facade of the rule of law. He was not really a civil servant
in the modern sense. To transpose this office to the present day and to graft
it on a democratic polity is all but impossible. Yet we have gone through
with this false synthesis in the interest of civil service elitism. The way out
of this regime of humbug and proxy rule is to separate the two streams of
powers vested in the Collector. The executive authority of the state should
be vested in elected councils, as it is in Europe. The Pachayati Raj system
has already gone some way towards this and this tendency should be taken
to its logical conclusion. At the same time, the statutory powers of Collector
should be vested in a functionary who is outside the control of the state
government and can thus act in an independent and unbiased manner. He
may be ultimately accountable to the state legislature or some other
bipartisan body, but he should not be subjected to political control in his
day-to-day functioning. This is absolutely imperative if we want to save the
rule of law. To give just one example of the flagrant manner in which
political control has vitiated the independent statutory authority of the
Collector, one has only to refer to incidents of breakdown of law and order
where the state government has interfered to the detriment of law as well as
public order. The code of criminal procedure does not recognize any
authority above that of the District Magistrate in matters of law and order,
yet most DMs consult the Chief Minister and proceed on his advice in
matters where their own discretion is supreme. In one celebrated incident,
where a DM did not use force to disperse an unlawful assembly, his defence
is that he was under orders of the Chief Minister not to use force. Such
orders, if indeed there were any, did not have any legal sanction. But the
poor DM chose to put his own self-interest, above the rule of law. This of
course is not an isolated incident. Many a time the peace and security of this
realm has been violated because of unwarranted and unwarrantable
interference by politicians in a matter which should be left to the discretion
of a neutral authority. As long as the DM is a creature of the state
government, such incidents will continue to happen.
I am aware that the earlier part of this chapter where I have argued in
favour of the Collector being a benevolent despot will appear to be in
conflict in with the arguments advanced above. Let me therefore explain
this apparent inconsistency. When I spoke of the role of the Collector being
mainly to dispense justice I was speaking from the point of view of a civil
servant who wants to make the most of an opportunity that has come his
way. From the perspective of a civil servant who is keen to do good and is
not constrained by careerist ambitions or sheer timidity of character this
seems to me the only sensible way forward. Therefore given a second
innings I would still follow the same policy that I have outlined above.
However on reflection, I do not recommend this policy to others, simply
because I do not think most civil servants will follow it anyway. This policy
demands too much self-assertion in one sense and too much self-denial in
another. I say too much self-assertion because only some one who is willing
to stand by his own beliefs in the teeth of conventional wisdom will be
disposed to follow the course of action outlined above. Too much self-
denial, because only a person who is indifferent to the trappings of power
and the insidious way in which it corrupts a man's judgement and
discrimination could go on resisting temptation and doing justice to the
underdog. Such contrary virtues are seldom found together. One cannot
therefore recommend a creed which puts such a strain on human fallibility.
However, the latter recommendations regarding the restructuring of
the Collector's job are from the stand point of a reformer who has the
notional freedom to 'change this sorry scheme of things entire'. This
freedom is the birthright of authors everywhere. Looking at the issue from
this angle, I have suggested a change in the whole set up for two reasons.
First, I do not think we should allow our politicians to get away with the
irresponsibility of proxy rule any longer. They should be given the
executive authority of the state and should then be held accountable for
what they do. No longer should we permit them to pull the strings from
behind the scenes and pin the blame on bureaucrats when things go wrong.
This would put an end to the regime of humbug and make believe and
would be in the interest of officials as well as politicians.
Moreover, this would prevent Chief Ministers from running a
personalized autocracy while swearing by democratic principles. They
would find it much more difficult to deal with an elected council or a
Panchayat than a hand picked official who is beholden to them in the first
place.
The second and much more important reason is that it would be a step
towards the establishment of civil society. If we accept the principle that a
civil society is chiefly distinguished by its reverence for the law,
strengthening any institution that is concerned with law enforcement and
liberating it from partisan political control would only conduce to the rule
of law. It would also put an end to the culture of dependence and force the
people to take responsibility for their own lives. When they stop looking to
an over mighty official who represents an imperialistic conception of state
power and take their destiny in their own hands – that would be truly a
change in the direction of freedom and democracy. The time for such a
change has come.
 Life as a Senior Civil Servant

L et me now come to the last phase of my career – that of Secretary to

government. Before becoming Secretary, I served as head of various
departments. In all these posts I was conscious of a decline in the
importance of the kind of work I was doing, compared to the work I did as a
district officer, but it was only when I became Secretary to the government,
supposedly the pinnacle of one's career that the sheer futility of the job was
brought home to me in all its starkness. The function of a Secretary to the
government is to aid and advise the minister in the discharge of his
responsibility. Which is to say, the Secretary in effect does nothing. He only
advises, and if his advise is rejected, he does not fume and fret, but like a
good civil servant takes up some other matter. This system is grounded in
the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, a comfortable legal fiction that
rests on the premise that the minister takes both the praise and the blame for
the functioning of his department and is solely accountable to the
legislature. The civil servants who advise him are faceless, anonymous
creatures, who are protected from Parliamentary censure and public
disgrace for their actions, even when they happen to make mistakes. This
doctrine works in a rather perverse manner in practice, because ministers,
while always willing to accept praise, are, when it comes to criticism, only
too willing to find official scapegoats for their own misdeeds. Times
without number, one has heard the following dialogue in legislative
chambers across the country:
Member: Will the minister assure the House that the matter shall be
investigated and those responsible shall be punished?
 Minister: I assure the House that this matter shall be investigated
thoroughly and those (officials) found guilty shall not be spared. In fact I'll
nominate the honourable member as one of the members of the enquiry
committee.
On the other hand, it is rare these days to hear of a minister accepting
responsibility and resigning from office on account of any lapse. So much
for the doctrine of ministerial responsibility! The point of citing it here is to
highlight its unfortunate impact on the quality of advice that is tendered.
Ideally this advice should be forthright and unequivocal. The minister
should of course be presented with a range of options where they are
available but he should be left in no doubt as to what is being
recommended. This kind of forthrightness, however, may prove to be costly
if things go wrong somehow. Most civil servants have therefore adopted the
SoS policy. SoS meaning save your own skin. This means that in practice
the official advice is seldom forthright, it is usually accompanied by several
ifs and buts, and waffling of the 'on the one hand and on the other hand
type', culminating in a kind of incomprehensible bureaucratic argot
caricatured so effectively in 'Yes Minister'. This places the onus for decision
making on the minister and allows the bureaucrats to wriggle out of
responsibility should things go wrong.
But there is another aspect of the problem which is even more
negative in its impact. This stems from the fact that on any serious issue,
serious in the sense of materially affecting the public interest; decisions are
usually taken on political considerations and bureaucratic advice is likely to
be of little or no consequence. Thus a civil servant may well find that while
his advise as to the number of toilets to be built for ladies in the Secretariat
is likely to be accepted without demur, when it comes to the number of new
schools to be opened in a district, the decision is going to be taken on
political grounds. No one is likely to take pains over his work when he
knows that it is unlikely to receive serious consideration. Let me recount an
incident which illustrates this perfectly.
This happened when I was Secretary in the Tribal Welfare
Department. The state government in its wisdom had decided to introduce
the sixth schedule of the Constitution in the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh.
A resolution was rammed through the state legislature and passed without
any informed discussion. A proposal was thenceforth forwarded to the
Government of India recommending the introduction of the sixth schedule
in M. P. A committee was formed under an eminent academician to
demarcate the areas for inclusion in the sixth schedule and to work out the
other modalities of the question. When I took charge of the office, things
were thus pretty far advanced. The first thing I did on assuming charge was
to call the file relating to the subject. What I saw shocked me. This was an
issue with grave constitutional implications and with far reaching political
consequences, but it had been dealt with in a most superficial and slipshod
manner. The file had travelled right up to the senior most civil servant, the
state Chief Secretary himself, but that worthy had barely applied his mind
to the issue. The complex constitutional and legal aspect of the problem had
not even been formulated let alone discussed. Whatever official notings
were available on the file seemed to uncritically endorse the decision of the
political masters. What one witnessed here was more than intellectual
dishonesty, it was sycophancy and time serving of the worst kind.
As it happened, I was familiar with the issue because I had served
earlier in the department. I knew it was a divisive issue. It was likely to
divide hitherto peaceful communities on ethnic lines and plunge the state
into communal discord. The state government was playing the politics of
division for short-term political gains. It was following the cynical policy of
divide and rule followed by the British rulers, but it did not have their
excuse and it was going well beyond even what they had contemplated.
What was worse, the state government knew that the proposal was
constitutionally unsound and could never be accepted by the Government of
India, yet they were playing up the matter for all it was worth in the hope of
gaining some short lived political advantage. At the same time there was no
informed debate on the issue either among the political class or in the
media. Thus all the estates of the realm, either through connivance or
through ignorance seemed to conspire at a proposal which was nothing if
not a fraud on the Constitution. A few words about the background of the
case will make this clear.
The constitutional lineage of the fifth and sixth schedules goes back to
the Constitution of 1919, wherein certain areas in the North-East as well as
the Lahaul Spiti valley of Himachal Pradesh were designated as "wholly
excluded areas". Certain other tribal areas of central India were designated
as "areas of modified exclusion". These provisions were retained in the
Constitution of 1935, though the nomenclature was slightly modified. They
were now called "excluded areas", and "partly excluded areas". These same
provisions were incorporated almost unchanged in the Constitution of free
India as the fifth and sixth schedules.
The import of this peculiar nomenclature; "excluded areas", is actually
clear enough. The intention of the colonial rulers was to keep these areas
outside the political mainstream. In these areas, especially in the tribal areas
of the North-East missionary influence was strong. The British perceived
these areas to be well disposed towards their regime and therefore wanted
to keep them safe from the contagion of the Congress dominated anti-
British politics of the rest of India. Thus in the name of safeguarding tribal
traditions and autonomy, the traditional system of tribal government was
institutionalized, tribal custom was given the force of law and the state
restricted itself to a nominal presence. All political rights were confined to
the tribals, but in an area where almost the entire population was tribal, this
was not seen to be unjust.
It will be readily seen, that the sixth schedule is a retrogressive piece
of legislation. It looks back at some mythical golden age as the aspirational
norm to be followed and precludes the development of modern political
institutions and representative democracy. Worse still, it takes no account of
the political rights of other communities and assumes that society will
remain homogeneously tribal for all time to come. Seen in this context, Dr.
Ambedkar's views (paraphrased by me) on this legislation, as expressed by
him in the Constituent Assembly do not come as a surprise:
The tribal communities of the North-East differ from
the rest of the country in their culture and way of life.
They may be said to constitute almost a separate
nation as the Red Indians do in America. The sixth
schedule creates tribal enclaves like the Indian
reservations in America and likewise should remain
confined to its present area. It is not our intention to
introduce this anywhere else.
Dr. Ambedkar's views clearly show his own misgivings on this score,
misgivings which have been justified by time, because the sixth schedule
has been responsible, among other things, for keeping the North-East cut
off from the national mainstream.
 In any case the spirit of our Constitution is inimical to political
institutions founded on ethnicity. Therefore no responsible person, even if
he be a political adventurer, would dream of introducing this measure in
Madhya Pradesh, where even in the tribal district of Bastar, more than thirty
per cent of the population is non-tribal. Yet this was what the state
government proposed to do.
The issue was thus a grave one. It was not only constitutionally
perverse, it was politically unwise as well, because it sought to divide
communities on ethnic lines for short-term political gains. The intellectual
dishonesty as well as the analytical ineptitude displayed by the civil service
mandarins in this case was depressing. Considering the gravity of the issue,
one would have expected passionate argument, rigorous analysis, as well as
vision and commitment to the long-term issues which I have just outlined
above, in short all that goes into the making of honest advice when it is
given in the right spirit by persons of calibre. Instead, what one witnessed
here was worse than incompetence, it was collusion.
The choice before me was therefore clear. I immediately wrote out a
long note discussing the constitutional background of the case and argued
strongly against its adoption by the state. I did not mince my words, the
evidence of history, the weight of law, and the force of reason were all on
my side, and I thought what I had written was therefore incontrovertible and
no reasonable man could turn it down without forsaking reason itself. I took
the note to my official superior, a man who enjoyed a reputation for being
something of an intellectual. He kept the file for a day and called me up the
next day. After a while, I asked him what he thought of my note. His
response shocked me, he said, "What's the use of all this when the CM has
already taken a decision?" There was no attempt at a reasoned response, no
attempt at a logical refutation of the arguments that I had marshalled, there
was only this oracular command delivered orally, which he thought was
sufficient to clinch the matter.
I want the reader to have a clear idea of the situation because it is
symptomatic of what is really wrong with the civil service in general. Here
was this officer, fond of argument and debate and generally delivering
clever homilies on all things under the sun, and "inebriated", as Lytton
Strachey says of Gladstone, "with the exuberance of his own verbosity", yet
this man had not even bothered to read what I had written, but had simply
pulled down his mental shutters, because his political masters had decided
otherwise. His cynical refusal to engage in any rational discourse in the face
of political dictat was not merely an intellectual failure, it was a moral
surrender. It was not just an endorsement of the doctrine, that, 'the king can
do wrong', it seemed to elevate sycophancy to the level of an ethical creed.
It was then that I realized how far the rot had set in.
So much for honest advice. But let me suppose for the sake of
argument that this officer, had agreed with me, there would still remain the
departmental minister who is unlikely to overrule himself, unless his earlier
decision was flatly illegal. There is in any case, no problem about cases
where the rights and wrongs of a problem are clearly demarcated. The
problem arises in those far more numerous cases where the decision falls
short of outright illegality, but comes within the grey area of impropriety. In
such cases, considerations of value are always going to be outweighed by
political expediency. What recourse has the hapless civil servant in such
cases. The Madhya Pradesh government's Rules of Business prescribe that
in cases where the departmental secretary is in disagreement with the
minister he can request the minister to send the file to the Chief Minister for
final orders. The discretion, be it noted, is still left with the departmental
minister, who may be the delinquent party in the first place. He may or may
not send the file to the CM. It all depends on his whims and fancies. In most
cases he will fail to oblige the bureaucrat, after all, why should he submit
the matter to the arbitration of his political boss, if the decision lies with
him. It follows therefore that in the very few cases where upright civil
servants disagree with their minister, and resubmit the matter to him for
onward transmission to the CM, the file comes back with the remark that
there is no need to do so. This is the extent of the government's commitment
to upholding honest advice.
Let me close this chapter with an incident where a very senior civil
servant was made to connive at something which, though not illegal, was
still in my view gravely improper. This incident happened when I was
Secretary in a department, which has a big budget and disbursed a lot of
funds to other departments. A case came to our notice where the
departmental minister had gone against the advice of the departmental
secretary and made a large purchase order at a highly inflated cost. The
subordinate officers had either colluded with the minister or been brow
beaten into acquiescence. The departmental secretary had been overruled.
The material that was to be supplied had probably never reached its
destination. The minister's guilt as well as the collusion of the subordinate
officers was plain to see. We accordingly made out a case for enquiry by the
Lok Ayukta and sent the file to the CM for approval. The file was first seen
by the Chief Secretary and the approval of the General Administration
Department was obtained. The Chief Secretary and the General
Administration Department failed to scrutinise the file carefully and see that
a minister was likely to be implicated in the matter. The CM also failed to
see the catch and approved the matter. We were surprised but quite gleeful.
The file was sent to the Lok Ayukta and a receipt was obtained. Then we sat
back to await developments. But within a few hours, the minister got wind
of developments and it was then that the fatal weakness of civil servants
when dealing with politicians came into play.
I received a telephone call from my official superior, (not the person
previously mentioned), who was then at Delhi. He had been given a
dressing down by the CM who had accused him of betrayal and of acting
with malice aforethought. I commiserated with him. We both felt that we
had acted rightly. We both felt the glow of righteousness that comes from
standing up for a cause, even though, as it proved to be the case here, it be a
lost cause.
The next morning I received a phone call from the Chief Secretary.
After a few polite meaningless words, he came to the point. He wanted me
to recall the concerned file from the Lok Ayukta. This I pointed out to him
would be highly improper. But he was insistent. I then put up the matter to
him in writing, pointing out that such a step would be unprecedented and
would bring disrepute to the state government if it became known. But back
came my note with a written order that the offending file be recalled. The
Secretary to the Lok Ayukta, who had been sounded out in advance by the
government, proved amenable and returned the file to which he should have
clung like a leach.
In this manner a gravely improper thing was allowed to happen, with
the active connivance of no less a person than a Chief Secretary. The funny
thing was that he was also able to argue at the same time that what he was
doing was in the public interest. No one can beat the civil servants at giving
a high moral tone to their worst misdemeanours, especially when their own
interest is involved.
 The Character of the Average Civil Servant

T he members of the Indian Administrative Service constitute an elite.

They occupy the highest official posts in both the state and central
governments as if they were theirs by prescriptive right. In these positions
they are expected to carry out the fiendishly complex business of modern
government, without knowing very much about the departments that they
handle. They are lionised by society, feted by the press, and generally have
their passage through life made smooth by the various amenities which just
fall into their laps along with the plums of office.
With such a premium being put on their services, the country has a
legitimate right to expect a high standard of service and performance from
them. They are expected to be in fact, rather like the Guardians of Plato's
Republic, leading a Spartan life of poverty, renouncing their private claims
in favour of a life devoted to the service of the state, inflexible in their
rectitude and unswerving in their commitment to the cause of good
governance. Do they in fact measure up to this lofty ideal?
The fact is that they do not. The sad truth is not that they fall short of
the lofty ideal, failure in a difficult undertaking would be no disgrace, but
that they do not even accept the existence of these ethical norms. The sad
truth is that venality and jobbery are accepted as the norm rather than an
exception. The sad truth is that the cause of self-advancement is dearer to
most than the cause of the state and the dictates of politicians are obeyed
more readily than the dictates of conscience. I am reminded of T. S. Eliot's
poem on J. Alfred Prufrock, which sums up the character of the average
civil servant rather well:
 No, I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,
Am an attendant lord, one that'll do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince, no doubt an easy tool,
Politic, cautious, meticulous,
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse.
Indeed, at times almost ridiculous.
Almost at times the fool.
This picture of a pompous, vainglorious person, too full of his own
importance to realize his own futility sums up the case perfectly. The first
character trait of civil servants that comes to mind is obsession with rank
and status. This of course is not a failing of civil servants alone but a part of
our national character, but it is exaggerated sometimes to ridiculous lengths
in the case of civil servants. To begin with, this takes the shape of a rather
unnatural preoccupation with the outward trappings of authority, like
beacon lights on official cars. Many officers, not satisfied with converting
their vehicle into a mobile lighthouse, also put a light on the bonnet. As if
this were not enough, they also have a plaque affixed over the number plate,
which carries their official designation in gilt letters, quite often with a red
background for added effect. These tell-tale symbols are not just for effect
however, most civil servants also expect the traffic to give way at their
approach. I remember a Commissioner who was so incensed that a truck in
front of his official car would not let him pass on the narrow ghat road that
when he reached the nearest police station, he asked the police to challan
all the trucks coming up the road. The traffic jam that took place as a result
of his injured vanity stretched nearly for a mile.
This puerile obsession with rank and status often manifests itself in a
ludicrous competition to get the best postings, the best official cars, the best
official houses and even the best rooms in the secretariat. I can tell many a
tale about this business of room allotments because I was once in charge of
this rather sordid matter. There was, for instance, this officer who cultivated
a leftist image, but was rather fond of the trappings of authority. He was not
satisfied with his room and by dint of moving heaven and earth was able to
secure a room which was formerly occupied by a minister. This new room
was apparently large enough to satisfy his vanity, but as luck would have it
there was a cabinet expansion a few days later and this room was again
allotted to a minister. The bureaucrat was now relegated to a room which
was even smaller than his former room. This was an indignity not to be
borne and the officer concerned kept badgering me to give him a bigger
room. Again, purely as a matter of coincidence, the room that he had
originally occupied again fell vacant, and he was now willing to settle for
what had earlier seemed too small to him. There was poetic justice in this.
There is another story about the allotment of rooms in the Secretariat
which is truly hilarious, but which out of regard for the feelings of those
involved, I shall omit to narrate. Instead let me tell another story about the
allotment of rooms in a circuit house. As everyone knows, most circuit
houses in a district town have only two or three decent rooms and problems
sometimes arise when VIPs and WIPs all turn up together and ask for
rooms. There was once a Collector who was transferred because of a minor
glitch about the allotment or the non allotment of a room to a minister, but
that's another story. This one concerns a senior officer whom we shall call
X. The district where I was posted had a circuit house with only three good
rooms. When I was informed by his departmental officers that X was
scheduled to arrive the very next day, I was put in a quandry, because out of
the three rooms in the circuit house, one was occupied by the local minister,
another by the local MP and the third by an officer who was far senior to X.
This left only the fourth room which was much smaller in size as well as
rather bare in terms of furnishings. X, when he arrived was furious with me
for giving him a room that he did not consider commensurate with his
status. He conveniently forgot that the very same protocol, on the strength
of which he was making such exaggerated claims on the world, accorded a
higher rank to the three individuals who were occupying suites before him.
X gave vent to his resentment by a series of intemperate remarks whose
upshot was that I had deliberately slighted him. This was a ridiculous
charge, which I was prepared to repudiate in equally strong terms.
Fortunately for both of us, hearing the commotion, the senior officer, who
was in the next room came out and on learning of the problem offered X his
own room, as X was accompanied by his wife. This gentleman thus proved
himself to be the superior of X, not only in rank, but also in magnanimity,
but his gesture was as rare, as X's outburst was commonplace. Officers like
X, puffed up with a sense of their own importance often behave in this
manner. The tragedy is, such officers often rise to the top of the civil
service.
There is another story which can be mentioned as an interesting
sidelight to show how the official mind works when anything concerning
rank and status are involved. Everyone knows that the use of flashing
beacon lights on official cars, is a privilege reserved for ministers and those
officers who are directly involved in law enforcement. In a democracy, the
use of such symbols even by ministers is not quite right, but in any case
others are not permitted to use them. This is however a privilege that is
routinely abused by those who consider themselves important enough to
broadcast their status to the world. Senior bureaucrats, politicians who are
not ministers, high court judges, members of various tribunals and
commissions and so on. Some years ago the government of Madhya
Pradesh brought out an order, dividing these light users into three classes,
the most important people were allowed to use the red lights as before, the
second rank people, which included the civil servants were permitted to use
yellow lights instead of red, and ambulance and other medical services were
asked to use blue lights. This grotesque refinement of a basically
undemocratic practice is bad enough in itself, but now comes an extra twist
that makes the whole thing ridiculous. Among the bureaucrats only those
directly concerned with law enforcement were allowed to use beacon lights
with two exceptions; these exceptions were the Home Secretary and the
Chief Secretary. Now both these officers are also desk bound mandarins,
like the rest of the secretaries to government, and on the face of it there was
no justification in functional terms for them to advertise their rank over the
heads of the rest of their colleagues. It transpired that both these bureaucrats
had cornered this privilege because the concerned file had been processed
by them and they were thus able to insist upon an exception being made in
their case. This is the absurd length to which the civil servants can go in
their obsession with rank and status. It does not occur to them, that such
display is vulgar and undemocratic. That it reveals not a distinguished
person but an inferior mind. They do not remember that in this very country
there was a man who used to travel in third class compartments as a point of
principle because there was no fourth class, and whose simplicity and lack
of ostentation was such that the world calls him Mahatma. Such are the
unworthy inheritors of his legacy.
 From this general tendency another character trait can be inferred.
People who have so much regard for rank and status are unlikely to have
any regard for those who have neither rank or status, i.e, those who
constitute ninety nine per cent of the population of this country. I can say
from my experience of the civil service as a class that this is true. There are,
of course, many well intentioned and committed officers but these again are
in a minority. The civil service as an organizational hierarchy and as a class
does not take its character from these people. It takes its colour and
complexion from the kind of people I speak of and these people are
curiously disobliging to ordinary people, just as they are extremely obliging
to powerful people. In fact the successful careerist in the bureaucracy is
often the man who follows the policy of "lick above and kick below." He is
obsequious and fawning with senior officers and politicians, ruthless and
overbearing with subordinates and inaccessible to members of the public.
Now it has been a principle with me throughout my career, to be accessible
to everyone, and all those who came to see me, seemed to agree on one
point, that my colleagues were usually inaccessible to them and in their
eyes at least I had the inestimable virtue of being a patient listener, if
nothing else. Very often they asked for nothing else.
This lack of sympathy for the common man is the most damning
indictment that can be brought against a public servant in a country like
ours, where the majority of the population is without substantial wealth, or
influence, yet this is as true of the lower bureaucracy as of the highest civil
servants. Go to any office as an ordinary citizen, and you are unlikely to
meet with courtesy or consideration. Everyone, right from the peon and the
clerk sitting among disorderly piles of files, to the head of office, invisible
in his air conditioned chamber and usually inaccessible to ordinary people,
are all likely to be rude and overbearing. All this does not in any way
redeem the conduct of the senior civil servants, for they are after all
expected to set the standards.
This lack of regard for the common people is accompanied by
excessive servility towards people in authority. A member of the public
who has faced the rudeness and condescension of the over mighty
bureaucrat will be surprised if he saw them creeping and crawling before a
Chief Minister or a Prime Minister.
 There are no other words to describe the undignified postures that I
have seen many bureaucrats adopt towards powerful people. Servility of
this kind is never an edifying spectacle, but one could laugh it away if it did
not have rather unfortunate consequences for the quality of governance in
the country. Important people are able to get away with all kinds of folly
and stupidity because those who advise them haven't the nerve to tell them
so. I remember one meeting in which all the Collectors of a division were to
be addressed by the Chief Secretary. Several secretaries were also asked to
be in attendance and I happened to be one of them. This meeting was being
held just before a general election and after talking about this and that for
some time the Chief Secretary came to the point. He declared that the
forthcoming election would be a verdict, not merely on the performance of
the government but also the performance of the Collectors, and the result
would show who had done well and who had done badly. To my mind this
was a most dangerous doctrine. The CS was telling the officers, without
putting it in so many words, that they had better ensure the victory of the
ruling party. But no one objected. It was left to me, as so often, to set the
record straight. I pointed out that the election result would be a verdict on
the performance of the government as a whole, including the programmes
and policies of the government, which were not designed by the Collectors.
There were also political factors at work in any election, and it was
simplistic to reduce the whole exercise to this cracker barrel formula. Faced
with this frontal assault the Chief Secretary did not press the point. But
even then no spoke up in defence of one of the core values of the civil
service, political neutrality, which was under attack here. The habit of
sycophancy does not die easily.
To this rather depressing scenario, I must add one more depressing
fact. Most civil servants are much too preoccupied with bread and butter
issues and rather too little with matters concerning ideals and values. I had
ample proof of this when I was Secretary of the Madhya Pradesh IAS
Association. Some officers once moved a resolution that the age of
superannuation for IAS officers should be raised to sixty years, on the
grounds that judicial officers also retired at sixty. This was some years ago,
when the age of superannuation was fifty-eight years. As secretary of the
association, I was asked to elicit the views of all the members of the
service. I accordingly wrote to all the four hundred and odd members of the
service scattered in all the four corners of the state, asking them what they
thought of the proposal. The results were amazing. Among all those who
replied, except for one member, all were in favour of extending the
retirement age. Many were eager to contribute to a fund, which might be set
up to file a petition in the Supreme Court. Except for the one honourable
exception, everyone was keen to hang on to the fruits of office for two more
years, no one was keen to obtain his freedom from government to take up
politics, or writing, or the cultivation of Pierian roses, or any other vocation
or avocation. Everyone was happy with the hack work that he was doing
and wanted to keep on doing it. Such is the effect of long service in the
government on the minds of the civil servants.
On another occasion, a meeting was called to discuss the introduction
of a code of ethics in the civil service. This was a fall out of the initiative
taken by the UP cadre officers in trying to identify the most corrupt officers.
Like the UP initiative, this was also a fiasco. I had planned to speak on this
occasion, because to my mind this was a momentous issue. I had decided to
speak on the concepts of justice and order, two concepts central to any
philosophy of the civil service. My argument was that the moral order, at
which we must aim, was the equivalent in social and political terms of the
cosmic order which prevails in the universe. I had decided to keep the
argument on a rather lofty plane, in keeping with the subject, but as I looked
at the faces all around me, I had a moment of revelation. I saw ponderous
heavy figures, each immured in his own self importance and shallow
egotism. Looking at these hard faces, I was reminded of W.H. Auden's lines
:
Intellectual disgrace,
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in every eye.
One could not discourse on abstract ethical issues to men such as
these. I put my speech back in my pocket and decided that I must leave the
service as soon as I could.
 The Civil Servant as a Ruler

I have now said all that I had to say about my ownexperiences in the civil
service and it is time to come tothe more general issues which are the
main subject matter of this book. Let us start with the concept of the civil
servant as a ruler.
There are two conceptions of the civil service that we have to contend
with and these two conceptions are very different. The modern conception
of the civil servant is basically that of a manager, who is engaged in the
performance of a professional task in the service of the community. A post
master, a school inspector, or a hospital administrator, are all civil servants
according to this definition. This view focuses on the performance of
managerial tasks, usually service-oriented, as the essence of the civil
servant's oeuvre. In this view even the mandarins who man the higher
echelons of the civil service are simply managers, whose watchword is
likely to be efficiency rather than justice and order.
On this showing the civil servant is likely to be a professional and a
specialist rather than a generalist. Although the cult of the generalist is alive
and well, there is a growing realization that the complexity of the tasks
required to be performed by the modern state in all spheres, particularly at
the higher levels of management, requires specialized skills. Thus the old
notion of the gifted amateur, who will always muddle through, is now
beginning to be discarded. The philosophy of muddling through, when one
is traversing a veritable minefield, does not appear to be brave and
courageous, but seems rather like suicidal folly.
 There is of course another conception of the civil service, that of a
moral and intellectual elite brought together in the service of the state. This
state is usually an imperial state. Historically the notion of the civil service
as an elite has been taken to its highest pitch of development in imperial
states, like medieval China, the British Raj or the Roman empire. The chief
purpose of these elitist civil services, their very raison de etre in fact, has
been to ensure the survival and perpetuation of the empire they served. The
word perpetuation is used advisedly, for, to the Confucian literati who
served the empire in say, Sung China, or the Roman governors in the age of
Trajan, there must have seemed something eternal in the fabric of the state
which they served. It is another matter that the high noon of imperial
splendour is followed by a collapse, which is as spectacular in its
suddenness as the brilliant coruscation of power. But such matters are the
domain of prophets and visionaries, and beyond the ken of civil servants,
whose business is essentially to preserve and perpetuate.
This is another feature of elitist civil services which should be noted –
their conservative nature. Their real purpose is to preserve a dispensation,
which though it may shroud its real purpose in moralistic rhetoric, is not
basically benevolent in nature. In such a state the civil servant's prerogative
to rule does not does not come from the consent of the people, but springs
from the power of the state, whose agents they are, and such power is
usually obtained by conquest and maintained by force. Paradoxically the
highest standards of conduct, the most devoted commitment to the ethic of
public service, manifests itself in the administration of territories that
constitute the remoter outposts of empire, where the ruling power is seen
quite clearly as a colonial power. But this paradox is more apparent than
real, because agents of a foreign ruler often find that they are treated as
quasi-divine beings by the natives over whom they rule and their life then
becomes an attempt to live up to this ideal which is partly imposed upon
them. The development of the Indian Civil Service shows these features in a
typical form.
We have thus isolated three features of the elitist civil service that may
be considered typical – they serve governments that are despotic, they often
hide the real purpose of their administration behind lofty moral
pronouncements, and they are essentially conservative in nature. To this let
us add a fourth feature, admission to their ranks is usually restricted to a
single point at the bottom of the hierarchy. Entrance is usually on the basis
of an examination that is supposed to test intellectual ability. Once selected
the new recruit can look forward to a career within a closed caste, whose
membership confers automatic status and privilege. As typical examples we
can consider the Chinese mandarins, and the Indian Civil Service in the
latter half of the nineteenth century.
If imperial China has become a byword for bureaucratic government,
the reasons are not far to seek. The government of imperial China was
always known for vigorous authoritarian rule. No form of government other
than absolute monarchy has ever flourished in China. The present
government of China is also a despotism, it is monarchical absolutism in the
guise of a communist state; simply old wine in new bottles. But the point is,
the dividing line between the rulers and the ruled remains as sharp as ever.
If we take the Chinese Empire at its height, say in the Sung period, we
find a society stratified into manifold gradations of rank and status. It is
reported that even the emperor's concubines were carefully divided into
thirteen different grades! This is the very epitome of a conservative society.
In this society the only profession open to men of rank and status, was the
civil service, which therefore enjoyed a prestige almost surpassing that of
the emperor and his court. All the learning and scholarship in society, all the
literary, artistic and intellectual talents were to be found in the civil service;
other professions were either considered inferior or even proscribed by
imperial decree and therefore out of bounds for the children of the gentry.
We may liken this dispensation to the classical form of bureaucratic
government.
The foremost task of this vast bureaucracy was the maintenance of
imperial authority throughout the length and breadth of the Chinese realm.
This was much more difficult than one might suppose. Twenty centuries of
imperial rule may give the impression that monarchical absolutism
possessed a monolithic strength which required no support from an
elaborate administrative apparatus, but this would be wrong. In China
periods of calm and prosperity have often been followed by turbulence and
disorder, when the imperial authority has either disappeared altogether or
been replaced by squabbling warlords or intriguing pretenders. Apart from
the ever present threat of external aggression, the authority of the Chinese
state has been threatened throughout history by three factors, which arise
from the peculiar geo-political character of the Chinese empire.
The first factor has been the very large size of the Chinese state, due to
which the threat of rebellion by warlords or over mighty provincial
governors remained ever present. The Chinese empire during the Han
period was divided into as many as 100 provinces and during the T'ang
period this number rose to 350. It is clear, that no central authority however
efficient could control so large an area. The danger of rebellion was
particularly acute in the outlying provinces, which were often six to seven
weeks' march from the imperial capital and where an ambitious governor or
military commander may easily be tempted to raise the banner of revolt.
The virtual abandonment of the feudal system and its replacement by
bureaucratic government, with provincial governors being directly
appointed by the court from the ranks of the permanent civil service, was
devised to check this threat. These officials could be shifted from one
province to another at the will of the emperor, and could not assume any
legal rights over their territory; unlike feudal lords, who could exact fealty
from their fiefdoms. The central government also employed a large number
of officials to continuously supervise and inspect the work of provincial
officials and report on their doings. Despite these precautions, however,
imperial authority was often subjected to serious disruption on this account.
The second threat to orderly government often arose from the danger
of revolts led by disaffected peasants or banditti. The large population of
China, the scarcity of arable land, and the possibility of crop failure due to
climatic factors have always made agriculture a precarious business and
famines have been almost endemic. This has created a large body of
citizenry, living beyond the pale, as it were, outside the reach of civil
authority and subsisting on petty crime. Such elements are ever ready to rise
against the established authority at the call of any ambitious adventurer and
the frequency of peasant revolts in China is explained by this. It has always
therefore been one of the basic responsibilities of the provincial governors
and local prefects, to keep a sharp watch over all potential troublemakers
and to crush any incipient revolt at the very first hint of trouble.
The third danger to the stability of the state arose from the absence of
any established convention of settling disputed cases of succession. This
left the field open for powerful factions at the imperial court to intrigue and
manoeuvre to set their own candidate on the throne. It allowed elements in
the imperial household, eunuchs and concubines and the relatives of the
king to unsettle the peace of the realm by initiating sordid machinations
with the sole aim of grabbing power. The case of the Empress Wu, who rose
from a minor concubine to be the absolute ruler of China due to her
capacity for intrigue and ruthlessness, illustrates this perfectly. Whenever
there was a weak monarch on the throne, these possibilities multiplied. In
such cases the balance of power shifted imperceptibly in favour of the
powerful civil service, whose peculiar organization as a body corporate,
unified by a single hierarchy and a shared ethos, made it thus a prime mover
in all attempts to change the equation of power. Thus the very success of the
bureaucracy, became in China a cause of instability.
In view of these very real dangers, the real purpose and mission of the
state in China was always the strengthening of the state and the preservation
of imperial rule. The main task of administration at the level of the
prefecture, which was like a district in India, was the dispensation of
justice, the collection of revenue, the maintenance of security, the upkeep of
communications, the care of state stores and granaries and the registration
of the land and population. All these tasks were carried out, not with any
benevolent end in view, but with the central purpose of strengthening the
state.
For the same reason, the Chinese system was a vigorously centralised
system, where the prefects reported directly to the provincial governors, and
the governors to the central government. Below the prefects were the
hereditary headmen, the village elders, the crafts guilds and the family
system, the whole fabric of customary obligations and interrelationships
built up over the centuries, which assisted the established government in the
exercise of authority. The entire system was staffed and operated by
members of the bureaucracy, which formed a single corporate body, right
from the humblest provincial scribe, to the greatest mandarins at the court –
right up to the chancellor or the imperial secretary himself. In this system,
the emperor could, like a spider sitting in the centre of a vast web, keep in
touch with all the outlying reaches and ramifications of the structure, if he
so desired. In practice, however, things did not always work out that way.
However, no bureaucracy can survive for a long period, purely as a
conservative enterprise. It requires a moral and philosophical justification
for its work. This common creed inspires in the best elements a truly heroic
commitment to public service, keeps the rank and file committed to a
decent standard of behaviour, and serves at worst as a sort of intellectual fig
leaf to cover the real purpose of the government. It has therefore a dual
purpose, and is useful both to the cynics and idealists alike. In the case of
the Chinese civil service, this creed was provided by the philosophy of
Confucius.
It is the fate of philosophers to be used and abused by those who do
not share their exalted moral purpose. This has certainly been the fate of
Confucius, who was used by the Chinese state to justify absolutism. It has
been the practice to label Confucius, as a conservative thinker. This is a
vulgar simplification of the same order as the statement that Yehudi
Menhuin is a Jewish violinist. Like all vulgar simplifications, it also
contains a germ of truth.
Confucius is above all a practical philosopher. He is not too concerned
with abstract metaphysical entities. His concern is basically with a code of
conduct that could actually be used to sustain a moral order that he
considers desirable. He considers virtuous conduct – conduct that is
unselfish, gentle and compassionate, to be the aspirational norm. Such
conduct does not depend upon one's birth or station in life, but on
education. Moral precepts can be inculcated by a process of education and
not by any other means. Hence the central place assigned to education in
the Confucian canon.
Confucius looks upon social relationship as a complex web of
obligations and duties. Virtue lies in the rigorous discharge of these
obligations. A special place is assigned in this dispensation to the ruler who
is looked upon as the vice regent of heaven, sent down to rule the earth in
accordance with the Confucian tenets. All goes well so long as the ruler
follows the precepts of morality, but the moment he neglects his duties or
strays from the path of virtue, disaster befalls him and his subjects.
Confucian ethics have been used to justify absolutist government on the one
hand, and oh the other they have also been able to furnish a moral
justification for the wholesale change over of loyalties whenever one
dynasty is replaced by another.
The latent authoritarianism of Confucius is qualified by his insistence
that government is to be carried out in accordance with moral precepts and
its ultimate aim is the welfare of the people. However his writings do not
contain any evolved concept of civil liberty or individual rights. Confucius
accords a frankly subordinate status to the people, well below that of the
sovereign and his advisers. The children of the earth, as he calls them, are
looked upon as rather helpless beings who have just about enough
intelligence to till the earth and raise crops. The onerous task of governance
is considered well beyond their capacities, and the best that they can do is to
enjoy the blessings of orderly rule and leave the difficult task of governance
to the sovereign and his advisors.
Confucius assigns great importance to the sovereign's advisors. They
are supposed to be a moral and intellectual elite, standing apart from their
fellow men on account of their superior abilities. The important things is
that the power and privilege which they enjoy, is entirely due to their merit.
This doctrine, which has furnished the moral justification for civil service
elitism ever since, must be considered advanced thinking for the time. We
know that until fairly recent times; and in many countries even today, public
office is often assigned on the basis of jobbery and nepotism. It is the
greatness of Confucius that he propounded this doctrine more than two
thousand years ago, and it is the greatness of Chinese culture that this
doctrine was put into practice and faithfully followed, for more than two
millennia.
The practical result of this doctrine has been the veritable apotheosis
of the official-scholar class, which has dominated the cultural and social life
of China down the ages, and which is responsible for great literary and
cultural accomplishment as well as the subsequent decline and subjection of
the Chinese empire. The history of China is therefore a verdict on the elitist
model, because in no other country do we find this model in existence for
such a long period, with the civil service in undisturbed possession of social
and political pre-eminence.
And this verdict all said and done, must go against the mandarins. It is
true that they have played a role in maintaining the political unity of China,
kept the system going in times of instability and been responsible for
disseminating Chinese culture through the length and breadth of China.
Their active participation in Chinese art and letters have given it a polish
and sophistication that it may not otherwise have acquired. But their overall
impact on Chinese history has been mainly that of a conservative force.
This is only to be expected from a corporate body who owe their privileged
status, to their mastery of ancient literary classics and who derive their
prerogatives from an absolute monarch who is seen as the fountainhead of
all authority.
One of the consequences of this system was social stagnation. The
hierarchical structure of the bureaucracy and the consciousness of rank and
status were reflected in Chinese society in the shape of a social structure
stratified into various gradations of rank, each of which tended to form a
closed caste. This naturally restricted social mobility and individual
freedom. On the other hand, it made rank and power rather than moral
worth, the measure of a man's standing, thus subverting the very Confucian
ethic on which it was founded.
One can also say that by making power as an end rather than a means
of political endeavour, it legitimised tyranny and misrule. By actively
participating in palace intrigues and the machinations of concubines,
eunuchs and ambitious courtiers, it lowered the tone of an ancient
civilization and by switching loyalties at the demise of every dynasty it
made it easier for foreigners to establish their rule in China. The case of the
Manchu dynasty illustrates this admirably.
These are serious charges, but the most serious charge against the
mandarins, is that they stifled the social and intellectual life of the country.
By shutting out China, to all new knowledge emanating from the west, they
denied the country the fruits of the enlightenment which swept Europe in
the fifteenth century. Their typical middle kingdom insularity and arrogance
were responsible for the ultimate political humiliation of China and her
subjugation by foreign powers.
We come now to the most recent example of the elitist model, the
Indian Civil Service, which as the ancestor of the present day civil service
in India as well as Britain, deserves study in its own right. The present day
status and prestige of the Indian Administrative Service is a legacy of the
ICS. Government officials have always enjoyed a high status in India, but
nothing like the Indian Civil Service, had been seen before. Imagine a
service unassailable in its tenure of power, inflexible in its rectitude
(almost), composed of men, who seemed by virtue of their martial prowess
and strength of character, like beings from another planet. No wonder the
Indian Administrative Service, though defunct of real power, is still able to
maintain the bluff due to the overpowering impact of this legacy. But it did
not begin this way. The company's servants in the early years, were usually
a crew of rapacious freebooters inspired by a simple motive – avarice. The
forerunners of Malcolm, Metcalf, Munro and Elphinstone, were usually low
paid company hacks, who carried on a more lucrative private trade on the
side and were interested only in amassing a quick fortune, and leaving for
home, before they were carried off by cholera or some other distemper,
which was never very far away. It is interesting that the early civil servants
of the company included many members of the British aristocracy, who
were lured to India in the hope of making a quick fortune. As the civil
service gained in rectitude, it also became a more inexorably middle class
body. Its collective morality now took on features of the Victorian middle
class morality of its time. The self-righteousness of these early civil
servants and their unctuous faith in their own superiority can be explained
as part of the same syndrome. But between the raffish disreputable 'nabobs',
who desired nothing better than to make a quick fortune and return home to
settle in some fashionable part of London, and the 'minutely just, inflexibly
upright' Guardians of the latter day lies an age which witnessed the
transition from the age of Walpole to the age of Gladstone.
Much has been written about the Indian Civil Service, most of it by
retired civilians, usually British, and most of it frankly eulogistic in tone.
The British claim is that the men of the service, were nothing less than
Guardians in the Platonic sense and that their main concern was always the
welfare of the people in their charge. There is a lot of sentimental literature
about the glories of camp life and the special bond that existed between the
district officer and 'simple and artless' village folk who came to him for
redress. There is no doubt a great deal of truth in this idealized picture of
the district officer as a benevolent despot, but this is only one side of the
coin. There is another side to it, and this side shows the picture of a petty
tyrant, who is able to justify his cruelties and repression with reference to
lofty principles. The British have a knack of justifying political expediency
on the grounds of principle. Thus the annexation and absorption of native
states by Dalhousie, which was simply a case of bad faith and political
chicanery is justified by the apologists of the Raj on the grounds that the
extension of British rule was good for the natives. General Dyer when he
fired on the unarmed gathering at Jallianwala Bagh, said that he wanted to
create a "moral effect throughout the Punjab", by his act of gratuitous
barbarity. This other side of the coin shows the face of a self-righteous
bully, and it appears whenever British rule is under attack. Of course this
face does not appear very often, but without it the truth would be
incomplete. And it makes it hard to sustain the Olympian pose.
Our first maxim was that elitist bureaucracies exist, not for the benefit
of those they govern, but to perpetuate the government of a despotic ruler or
an alien conqueror. This is certainly true of the Company's civil servants as
their conduct during the so-called Mutiny shows. British historians describe
the great revolt of 1857 as a mutiny, as an isolated outbreak brought about
by a rag-tag coalition of disaffected sepoys and disgruntled princes. If this
were indeed the case, there is hardly any justification for the ruthless
savagery with which the revolt was suppressed. Consider for instance, the
following instructions of General James Neill to his subordinate Major
Renaud:
The villages of Mubgoon and neighbourhood to be
attacked and destroyed, slaughter all men, take no
prisoners ...
All sepoys found without papers from regiments that
have mutinied who cannot give a good account of
themselves to be hanged forthwith. Futtehpore to be
promptly attacked, the Pathan quarter to be destroyed,
all in it killed; in fact make a signal example of this
place.
Neill's orders were carried out in letter in spirit and the whole country
around Kanpur was made a desolate ruin. Entire villages were destroyed
and all adult males who were unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of
the conquerors, were either hanged or blown up from the mouth of canon.
All without even the semblance of a trial. It can be said in defence of Neill
that he was acting in retaliation for the slaughter of women and children at
Kanpur, blame for which must be laid at the door of Nana Sahib. But even
so this looks more like the maniacal rage of a Timur or a Genghis, rather
than the conduct of a servant of Her Majesty's government supposedly
acting in defence of some lofty principle.
Another act of horrific cruelty took place at Amritsar. This incident is
recorded in some detail in Philip Mason's book titled The Men Who Ruled
India. One Cooper was the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar, and at the
outset of the mutiny he made a statement which lays bare the real nature of
colonial rule, "Government", said Cooper, "could not condescend to exist at
the moral sufferance of its subjects". Precisely. But it took the mutiny to
uncover the real reason behind the rhetoric and pious sentiment.
This same Cooper was able to capture a troop of 282 men of the 26th
infantry who had surrendered to him peacefully. All these poor men after a
night in captivity, were executed in the morning, without even the formality
of a trial. About a fifty died of shock and exhaustion. Cooper's excuse was
the same as that of Dyer, seventy years later. He wanted to produce a 'moral
effect', on the Punjab. In plain words, he hoped that by his barbarous act of
cruelty he could frighten other rebellious spirits, into a tame acquiescence
to British rule. As it happens, history proved both Cooper and Dyer wrong.
Nor are these isolated incidents. Let me quote from, an article by Karl
Marx on the 'Indian Revolt', dated September 4, 1857. Marx writes:
An officer in the civil service from Allahabad writes;
"We have the power of life and death in our hands and
I assure you we spare not. Not a day passes, but we
string up ten to fifteen of them. (non combatants)."
Another exulting officer writes, "Holmes is hanging
them up by the score, like a brick. "
Another in allusion to the hanging of a large body of
natives, "Then the fun commenced."
A third: "We hold court martials on horseback, and
every nigger we meet, we either string up or shoot."
Such instances could be multiplied, but the point should by now be
abundantly clear, and the point is that elitist bureaucracies, despite their
facade of benevolence, exist, not for the welfare of the governed, but to
perpetuate despotic rule.
However, it must not be supposed that this is all that there is to the
myth of the British civil servants in India. There is another side, the side
that is eulogised in countless journals, biographies, and histories, which
dwell on the exploits of the Guardians, in fulsome detail. This is also true.
The fact is, in times of peace, the British government was better than any
other government that had preceded it for a very long time. Its officers were
relatively free from venality and corruption, they dispensed justice with a
strict impartiality, and they were more successful at maintaining order than
any other government before them. Their success as final arbiters of almost
everything was due to the fact that they were foreigners. Unlike other
conquerors before them, they were not assimilated by India. For their own
part they had made it their policy not to interfere in matters of local custom
and religion. It was possible for them to view local issues with a certain
Olympian detachment. This explains their success as arbitrators and
magistrates.
But as mentioned before, bureaucracies can not survive for long
simply as a holding operation. They need a philosophy to sustain them, an
elevating creed that could innure them to the hardships endured in a
(possibly) hostile environment, and invest their work with a lofty meaning
and purpose. This philosophy in case of the Raj is provided by a set of
beliefs which are aptly summarised by the phrase, 'the white man's burden'.
It is easy for us, after all these years to be cynical about this phrase. It calls
up images of a white man in a pith helmet and a riding crop, swaggering
about among the natives. It brings to mind Gunga Din and other characters
from the pages of Kipling all of whom, despite the good intentions of the
author, are little more than figures of humorous condescension. Kipling in
fact epitomises the values and attitudes behind this philosophy, which
provided a moral justification not merely to the ambitious empire builder
and the Bible toting Christian soldier but also to the evangelist Christian
preacher and the buccaneering Christian trader who followed in his train.
People like Kipling may have really believed in the mission of the
white races to civilize 'the lesser breeds without the law', but this faith in a
divine providence guiding the hand of the empire builder must have come
in handy for the Victorian soldiers, who blew up and hanged the Indian
mutineers, with a pious satisfaction, that this retribution was divinely
ordained.
In the case of truly high minded men however, men like Thomas
Munro, and Elphinstone, this became merely an added feeling of
responsibility. It was Munro who wrote, "When ever we are obliged to
resign our sovereignty, we should leave the natives so far improved from
their connection with us, as to be capable of maintaining a free or at least a
regular government among themselves." Echoing the same sentiment,
Elphinstone wrote, "the most desirable death for us to die should be the
improvement of the natives to such a pitch, as would render it impossible
for a foreign nation to retain the government." But even this benevolence
was not entirely disinterested. Munro, in spite of his lofty sentiments
wished for an "indefinite prolongation of our rule", and Elphinstone when
he blew up the mutineers from the mouths of canon, commended this
method of punishment on the grounds that it combined two of the cardinal
principles of justice, "It was painless to the victim and terrible to the
beholder."
The benevolent paternalism of these men made their example an
inspiration to many generations of civil servants. It called forth prodigious
industry and unremitting labour carried out without regard for personal
comfort and in a spirit of complete integrity. The result may still be seen in
the settlement records of many districts, which still forms the basis of land
revenue administration in a large part of India. It was also responsible for
creating the popular stereotype of the incorruptible district officer about
whom it may be said, without exaggeration, that he was "inflexibly upright,
minutely just." It is responsible in part for the prestige which the civil
service still enjoys in India, in spite of being a morally defunct organization.
But all this was made possible, because these men, though members of an
alien conquering race still felt a deep sense of responsibility towards their
charge. They acted responsibly because their power was absolute. The
achievements of British civil servants were not made as civil servants but as
rulers. Their story is a signal example of the civil servant as a successful
ruler. It is also a tribute to the British character, that so many men could
remain uncorrupted by power for so long.
However, when it comes to the final reckoning, we have to admit, that
the over all character of the British Raj was conservative and status quoist.
This is so, in spite of the reformist zeal displayed by the British
administration upto 1857. This is so, even in spite of the many high minded
men who really believed that the welfare of the people in their charge was
their real mission. These individual cases of true Christian charity, and
genuine devotion to the common weal do not alter the real character of
British rule. For that one must go to the average run-of-the-mill civil
servant, the Oxbridge educated middle class British gentleman, who was
intelligent enough to feel more than a professional sympathy and
comradeship for the 'natives' in his charge, yet stupid enough to regard
himself as a superior being and smug enough to feel that his own education,
background, and value system were the best in the world. These clever,
practical, and industrious men, formed the backbone of the service, and
taken as a whole they were a thoroughly reactionary force. Many viceroys
who came to India with liberal dreams, most notable among them being
Lord Ripon, found their generous enthusiasm, frustrated by the obdurate
resistance of the official class. The Illbert Bill agitation furnishes a good
case in point. This was an attempt on the part of Lord Ripon to set right an
obvious anomaly in the criminal procedure code of 1872, which laid down
that a European could not be tried by Indian Magistrates. When the Illbert
Bill was brought in to set aside this blatant piece of racist arrogance and
bring Europeans and Indians on the same footing, the whole official class
rose up against the measure to a man. Their views were summarised by Mr
W. S. Seton Kerr, Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, who
observed:
It is the cherished conviction of every Englishman in
India, from the highest to the lowest, that he belongs
to a race, whom God has destined to govern and
subdue.
This racial arrogance seems to have hardened, as British rule became
more securely established in India. There is an interesting story told by Sir
Montagu Gerard in his book Leaves from the Diary of a Soldier and a
Sportsman, about a native potentate of a small principality near Agra who
boarded a train by entering a first class compartment and was given a royal
send off by his subjects. When he returned, they were shocked to find him
alighting from a second class compartment. When asked the reason for this
unprincely behaviour, he disclosed that he had been sorely harassed by two
sahibs on the way up, who had made him brush their clothes and massage
their legs all the way up to Agra. This mind you, was the behaviour of two
Englishmen towards a prince, the lot of the common man can only be
imagined.
The civil servants of the Raj were not the witting or unwitting tools of
the British government, nor were they just another estate of the realm. They
were the real rulers of India. As such their behaviour and attitude as a
collective entity is important. It is often argued by the apologists of the Raj
that the aberrant behaviour of a single officer should not be used to
condemn the whole official class. It is argued by them that individual
behaviour is too much subject to the accidents of time and place and the
vagaries of personality, to furnish any adequate basis for generalizations
about a whole class of people. But the same defence cannot be offered,
about the policies of the British government, which reveal the considered
wisdom, not merely of the official class, but of the British government
itself. These policies, taken over a reasonable period of time, show a fairly
consistent thread. They are conservative policies in general and their main
aim is the perpetuation of British rule in India. But before we analyze these
policies, let us revert to the subject of personal remarks, and to the words of
Lord Curzon, that arch imperialist, who may be allowed to have the last
word: "It will be well for England, better for India, and best of all for the
cause of progressive civilization in general, if it be clearly understood from
the outset that we have not the slightest intention of abandoning our Indian
possessions, and it is highly improbable that any such intention will be
entertained by our posterity."
Lord Curzon's statement is an unambiguous assertion of the
imperialist creed, but what he states with such pompous self assurance, had
always been the policy of the Raj. The policy of free trade and laissez faire
in economics, divide and rule in politics, and non-interference in social
reform, all had the common aim of perpetuating British rule.
The quest for profits accruing from the rich Indian trade provided the
initial impulse that led eventually to the establishment of Brtish rule in
India. The economic policies of the Raj never lost sight of the fact that it
owed its existence to the enterprise and avarice of a mercantile syndicate.
Although the British Raj ceased to be a profitable enterprise from 1800 or
thereabouts, if we take a simple surplus of revenue over expenditure as our
yardstick, it remained a source of lucrative careers for the British middle
class, as well as a captive market and a source of cheap raw materials for
British industry. It also prolonged the power and prestige of the British
ruling class and gave a fresh lease of life to that otherwise moribund order.
All this explains why the British taxpayer continued to support the
expense of the Raj even though the debt of the East India Company (soon to
be merged in the public debt of England ), stood at some 50 million pounds
sterling in 1857. To begin with there were the stockholders of the company,
whose numbers stood at some 3,000 in 1850. Each stockholder drew a
dividend of some ten and a half per cent on his investment, the total
amounting to some 670, 000 pounds sterling annually in 1857, and all
drawn from the revenues of India. Then there were the large numbers of
civil, military and professional officers in India all of whom drew princely
salaries. The average annual salary in the civil service was said to be about
$ 8000 in the 1850s, while a member of the Calcutta council drew about
$50000 and the governor general himself drew upwards of $1,00,000.
Convert this to current prices and the real worth of these salaries will
become obvious. There were also a large number of officers, both civil and
military, living in India after retirement, and drawing lucrative pensions
charged to the revenues of India. This situation continued to prevail right up
to the end of the Raj and such was the British sense of economic propriety
that even the salaries of the office boys and tea ladies at India House were
charged on the consolidated funds of India.
However, while all this is interesting and instructive, it still does not
explain the real raison de etre, for the empire. For this we must look at the
trade between India and England. Two things stand out about India's
external trade between 1757 to 1947. First, the commodity composition of
India's external trade underwent a transformation in the nineteenth century
and from being a major exporter of cotton piece goods, she became a major
exporter of primary commodities, like sugar, indigo and raw cotton by
1850. Second, she enjoyed a very large and persistent surplus of exports
over imports, for a period of more than 200 years. Both these features of her
trade, so remarkable in themselves, were due directly to her political
subjection to Britain.
Let us consider the question of commodity composition first. In 1761
out of a total export of Rs 3063499/cotton piece goods accounted for
exports worth Rs 2430850/. In 1780 out a total export worth £ 1254958
cotton piece goods again accounted for exports worth £ 639938. Again in
1805 out of a total export of Rs 37595877, piece goods made up Rs
12849670, still about sixty per cent of the whole. However by 1828-29, this
had dropped to 11 per cent and by 1850, was further reduced to merely 3
per cent of the total exports. At the same time the export of indigo, raw
cotton and opium accounted for almost 50 per cent of the exports, whereas
their share was negligible during the eighteenth century. (Data is from the
Cambridge Economic History of India)
On the other hand, the import into India of cotton yarn and piece
goods, made in England, which was non existent in the eighteenth century,
became thirty per cent of the total value of imports by 1820, forty per cent
by 1850 and fully fifty per cent by 1870. Describing this process, Karl Marx
writes: "It was the British intruder who broke up the Indian hand loom and
destroyed the spinning wheel. England began by driving the Indian cottons
from the European markets, it then introduced twist into Hindustan, and in
the end inundated the very mother country of cotton with cottons. From
1818 to 1836 the export of twist from England to India rose in the
proportion of 1 to 5200. In 1824 the export of British muslin to India hardly
amounted to 1, 000, 000 yards, while in 1837 it surpassed 64, 000, 000
yards. But at the same time the population of Dacca decreased from 150,
000 inhabitants to 20, 000. This decline of Indian towns celebrated for their
fabrics was by no means the worst consequence. British steam and science
uprooted over the whole surface of Hindustan the union between agriculture
and manufacturing industry."
This remarkable volte face was effected by using tariff barriers to
protect British industry, and when that same industry was transformed by
the industrial revolution into a steam driven juggernaut, by using her
political dominion over India to break down the tariffs that protected Indian
industry.
Cotton is the natural fabric of India, just as wool is the natural fabric
of England. Yet the ease with which cotton could be used for mechanical
spinning and weaving made it the mainspring of the Industrial Revolution
and made England the foremost producer of cotton cloth in the world.
When the East India Company started importing Indian cotton piece goods
into England, all this was still in the womb of the future. Indian cotton soon
became the rage in England, so much so that ladies of fashion started using
cotton even when its use was unwarranted by the weather. Commenting on
this phenomenon Dean Swift writes: "The general fancy of the people runs
upon East India goods to that degree, that the chintz and painted calicoes
which were before made use of for carpets and quilts and to clothe children
and ordinary people now became the dress of our ladies. Nor was this all,
but it crept into our houses, our closets and our bedchambers, curtains,
cushions, chairs, and at last the beds themselves were nothing but calicoes
and Indian stuffs. "
The local wool industry alarmed at the prospects of extinction,
petitioned the government, which banned the import of printed calico into
England. Only dyed cloth without print being permitted. But this did not
prove to be sufficient to stem the tide and Indian cottons continued to be
imported in large quantities. Subsequently, the government banned the
import of dyed cotton as well, only plain white cloth being permitted for
import. As time went by duties on Indian cotton were also progressively
enhanced. This policy succeeded so well, that British industry felt confident
in 1821, that Lancashire could supply the clothing needs of entire India,
provided it was given preferential tariff treatment. What a strange reversal
of roles was this; brought about by India's political servitude. Within the
space of a few decades, the extensive cottage industry that had turned out
what Karl Marx calls the "admirable textures of Indian labour"; was
extinguished and cheap mass produced cotton was suffered to inundate the
mother country of cottons.
When the question of reducing tariffs on British cotton was put to Sir
Charles Grant, a prominent member of the East India Directorate, he had
this to say:
But with respect to that very large question, I take the
liberty to offer one remark; we have by protecting
duties at home and our improvements in machinery,
almost entirely excluded from this country the cotton
fabrics of India, which were formerly their general
staple, and if we use the power, which we have over
that country now, to introduce into it the fabrics of this
country, so as to exclude their own, it may be
questioned, how far we act justly with respect to our
Indian subjects; for it may be taken for granted, that if
they were under an Indian government they would
impose protecting duties, upon their own fabrics, in
their own markets, as we have done in our ours.
Thus the British destroyed Indian industry by resorting to
protectionism, and captured her markets by invoking the principle of free
trade. As ever justifying the pursuit of self-interest on the grounds of
principle. It was the same self-interest which made India into a net exporter
of indigo, sugar and grain. All these articles were required for domestic
consumption by British industry and the British public. It must be
remembered that India was never, throughout this period a country surplus
in foodgrains. Indeed she was afflicted with recurring famines, yet despite
the famine of 1899-1900, which was until then the worst recorded famine in
Indian history, she was still forced to export to Britain a very large quantity
of grain, fully amounting to ten per cent of her total export in terms of
value. To those economists who ascribe the change in the commodity
composition of India's export to the fact of industrialization of China, Japan,
etc, I would pose a simple question, what was the economic logic of export
of grain by a country where millions were starving for want of grain. Let
me save them the trouble of an answer, it was the logic of slavery.
But even more remarkable and conclusive is the strange fact of India's
persistently favourable balance of trade. It is estimated that (for instance)
between 1795-1805 India enjoyed a surplus of roughly sixty millions rupees
in her exports over imports. The balance was met by importing silver
bullion into India. This practice was followed by the East India Company,
throughout the eighteenth century, for the developing industry of England,
as yet, did not produce anything for which a big demand could be created in
the Indian markets. This phenomenon is remarked upon by Karl Marx:
From immemorial times Europe, received the
admirable textures of Indian labour, sending in return
for them her precious metals, and furnishing thereby
this material to the goldsmith – that indispensable
member of Indian society, whose love of finery is so
great that even the lowest classes, those who go about
nearly naked, have commonly a pair of gold earrings
and a gold ornament of some kind hung about their
necks.
However as the British Empire became firmly established in India,
this import of bullion ceased. Although India still continued to export more
than she imported, the visible account in her balance of payment does not
furnish any clue as to how this surplus was financed. It is estimated that
between 1847 and 1867, this surplus was 340 million rupees and between
1898 and 1914 this surplus has been estimated as 353 million rupees. This
large surplus continued right up to 1948 but by a strange piece of statistical
jugglery it was turned into a deficit. This was due to what are
euphemistically called invisibles. In 1898-99 for instance, these invisibles,
which are termed as service transactions by one economist, amounted to
396.5 million rupees. By virtue of this India ended up with a net deficit of
40. 4 million rupees which was then met by foreign borrowings. These so
called service transactions are supposed to have included freight payments
by India, commissions on banking and insurance, government home
charges, and net interest payments. These figures are incredible, because the
invisibles add up to four times the value of merchandise exports. The fact
is, this deficit was a bogus one. It was nothing other than a tribute exacted
by the ruling power from a conquered nation and nationalist writers like
Dadabhai Naoroji and R. C. Dutt have proven this beyond doubt. One novel
expedient used to finance this bogus deficit, was to use Indian exports to
other countries to finance Britain's imports from those countries. For
instance, India was forced to export opium to China, to enable Britain to
import tea and silks from China. When the Chinese government resisted the
export of opium, which was turning her whole population into degenerate
addicts, the so called opium wars forced her to submit to the emasculation
of her whole population.
The same fixation with economic profit can be seen at work behind
the British fixation with matters relating to land revenue. The best minds
among the civil servants of the empire devoted a considerable part of their
time to questions of land tenure. Sir John Shore was the first acknowledged
expert on this subject and Thomas Munro was another, and both went on to
hold very high positions in the Government of India, Munro becoming
governor of Madras and Sir John Shore who reached the very pinnacle,
retired as Governor General. Munro's early career as Collector of Canara
district set the pattern for the lifestyle and work schedule that was followed
by countless administrators after him. This consisted of moving on
horseback through a vast territorial domain, camping out and working from
morning to night, settling land disputes and finalizing the record of rights
and land revenue assessment. British administrators performed a truly
monumental task in compiling these records, which still form the basis of
land settlement throughout India. But these heroic efforts were inspired
ultimately by a rather mercenary motive, that of enhancing the collection of
revenue. It is for this reason that the British adopted a rather cautious and
conservative attitude towards the zamindars. In the beginning, trying to
establish their rule in an alien country, it was natural for them to seek the
cooperation of the local ruling class. But even after British rule had become
unassailable, this ambivalent attitude to the zamindars remained. The
survival of the poligars, zamindars, mamlatdars, and other functionaries,
who presided over anachronistic systems of land tenure was due to this
conservative attitude of the Brtish administrators. We had to wait for
independence, and a government of politicians rather than civil servants for
the abolition of zamindari.
It is alleged by the apologists of British rule, that the construction of
great irrigation works and the Indian railway network disproves the theory
of the 'revenue collection mentality', and prove that the British
administration was in fact development oriented. This is a doubtful claim.
The construction of the Western Yamuna canal network was done with a
clear purpose of generating additional revenue. The western Yamuna
command area was chosen, because this was in fact an already existing
system that had fallen into disuse due to neglect and the earth works
constructed in Mughal times were still extant. The construction of irrigation
systems on the Cauvery and the Ganga were inspired by the same profit
motive.
As regards the railways, the main reason behind their construction
were strategic rather than commercial. It was thought that the railways
would facilitate the movement of large bodies of troops from one corner of
India to another and thereby consolidate the empire. The other reason was
to provide a safe and profitable field for British capital which was finding
the domestic market saturated and incapable of a sufficiently high return.
By providing a guaranteed five per cent return on their investment and
charging it on the revenues of India, the Government of India did just that.
It is the British imperialists and the British capitalists who are the real
progenitors of the Indian Railways.
While the economic policies of the British government retarded
economic growth and impoverished the country, the politics of the colonial
government exacerbated ancient animosities within Indian society and
divided the country. After the so-called mutiny, the policy of divide and rule
was followed with a cold blooded thoroughness, which led eventually to the
partition of India. Its effects are still being felt today. Sir John Lawrence,
who may be taken as the archetype of the enlightened British administrator
in India, was the head of the Punjab committee which was appointed in
1858 to study the military problems that had led to the great revolt. He
observes, "As we can not do without a large native army in India, our main
object is to make that army safe; and next to the grand counterpoise of a
sufficient European force, comes a counterpoise of natives against natives."
The committee goes on to observe that, "Different races mixed together do
not long preserve their distinctiveness: their corners and angles and
prejudices get rubbed off, till at last they assimilate." To prevent this the
system of local recruitment based on caste was evolved and regiments of
Dogras, Sikhs, Rajputs, etc., were created as mutually exclusive units which
could never, it was, hoped, make common cause on any national issue.
The same policy of divide and rule was behind Lord Minto's decision
to inaugurate the policy of communal representation and separate
electorates for Muslims, in 1906. By openly encouraging divisive and
separatist elements among the Muslims, the British Raj was directly
responsible for the eventual partition of India. Of course communal
animosities were not new to India, but Akbar's policy of toleration and
communal harmony had been followed by most rulers, barring Aurangzeb.
Aurangzeb had favoured his co-religionists simply out of his devotional
fervour for Islam, not for reasons of policy. It was for the first time that the
paramount power in India, was deliberately fomenting communal discord as
a matter of state policy. This policy of communal representation was taken
to absurd lengths in the Prime Minister's communal award of 1932 which
provided for separate representation of as many as fifteen categories.
The same policy was behind the treatment of aboriginal tribes, for
whom a special dispensation was devised with the specific objective of
keeping them cut off from the mainstream. The constitutional scheme of
'excluded areas' and 'partly excluded areas', which has already been
discussed in the previous chapter was born out of the British desire to use
the tribal communities as another divisive factor. It is ironical that the same
divisive framework is now sought to be used as a framework for affirmative
action by latter day champions of the 'tribals', who don't seem to realize that
they are following in the footsteps of the British.
 This view of race as an exclusivist identity frozen in time is alien to
the Indian view. In India the aboriginal tribes had always been regarded as a
part of the diverse social fabric. Rajputs intermarried frequently with Bhils,
and the Bhilalas owe their origin to this fusion of blood. The famous Rani
Durgawati was a Rajput princess married to a Gond chieftain – Dalpat
Shah; and such marriages were commonplace throughout history. The
British view of race as a unique identity, and of each race as somehow
ontologically different from other races, was partly due to their own
feelings of racial superiority and partly the result of a blinkered approach to
the whole question of ethnicity. When Lord Roberts said that even the
newest British subaltern was superior to any native officer and could not be
placed under his command, he was speaking for an entire generation
brought up on the myth of British racial superiority. It is this view of race as
a narrow identity and the collateral view of a nation as a political entity
based on ethnicity, which is still the source of bitter strife in the world. The
Indians despite their disgraceful views about caste and colour and their
ludicrous rituals of purity and pollution have been more accommodating on
the question of race, and indeed do not share the tribalistic notion so
common in the west.
I have dwelt at some length on the character of British rule in India,
because it is the best example we have of the civil servant as a ruler. It is an
example surrounded by myth and legend, but once this encrustation is
cleared away and its real nature revealed, we find in it the same features
that we had identified in the Chinese example.
To begin with the regime of civil servants is always beset with a crisis
of legitimacy. This is so, because civil servants vested with state power tend
to form an elite corps, a closed caste where entry is restricted and popular
participation is not possible. This was the case with the Confucian literati in
China, this was certainly the case with the covenanted civil servants of the
Raj. In the case of the British Raj, the feeling of being a class apart, were
reinforced by feelings of racial superiority.
To overcome this crisis of legitimacy, which is the fate of all regimes
not founded on popular sanction, and to justify their regime in their own
eyes, if not in the eyes of those over whom they rule, they have to invent a
myth, an elevating moral creed which can put an edifying gloss over the
more mundane reasons which are behind the whole enterprise. In the
Chinese case this was provided by the Confucian ethic. In the British case
this was provided by the concept of the 'white man's burden', and the
mission to civilize the lesser breeds without the law. This myth then became
the official creed of the British civil servants. It is a tribute to British
character, that in spite of this they permitted, a large body of heterodox
opinion to not merely exist but also flourish. It is these heretics, too
intelligent to be taken in by the comforting illusions of conventional
wisdom, and too independent to merely toe the line, who are the real heroes
of the Indian civil service. It is these men who do not cherish any grand
illusions about their role, yet carry out their task with wit, wisdom and
human sympathy, who are the lead players in the drama.
Still the fact remains that in spite of these men, the overriding purpose
and mission of the regime of civil servants remains the perpetuation of their
own rule. It is this central purpose which provides the real motive force
behind the regime and it is this purpose which eventually alienates the
regime from a genuine welfare state. The British Raj in India, for instance,
could never have introduced the welfare legislation introduced in England,
by the Lloyd George government. The fact that it went on to exporting large
quantities of grain to Britain, in spite of recurrent famine, speaks for itself.
The story of the Raj contains a moral for those who dream of Utopias,
based on the rule of the Guardians. The moral is that those who come into
possession of real power, are loath to let go of it, and the initial benevolent
impulse of their regime is soon replaced by a dead conservatism, where
every stratagem is used and every Machiavellian expedient tried out to
perpetuate their rule. The history of the British Raj illustrates this perfectly.
However, when all is said and done, the fact still remains, that the Raj
in its heyday, say about 1880 or thereabouts, enjoyed and still enjoys a very
real reputation for probity and justice. The British Raj, with its global
possessions and world wide dominion surpassed in splendour and prestige
any regime that had been known in India, at least since the days of Asoka.
Its unassailable political position enabled the Raj to enforce law and order,
better than any regime known hitherto. It must be emphasized that the India
of myth and legend, the kind of India, described by Megasthenes in his
book Indica, had passed away long since into men's memories and into the
pages of history. Most people knew nothing about this mythical golden age,
their experience was rather of plundering Pindaris and marauding thugs, of
predatory bands of robbers and freebooters ravaging innocent villages and
bringing death and destruction in their wake. It was the Raj which wiped
out these myriad forms of criminality and made the Indian countryside safe
again. It was the British regime again which freed the process of
governance from venality and corruption. Let us admit, that the British
officer was more sympathetic to the underdog and more assiduous in
redressing his wrongs than his Indian counterpart today. We have to
concede that in the conduct of day-to-day administration, the British Raj set
a very high standard of governance. But let us remember that the civil
servants of the Raj could set high standards, because they were solely and
exclusively in command. Their high sense of responsibility was born out of
unfettered authority. Their claim to good governance thus exacted a high
price from India – the price of freedom.
 The Civil Servant as an Agent

T he rule of civil servants therefore ends in failure, and this failure is in

the last analysis a moral failure, based on the inability of the civil
servants to survive the corrupting influence of power. Human nature does
not prove equal to a long uncontested tenure of power. The last act of the
drama witnesses an embattled regime desperately trying to shore up the
crumbling edifice, which despite the imposing facade, rapidly falls apart.
The final catastrophe when it comes is sudden and sweeping, but the
political extinction of the regime is not the end of the story. Even in the act
of disappearing, the regime of civil servants leaves behind a legacy, a potent
myth, the myth of the Guardians.
This myth has exercised a peculiar fascination over the minds of
political philosophers and has been used as a blueprint for designing
systems of governance ever since Plato's Republic. The British designed
their Home Civil Service on the model of the ICS and we in India have
copied the British as usual, and committed the same mistakes.
The mistake, which should be obvious, is that in a democracy, a civil
servant is not expected to bear rule, he is only an agent of the state, whose
task it is to translate into action the programmes and policies of the state.
No objective criteria of efficiency or cost benefit analysis can be applied to
a ruler, the ultimate touchstone must be an ethical one, but this is not the
case with the civil servant as an agent. His performance can be subjected to
a very precise measure of efficiency. Just as in physics, the concept of
efficiency is defined in terms of the work done upon energy expended, so
too in judging the performance of an official, a measure of efficiency can be
the work done, divided by the time and money expended to do that work.
Efficiency subsumes qualitative aspects like expertise, and professionalism.
It also includes attitudinal factors like integrity, courtesy and commitment.
Governments have a right to expect efficient service from its servants and
the taxpayers have a right to expect value for money from the bureaucracies
which are paid for from their pockets. The watchword therefore is
efficiency.
But while everyone is agreed that an efficient civil service is the final
goal there is divergence of opinion on how this goal can be achieved.
Broadly speaking there are two approaches to the problem, one of which we
can characterise as the elitist approach and the other as the utilitarian
approach. The distinctive features of these two approaches can be
summarized in the following table:

ELITIST UTILITARIAN
1. Recruitment by examination at the Recruitment eclectic
beginning of the civil service career
2. Entry restricted at higher levels Lateral entry at higher levels,
based on suitability
3. Heirarchical organization forming a Not hierarchical
closed caste
4. Permanent life time career Short tenures
5. Cult of the generalist Focus on specialization

It will be seen that the two approaches outlined above could not be
more different. The British and the Indian models offer a classic example of
the elitist model, while the American case offers the best example of the
utilitarian model.
That there should be two approaches instead of only one is a testimony
to the power of the myth of the Guardians. Otherwise rationalist
considerations as well as empirical evidence seem to support the utilitarian
model. In order to see why this is so, let us briefly examine the nature of
elitism, these remarks being a sequel to what was said earlier about
bureaucratic elites.
 Elites are corporate bodies, enjoying a privileged status within the
body politic. They derive their elan from a feeling of superiority. This
superiority not only places them at the summit of the organizational
structure of which they are a part, but also gives them a privileged position
in society at large.
The privileged status of elites enjoys wide political and social
sanction, because the elite subserves a purpose which is considered so
important, that the rest of society is willing to suppress the natural human
tendency towards egalitarianism, and to accept the dominance of the elite,
in order that this overriding purpose might be attained. It does not matter
whether this elite is a bureaucratic elite, or a feudal aristocracy, or an
ecclesiastical elite. Whether the elite consists of Roman Catholic cardinals
or Brahmin priests, the important thing is, the elite must perform a function
which serves this all important purpose. As long as they serve this purpose
these elites remain vital, living entities. But when this purpose no longer
exists, they become parasitic entities; hot house flowers, whose brilliance
and splendour is artificially sustained.
Elitism appeals to two different sets of people. It appeals, first of all to
the tidy logical mind that delights in the construction of elegant
metaphysical systems. What could be more logical in theory, than to select
the brightest and the best young men and women of a generation and after
suitable training, invest them with the executive power of the state. The
proposal has an appeal which is not merely logical, it is also aesthetic. In
fact a mind that is susceptible to aesthetic appeal is likely to be prone to
flirtation with elitism. Plato is, of course, the classic example of this
mindset.
At the other extreme from the Utopian idealist, is the autocratic ruler
who for purely pragmatic reasons, favours an apparatus of governance,
where power is concentrated in the hands of an oligarchy that owes direct
allegiance to him and is dependent for its elite status on him alone. All
despots know that the best way to maintain their domination over a large
territory is to govern it through a centralized bureaucracy. Bureaucratic
elitism acts as an invisible prop for the regime and the social sanction given
to these elites, becomes the best support for the authority of the state. The
truth of this proposition would be apparent from a study of the Chinese and
the Roman empires, and lately the British Empire.
 It is easy to see how a bureaucratic elite is more efficient as an
instrument of autocratic rule than a feudal oligarchy or a ruling class
selected purely on the basis of political favour. A feudal aristocracy, whose
power is based on possession of landed property, would be less subservient
to the central authority than one which owes its power entirely to the will of
the sovereign. The political history of England, for instance, with the barons
forcing King John to sign the Magna Carta, is one example of this principle.
In England the feudal classes were able to form a check on royal
prerogative, rather than just being a supine instrument of royal will. An
English sovereign would gladly have dispensed with his contentious barons,
and adopted the Chinese system of rule by mandarins, had he been
permitted to do so. But then the history of the world would have been quite
different.
Thus both the bloody minded autocrat and the pure minded
philosopher favour bureaucratic elitism for their own reasons. The real
purpose of the elite in an autocracy remains the perpetuation of autocratic
rule, notwithstanding the naïve idealism of philosophers. However, in a
democracy this overriding purpose does not exist. A regime based on
popular support does not require a bureaucratic elite to sustain it. Nor can
we invent some other purpose which can be put in the place of the
transcendent purpose which has been lost. Good governance, even if
politicians desired it, does not constitute a single purpose. It is made up of
diverse components and capable of divergent interpretations. Yet the fact
remains, that the elitist model commands support even in democratic
countries. This is a conundrum which demands an answer. Let us look at
this problem within the context of elitism.
I think the wide appeal of elitism is explained by the fact that
snobbery as a social force is much more widely spread than we are willing
to admit. On rational grounds most people should be egalitarian in their
outlook, because equality is in the wider interest. One would also suppose
that those who are in a socially inferior position would be more disposed to
favour egalitarian ideologies. But the facts of the case seem contrary to
reason. It is only the upper middle class intellectuals who favour egalitarian
ideologies. The man in the street, is more of a conservative. Elitism it
seems, makes a vicarious appeal to his latent snobbery. In government
service, for example, those in the lowest cadre, have the highest regard for
the IAS officers. Even those who are in the provincial civil services, and
those who are in the other central services, while active in running down the
IAS seem to share this regard in private. And all this can be explained
readily by reference to the element of snobbery.
However let us set us aside our scepticism and see how far the various
features of elitism really lead to a high standard of performance. One of the
basic tenets of elitism is irrational belief in the superiority of the elite. In
rejecting rationalist criteria of merit as a measurable and quantifiable
concept, it also tacitly supports notions of merit as a pseudo-mystical and
intangible quality. There is a clear historical link between this kind of
philosophical hocus-pocus and authoritarian ideologies. Nazism for
instance, considered irrational notions of superiority of the Aryan race as
the basis of its creed. British imperialism rested on similar notions of the
superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, which was supposed to have a mission
to rule other races. The Nazis persecuted the Jews on the same irrational
grounds of racial inferiority. The Jews on the other hand have their own
traditions and myths and regard themselves as the chosen people. In India,
the Brahmins, to perpetuate the myth of their own superiority, considered
themselves as the 'twice born', and created a vast body of religious and
sacerdotal works to justify their superiority.
If we look at these pretensions of superiority without any blinkers we
see that they are at bottom nothing more than an attempt to preserve a social
and political dominance by the help of irrational myth making. If the elite
has sufficient resource and sagacity to preserve its dominance over a period
of time, its claims become a part and parcel of conventional wisdom,
accepted as truth without question. The social sanction given to elitism
helps to conceal its true nature. People tend to forget that it is only a
strategic device by which a dominant class perpetuates its dominance.
The apologist for the civil service can legitimately protest here and say
that these remarks may apply to hereditary bodies but not to the civil
service because it is chosen on merit. But this misses the point. We are not
talking about scholastic aptitude or intelligence. The merit that we are
concerned about can roughly be described as strength of character. There is
no examination or any other test yet devised to find merit of this kind. Nor
can it be inculcated by any course of training or instruction. The moral
impulse springs from sources that lie deep within a person's being. No one
can do good on principle or do evil on policy. A person is good or bad
simply because he can't help being so, and any element of calculation or
analysis of self-interest is really possible only if one is truly amoral. The
person who does good on the grounds of expediency would "soon be found
out. In this respect power is a ruthless mistress and a person who does not
have the strength of character to deal with authority would sooner or later
show his true colours.
This is not to say that codes of conduct and the collective morality of
an organization have no impact on the issue. While an individual cannot be
made better than he is, tribal values certainly serve a useful purpose because
they prescribe a minimum acceptable standard of behaviour. They help to
keep the rank and file on the straight and narrow path and ensure that the
grosser deviations from the norm are punished. In the context of the civil
service the organizational ethos helps in checking the more obvious forms
of venality and wrongdoing. But this depends on the commitment of the
leaders of the civil service to the codes of conduct that they are supposed to
uphold. This is where the situation differs so materially in democratic
polities from autocratic states where civil servants are rulers. In imperialist
states it is in the interest of the state that the civil servants follow a high
standard of public morality. It creates good will and support for a regime
which in the last analysis does not depend on the consent of the governed.
But in a democracy the real rulers are the politicians and their basic
motivation is to be re-elected. In this dispensation the civil servants are only
agents of the real rulers and the rulers base their appraisal of a civil
servant's worth not on his character or integrity, but on his pliability. Indeed,
in this case a person with strength of character would be a liability rather
than an asset because he would decline to be used as a mere tool. Purely as
a practical policy therefore, politicians ensure that only pliable civil
servants reach the top. These civil servants in their turn ensure that only
like-minded bureaucrats rise in the hierarchy. As self-advancement is the
basic drive of civil servants and self-advancement depends on pliability,
every career-conscious bureaucrat is compelled to adopt the value system
forced on him. Many young officers start with fine ideals, with grand
passions, with noble dreams, but they all end up with a willingness to
oblige. The ethical creed which they all embrace in the end is "the king can
do no wrong." So it is, that the ethical standards of the civil service are
decided by the political morality of the day. And the civil servants for all
their fine words about neutrality and independence are only as good as they
are allowed to be by the politicians.
Of course the civil service has its share of honourable men and
women, like any large organization. But these individuals of character and
integrity do not owe their virtue to the collective morality of the civil
service. They are what they are, because of their own inner impulsion and
could not be otherwise. We cannot argue, on the strength of these few
individuals, that elitism produces a high standard of conduct. This may be
true as long as the elitist organization is dedicated to the pursuit of a
transcendent goal or mission, but when such a goal is missing, the pursuit of
self-interest replaces the collective ethic. The result as I have shown above
is not edifying.
These irrational pretensions of superiority lead logically to restrictions
on entry into the elite, which then becomes a closed caste. The civil service,
especially the IAS is just such a closed caste. Entry into the IAS is usually
only at the recruitment stage, lateral entry at later stages is severely
restricted. This has obvious snob value, but it does not help in fostering
talent. In fact caste feeling is the enemy of true ability. An organization that
is imbued by caste feeling closes the door on the entry of fresh talent and
thereby lacks the means of self-renewal. By deliberately restricting the
talent pool that is available to the government it severely reduces the quality
of governance that the civil service can provide. This caste feeling
ultimately leads to a covert trade unionism, a drive to preserve their own
privileges and to keep others out of the plums of office. All this lowers
rather than raises the moral tone of the civil services.
Another argument in favour of elitism is that closed nature of the elite
breeds espirit de corps and creates close fraternal bonds that lead to a high
level of morale and ultimately to a high level of performance. The same
argument is offered in favour of the regimental spirit that is fostered in the
armed forces. But in the army this regimental spirit is sustained by the
memory of battles fought together, danger brayed together and the
consciousness of sharing in a great enterprise. This shared enterprise is the
business of fighting wars, a matter of life and death and therefore
demanding the ultimate in terms of commitment and sacrifice. The outward
trappings of this spirit, the display of battle honours, tales of heroism and
sacrifice, all create the feeling of pride and exaltation that is the essence of
regimental feeling.
The regimental spirit has therefore good justification. However, when
we talk of regimental spirit in the context of the civil services, we must
remember some significant differences. To begin with the civil services do
not have this feeling of being involved in a life and death enterprise that
comes so naturally to the armed forces. Their life is a succession of routine
matters; one damned things after another. Civil servants try to inflate the
importance of what they do, but it just does not have the kind of urgency
that is imposed by the requirements of fighting a battle. Then the
organizational structure of the civil service is quite different. As soon as the
newly recruited civil servants complete their training in Mussoorie they are
seconded to different state governments and thus scattered about the
country, many of them never to meet again. The state cadres, are organized
on the hierarchical principle like the army, but there the similarities cease.
In the civil service the hierarchy completely dominates fraternity, fellow
feeling takes a back seat before the claims of rank and status. In the place of
regiments, civil government is organized in departments. But departments
are prosaic entities, devoid of the corpus of tradition and legend that creates
the regimental spirit. Quite apart from this, no attempt is made in the civil
services to foster regimental spirit. The civil service has no heroes to look
up to, no icons to worship, no glorious feats of courage to commemorate. It
is every man for himself – and the devil take the hindmost.
It is also argued in favour of the 'closed shop' that people who reach
the top have to put in a life time of service in the civil service to do so, and
thus acquire the necessary wisdom and experience to manage the complex
business of governance. This is also a self-serving argument that rests on a
false premise. We may not agree with Napoleon when he said that
'experience is the mistress of fools', but we can hardly deny that experience
is also subject to the law of diminishing returns. In the civil service much is
made of rules and procedures and the way in which government functions.
There is a whole forest of such regulations and rules of business and a
positive mystery and mystique is built up around them. Most of these
procedures are simply irrational and archaic, but no one looks at them
critically, because by long usage they have acquired the bogus sanctity of a
Masonic ritual. Experience of such procedures is not a help but a hindrance.
 On the other hand, the civil service does inculcate the habits of
obedience and subordination. It does teach that discretion is better than
conviction, diplomacy than bluntness, a balanced view than analytical
rigour. After a lifetime of toeing the line, of smoothing down the edges and
toning down the passion, the kind of experience that one acquires is the
experience of distinguishing between shades of grey. The civil services can
do without too much of this kind of experience. An infusion of fresh blood
at regular intervals can only improve their mental and physical health.
Finally, let us look at another key feature of elitism – the cult of the
generalist. This in fact is the essence of elitism, that the right man, once
selected, is good enough to do anything with the proper training. The cult of
the generalist, which is such a cherished component of elitist civil services,
is a manifestation of this feeling. Here again we have followed the British
practice. It was Cardinal Newman, who summed up the apotheosis of the
generalist, in the following words, "It (the liberal education) teaches him to
see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of
thought, to detect what is sophistical and to discard what is irrelevant. It
prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any subject with
facility. "
In Britain, belief in the gifted amateur runs deep, as does distrust of
the specialist and the professional. Not so long ago, even sportsmen,
notably cricketers, were divided into two categories, the amateurs being
called 'gentlemen' and the professionals being called 'players'. The faint
note of disparagement in the word 'players', in contrast to gentlemen, is
obvious. This cultural bias means that in art and literature, the gifted
amateur always outperforms the professional. Take the case of Sherlock
Holmes and Lestrade, the Scotland Yard detective, who is his professional
counterfoil. The gifted amateur is symbolized by Holmes, and Lestrade
epitomises the, plodding, unimaginative professional who is always heading
in the wrong direction, until shown the way by Holmes. Tennyson's poem
on the "Charge of the Light Brigade", where the gallant troopers are sent to
their doom by the unprofessional blunders of their commanders, is the
ultimate glorification of the amateur:
Not though the soldiers knew
Someone had blundered
 Real life is however another matter, and what triumphs on the music
hall stage, may not do so in real life. The cult of the generalist was
castigated in the Fulton Report on the reform of the civil service. Fulton's
prescription was to break down the vertical barriers between the generalists
and the specialists and to throw open the top posts in the civil service to all
comers. These prescriptions, which have the force of reason behind them,
did not prove strong enough to surmount the resistance of the old guard
entrenched in Whitehall.
The argument offered in favour of the generalist is that what top policy
making levels need is not expert knowledge, but sound judgement and
general analytical ability. This is a bogus argument. The explosion of
knowledge, as well as the fast pace of obsolescence of knowledge in present
times, means that a person who is not well informed and up to date in a
particular field, would be all at sea in that area. This is specially true of
policy making at the national level, where a mass of information has to be
digested and the current discourse in the field has to be mastered. All this
must be backed up with a sound knowledge of the fundamentals of the
subject, as well as familiarity with the process of decision making and the
apparatus of government. This is a tall order. It is naive to expect a civil
servant, fresh from some provincial backwater, and innocent of economics
or public finance to handle an assignment, say in one of the economic
ministries, yet this is what we routinely do.
The British system has at least a saving grace, there a civil servant
once selected, is assigned to a department for the rest of his career. He then
acquires on the job knowledge and expertise. But in India we have the
tenure system, whereby no officer is allowed to work for more than five
years at a stretch in Government of India. No sooner does he get to grips
with the complexities of his job, his tenure ends and he is packed off to
some obscure backwater. This system ensures, that no one acquires, more
than a smattering of knowledge about his job. The system of muddling
through, was never carried to a more sublime height than this.
We see therefore that elitism as an ideology is defensible only when
the elite is dedicated to some transcendent goal and is vested with the
authority to achieve this goal. In democratic polities the bureaucracy has
neither this goal nor the authority to achieve it. Both these belong to
politicians. This being the case, in a democratic state civil service elitism
only leads to the worst of both the worlds, it gives the civil service a false
sense of their own importance and prevents the acquisition of specialized
knowledge when it is necessary. If efficiency is our goal we must look to
other options.
 An Agenda for Change

I t is a tragic irony that the bureaucrats, who as generalists are supposed to

know everything worth knowing, do not have any idea of their own role
in the scheme of things. Ask any civil servant about his own role and
chances are that he will either be at loss for words or hesitatingly describe
himself as a public servant, an agent of the state. This definition is fine as
far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. What for instance is meant by
the word 'state'? Does it mean the politically elected government of the day,
or does it mean some abstract juridical entity? If the former, the civil
servants have no choice but to accept their status as servants of politicians;
if the latter, they put themselves somehow above the elected government,
something which is clearly unacceptable in a democracy. This confusion is
not confined to India. Sir Robert Armstrong, and Sir Ian Bancroft, two
former heads of the Home Civil Service in Britain, seem to hold
diametrically opposite views on this issue.
According to Robert Armstrong, "Civil servants are servants of the
crown. In this context the crown means and is represented by the duly
elected government of the day ... The civil service as such, has no
constitutional personality or responsibility apart from the duly elected
government. "
On the other hand, his predecessor, Ian Bancroft seems to hold the
opposite view. In his opinion, "The civil service belongs neither to officials
nor to politicians, but to the crown and the nation. "
That two eminent civil servants hold such diametrically opposite
views about their own profession is symptomatic of the confusion that
exists on this issue. This confusion is typical of elitist civil services
because, they so sedulously foster the cult of the generalist. Remember
Cardinal Newman's assertion, quoted earlier that a person with a liberal
education is capable of "filling any post with credit and to master any
subject with facility. "A man who is supposed to be capable of playing any
role that he is called upon to play, is never quite sure what at bottom, is his
true vocation – whether he is a high minded mandarin above the dirty
business of politics or whether he is nothing more than a tool of the
government. It is worth expending some thought on the subject.
This book is an indictment of civil service elitism. The staple of my
argument is, that what we need is not a better civil service but a better
political system, where men of talent and character can find acceptance.
The present system where the politician is allowed to treat his office like a
personal fiefdom, and to abuse every norm of decency and morality in his
selfish interest; while the civil servant is expected to somehow carry on the
complex business of a modern state, and also take the rap for his master's
misdemeanours, is a half way house that combines the worst of both the
worlds. It creates a political class that is irresponsible and a civil service
that functions in complicity and collusion with this class, bereft of its
traditional virtues of independence and neutrality. What is worst of all, by
investing just enough resource and ability into the system, the charade is
kept going, when the only sensible option is to end the whole rotten
business once for all and start with a clean slate. It is like a patient on a life
support system, who is denied the dignity of death, but who has no chance
of being able to ever live properly again.
Therefore unless the present system is given a decent burial, we can
neither reform the civil service nor improve the political system. There are
two options before us. The first option is to do away with the permanent
civil service, lock, stock and barrel, and bring in the spoils system
wholesale, so that the politicians can have full freedom to appoint their own
relations and cronies to public office. As it is, the politicians think that they
are elected to enjoy the fruits of power. They make no fine drawn
distinctions between legislative and executive power. They think it is their
right to run the system as they please and have no qualms about meddling
in areas that the civil service considers its exclusive preserve. I have known
ministers tinkering with the confidential reports of peons and clerks – the
prerogative of junior functionaries in the government. They think it is their
legitimate right to take charge of everything. So in fact does the man in the
street. There is no point therefore in maintaining the pretence of civil
service neutrality and independence any longer. Let corruption and
nepotism have full play, so that the system can collapse under its own
weight. This will pave the way for the emergence of a more responsible
political class. The public will be made to feel the full force of
incompetence and corruption, not be shielded from it by the buffer of the
civil service. When the choice between competence and corruption is
presented in this stark way, it is possible, just possible, that the public might
be forced, in sheer desperation to choose politicians on the basis of their
character.
The other option is to put the clock back and go back to the days of
British Raj, with the civil service restored to its former pre-eminence. I do
not present this as a serious option, merely as a theoretical possibility for
those who are looking at ways to improve governance. Personally I think,
this option may be dismissed out of hand, not just because it is
undemocratic, but also because it doesn't really work. As I have shown, in
the long run civil service elitism without the inspiration provided by an
overarching political goal, soon declines into small-minded snobbery and
dead conservatism.
So we are left with one, only the first option, but for various reasons, I
do not think this option is likely to be implemented in the foreseeable
future. For one thing, the civil service, will rise up as a body against it. And
no one should underestimate their influence when they decide to act as a
collective body. For another thing, the present day politicians can not be
expected to oppose the very system to which they owe their existence. No
proposal for reform can succeed in the face of such formidable opposition.
Therefore, being practical men, we will have to settle for a compromise.
Any proposed compromise must take note of the peculiar genius of a
country. The compromise that I propose is dictated by two things, the first
of these I call the messiah syndrome, and the second, the incorrigibility
factor.
India is one of those countries where every problem is ultimately
expected to be resolved by individuals of genius. Curiously however, these
avatars are expected to arise, not from the ranks of politics but from the
civil service. The few success stories in the area of governance are all
ascribed to civil servants. We are all familiar with the wonderful job done in
Surat, for instance, by the Municipal Commissioner Mr Rao, or in Poona by
Arun Bhatia, or even by Khairnar in Bombay. The civil servant taking on
the powers of evil single handedly, and winning in the end, is a popular
stereotype. On the other hand, no one has ever heard of a politician cleaning
up the city, as Mayor Rudolf Guiliani has done in New York. It is simply
not expected of a politician in India.
This is so because of the incorrigibility factor. We expect, our
politicians to be corrupt and incompetent, as a matter of course. Like
indulgent parents watching over their spoiled children, we are willing to
forgive their every folly and foible. No one realizes that the same officers
could have done an even better job had they been politicians enjoying the
mandate of the people, rather than civil servants at the mercy of corrupt
politicians. They could not then have been transferred at the whims of
unscrupulous power brokers, nor would they have had to worry about their
own official superiors, who may be more malleable than them. Such a
thing, it is assumed as a matter of course is impossible. Politicians are
clearly incorrigible. They will not change – but in the meantime we have
the civil service. The combined result of this mind set is that the civil
service will continue to play an important role in the scheme of things, but
more and more this role will be that of a neutral umpire, of an arbitrator, of
a law enforcer and what will be needed above all will be the same
traditional qualities that we have been discussing, neutrality and
independence. As the option of an autonomous civil service can be ruled
out, the challenge before us will then be to safeguard the functional
autonomy of the civil service while keeping it at the same time firmly
accountable to the elected government. What follows, hereafter, is written
from this point of view.
Broadly speaking, the kind of work that civil servants do may be
divided into three categories. They act either as managers, or policy
advisors or are engaged in law enforcement. These three roles are really
quite different in nature and call for different kinds of skills and attitude.
The role of managers is basically subject to the touchstone of
efficiency. Managers require functional autonomy, they require the ability to
manage men and money. They can be judged only by the results they
produce. Managerial skills are not fostered by hierarchical set ups. They
need a different kind of environment to flower. Managers need creative
freedom to be able to put their ideas into practice, untrammelled by the
restrictions of official procedure and routine. Governments need a lot of
managerial talent, but the civil service does not provide the right
environment for it. If government is serious about improving the
management of the various commercial and autonomous undertakings that
it owns, it must enlarge the talent pool from which it recruits its managers
and be willing to play by the discipline of the market place. Individuals
coming from a civil service background may be good at throwing their
weight around but they are incapable of handling the ruthless demands of
business. Elitism rests on irrational assumptions of superiority, but the
market is no respecter of such pretensions, it is a completely democratic
place where all that counts is real ability. Government has to adopt similar
eclecticism in its recruitment policies if it wants to improve the quality of
its managerial staff.
Management also demands expertise and different jobs require
different kinds of expertise. Some need ability at financial management,
some require focus on marketing ability. All need an in-depth knowledge of
the subject and the ability to innovate. Such skills are unlikely to be found
in any one organization and government has to cast its net wide if it wants
to tap the best talent available. The important thing is that the cult of the
generalist with its emphasis on intangible norms and means rather than ends
does not produce good managers. What is needed therefore, is proper
respect for specialized skills.
This is also true of the civil servants who act as policy advisors. What
they need above everything else is knowledge. This is more than text book
knowledge acquired at academic institutions; although that is the starting
point and therefore indispensable. The explosion of information and the fast
pace of obsolescence of current knowledge means that it is increasingly
harder to keep abreast of all that is happening in a particular field. Only a
specialist with comprehensive knowledge of a particular subject can remain
up to date about new developments. Civil servants who advise the
government about policy matters are expected to have this kind of
knowledge, but the cult of the generalist ensures that no civil servant is ever
given the chance to acquire detailed knowledge of any subject. A person
whose specialization is in animal husbandry is often sent to manage finance
and a botanist may be asked to manage the industries portfolio. The usual
practice in government is to ensure that no one is posted in a department of
which he might have detailed knowledge. When civil servants go abroad for
training, as most IAS officers do, the authorities make sure that they are not
given a chance to put their training to any practical use on their return. If
their area of training coincides with their department, as might happen
sometimes, they are usually given another posting on their return from
training.
The cult of the generalist is defended on the ground that specialization
tends to narrow and limit a person's vision, whereas the generalist who
knows a little of everything is able to take the broader view. This view is
well described by Cardinal Newman in words which have already been
quoted in the last chapter.
But Cardinal Newman's sweet reasonableness is itself sophistical. His
denigration of the specialist rests on false premises about the nature of
knowledge. All knowledge is knowledge of something. You cannot exalt
knowledge as such, while running down the specialist in the same breath.
At the back of this is the notion that education should primarily be based on
study of classical texts and history etc. It is the old Confucian idea,
propounded with greater sophistication but its linkages with elitist notions
of education are obvious. What we have here is social and political bias
exalted into a philosophical principle.
Still the cult of the generalist suits politicians, because they are, after
all, also generalists who do not know even the fundamentals of the subject
that they are asked to handle. There are of course well informed ministers
but these are the exception rather than the rule. By superimposing a
generalist civil servant between themselves and the specialists who are the
heads of their departments, they save themselves the trouble of mastering
their subject matter. The civil servants who are thus asked to run the
government by proxy are cleverer than the ministers. Civil service elitism
with its claims of omniscience allows them to brush aside the specialist and
to substitute their own shallow pretensions in place of real knowledge. The
ministers are happy because with this one stroke they accomplish two
objectives. The specialists, who with their superior knowledge might pose a
putative threat to the ill informed politicians are put in their place, and the
ministers are able to devote their time to the only thing in which they
specialise, ie, politics, unburdened by the cares of office. This is the only
reason why a civil servant who does not know the difference between a
howitzer and a bazooka is put over the head of a general who might have
risen to the summit of his profession by dint of professional excellence and
bravery on the battlefield. This is the only reason why a civil servant who
does not know wheat from sorghum and rabi from kharif is put over the
head of a scientist who may have won international recognition in crop
breeding.
All this may be fine with the politicians, but it plays havoc with the
quality of advice that goes into policy making. What we get is the usual
civil service circumlocutions about 'on the one hand and on the other hand'.
This kind of wishy washy advice lets politicians do what they like. In this
whole transaction, the real loser is the nation. It is this kind of
circumlocution that led to this country's defeat by China and scandals like
Bofors.
There are two ways to remedy the situation. As far as managerial posts
are concerned the only approach is to follow the principle of 'finding horses
for courses'. This means complete eclecticism in recruitment and an end to
the policy of the closed shop. Our aim should be to find the best person for
a given job, no matter where he comes from. As far as those posts are
concerned whose aim it is to offer policy advice to the government, the best
option is to strike a balance between the claims of the generalist civil
service and the specialists and permit lateral entry of specialists at a given
level, say the Joint Secretary level. If all posts of Joint Secretary level are
thrown open to all comers who have the requisite qualifications and
recruitment is strictly on merit, there would be a tremendous improvement
in the quality of the civil service. A lot of dead wood would be weeded out
and the infusion of fresh talent would provide a fresh perspective. The
specialists who have to endure a life time of bondage to stuck up generalists
will have a chance to prove their mettle. No longer would they have to bear
the cross of their inferiority as an a priori established truth. If they are
pipped at the post by a generalist it would be in an open race, fair and
square. No longer would the soldier have to click his heels before desk
bound civilians ignorant of the art of war, or the scientist defer to the
ignorant presumption of the generalist. There would be an all round
increase in morale and the quality of advice that goes into policy making
would improve tremendously. Most important, the country would no longer
have to suffer the consequences of following half baked rhetoric as expert
advice.
But when we come to the posts which are concerned with law
enforcement, we come up against a different kind of problem. The problem
arises because of the fact that civil servants who are engaged in offering
advice have to have a certain loyalty to the government, whereas law
enforcement requires complete independence from executive control. The
problem is that the same civil servant is expected to do both the jobs. He is
expected to be loyal one day and independent the next day. When he is
Secretary to Government he is expected to be simply a loyal agent, who
finds his salvation in faithfully serving the government of the day. When he
becomes, for instance the Chief Election Officer of a state, he is expected to
be independent of the same government and to be absolutely even handed
in deciding the electoral battle which may seal the fate of the same
government. Neutrality and independence are of course the core values of
the civil service. But that is only on paper. As long as politicians have the
decisive say in the career development of bureaucrats, they will continue to
call the shots and civil servants will find it hard to live up to the avowed
code of conduct. Their position is rather like the position of humanity in
George Herbert's poem:
O wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound,
Begotten vain, yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick yet commanded to be sound.
In short it is an impossible mandate.
The problem arose in the first place because of the cult of the
generalist which assumes that a person who is good enough to be a member
of the elite cadre is good enough to handle any assignment whatever its
requirements. In practice however, as we have seen, loyalty and
independence do not go together. As law enforcement jobs require strict
independence, the solution is to separate all such jobs from other executive
posts, and to keep them outside the control of the executive. For example,
the statutory functions performed by the District Magistrate demand that
this job be kept outside the control of politicians. The code of Criminal
Procedure does not in fact recognise the authority of the state government
over the DM, who is the highest executive authority charged with the
maintenance of public order. Yet today most DMs feel obliged to consult
the state government before taking any action in a law and order situation.
This leads to tragic results sometimes. The classic case is that of the District
Magistrate of Faizabad, who failed to prevent the demolition of the Babri
Masjid in 1992 on the ground that he was told by the Chief Minister not to
take any action in the matter. A similar argument was offered by the Nazis
during the Nuremberg trials, but was not accepted by the tribunal. It is yet
to be seen what judgement is passed by the Supreme Court in this matter.
Similar independence is needed by the officers in charge of conducting
elections. Under the present dispensation the Collectors are also appointed
as Returning Officers during elections. It stands to the credit of the civil
service that most Returning Officers have so far conducted the elections
with a fair degree of impartiality. But already this neutrality is being
questioned in an increasing number of cases. The situation is much worse
with regard to subordinate civil services. Fair and impartial conduct of
elections is the cornerstone of democracy and anything less than total
neutrality and impartiality on the part of the election machinery is
ultimately fatal to the whole process. That is why it is imperative that we
create an independent authority at the state level on the same lines as the
central election commission, staffed by civil servants who are not
accountable to the government.
I have given only two examples, both of them about jobs done by the
Indian Administrative Service but the same thing applies to many other jobs
which are concerned with law enforcement. An obvious area is the
investigation and prosecution of criminal offences. At present this is done
by the state police which works under the total supervision and control of
the state government. This vitiates the whole process of investigation which
must be completely free from interference and external influence of any
kind, yet this is what routinely happens, and small time politicians of all
parties make it their stock in trade to rescue small time criminals from the
police. Even in big cases involving smuggling, drug running, and crime
with international ramifications, the suspicion of important politicians being
involved can't be ruled out. The Supreme Court has tried to liberate the CBI
from political control but the arrangements devised to ensure its
independence are still ad hoc and do not go far enough. All agencies,
concerned with the investigation and prosecution of criminal offences
should be placed under an autonomous quasi judicial authority, ultimately
accountable to a bi-partisan committee of the legislature, but enjoying
complete functional autonomy. This is the only way to break the politician
criminal nexus and save the fabric of civil society.
In sum, the jobs concerned with law enforcement should be hived off
from the generalist civil service and assigned to a separate cadre. To those
who have a sentimental attachment to elitism and would be loathe to see the
old civil service divested of its privileges this may indeed prove to be a
saving grace, for elitism here would be an asset rather than a liability. After
all to enforce the law in letter and spirit, to uphold its majesty and to enlarge
its civilizing influence is the prime task of civil society. Those charged with
this noble task need courage as well as unimpeachable rectitude, and the
consciousness of being engaged in a great mission may well impart a real
moral fervour to the whole undertaking and thus redeem elitism from the
negative features that we have been at pains to emphasize.
 Why I Am Not a Civil Servant

I have so far been discussing the institution of the civil service from the
point of view of a radical reformer, who wants to improve things, but has
no personal axe to grind, no scores to settle and no ghosts to exorcise. This
is the truth. I have so far kept away from personal matters for two reasons. I
wanted to focus on matters which had a general rather than a merely
personal validity, and I wished to avoid a charge which I fear would still be
levelled at me, the charge of insufferable personal vanity. Still I should be
less than honest if I claimed that personal factors played no part in my
decision to leave the civil service. It is now time to set out my own
testament, and to share with the reader my own peculiar outlook on the
world which has led me, inexorably to the path which I have followed. If by
so doing I find some understanding, if not sympathy, it would be sufficient
reward for having written this book.
My first reason for leaving the civil service is the loss of personal
freedom that is involved in the whole business. It may be argued that all
salaried employment necessarily involves a certain loss of freedom. This is
true, as far as it goes, but the degree of curtailment differs in each
profession. In scientific or technical or academic jobs, one may indeed
enjoy complete functional autonomy, being subject only to a loosely
defined control for purely administrative reasons. Ideally such control only
provides the necessary support and backup, which enables the real workers
to concentrate their efforts on scientific or technological accomplishment.
At the other extreme from this ideal, we may take the case of convicts
undergoing imprisonment, whose activities are completely determined by
the prison staff. Between these two extremes, there is a vast range of jobs;
and it may surprise some people to know that the civil service is closer to
the lower end of the scale than the top.
This may seem a bizarre statement, but let me explain. Senior civil
servants, for all the prestige and privileges which they enjoy are only tools
of the government. The higher they rise in their professions, the more
closely they have to serve their political masters. The top civil servants, say
the Cabinet Secretary or the Chief Secretary of a state, are completely at the
beck and call of the politicians. To those who do not have direct experience
of how things are run, these grandees may appear remote, awe-inspiring
figures, but what I have said is the truth. The plain fact is that the top
mandarins have no professional brief of their own. They exist only to do the
bidding of the government. Their raison de etre is to obey and serve. This is
not service in the ennobling sense of philanthropy or charity, this is service
in the sense of subserving the ends of power. It is true that in return for this
submission they enjoy considerable influence and power of their own. But
this power, let it be remembered is the power of a satellite, which shines not
with a personal lustre but in reflected glory. I think there is something
degrading about the whole business.
Yes, it is fact that civil servants are privy to many state secrets, that
they move constantly in the rarefied upper echelons of the government, and
as a consequence some of the glamour of power rubs off on them. Above all
they are permanent, while politicians are only temporary. This enables them
to make their own off the record claim – that they, and not the politicians –
are the permanent rulers of the nation. All this may be true enough but is it
therefore sufficient reason to hold the civil service in high esteem? To my
mind there is something distasteful in arguments of this kind. In my view
their position is morally equivalent to that of the Begum and her low born
paramour who ran the country in the reign of Mohammad Shah Rangeela.
This is the power of royal favourites and intriguing courtiers. Such power
deserves scorn rather than esteem.
Of course what is at bottom of this apotheosis of the civil service is
really a worship of power as such. India is not unique in this. In Turkey
during the years of the Sublime Porte it was a rule that the top civil servants
had to be eunuchs. Surprisingly it became a custom among the gentry to
have the eldest son castrated at an early age to prepare him for initiation
into the civil service. There may still be many, who are prepared to be
emasculated for the sake of entry into the gilded purlieus of the civil
service. I prefer to keep my natural endowments and face the rigours of
being an ordinary citizen.
If it is degrading to be employed in doing the bidding of politicians;
what makes this servitude doubly galling is that the business of politics is to
do with beliefs and convictions. It is concerned with the pursuit of value.
That at least is how things ought to be, but there is a shocking gap between
what ought to be and what is. In practice Indian politics is a game
completely devoid of moral purpose. It is the pursuit of power by any
means. This state of affairs may be tolerable for those who have no beliefs
or convictions of their own, but as the reader may have inferred, I have
quite a few convictions of my own. To forsake one's faith, and to devote
oneself to the bidding of those whose motives are simply to consolidate
their own power, to be forced to serve the personal ambitions of
unscrupulous politicians behind the ethic of public service, this is the kind
of daily deception and institutionalized humbug that makes the job of a
senior civil servant particularly unbearable to me.
Let me also add that the perks and privileges that go with the job, and
that are supposed to gild the pill, make the medicine more bitter. Public
service is satisfying when it is accompanied by the Spartan ethic, lofty
ideals and simple living. This has been the personal creed of many of our
best civil servants. To this is due the present status and prestige of the civil
service. It is therefore perverse to cite the liberal perks and privileges as the
main reason for joining the civil service. This is precisely not the reason for
which any one should join the civil service. Those who are fond of the good
things of life, should go into business, or other highly paid professions.
They should set their sights on becoming World Bank consultants, so that
they can advise Third World countries on how to avert economic collapse
on a thousand dollars per diem, or try their hands at becoming Supreme
Court lawyers, or advertising executives, or best-selling novelists or record-
breaking sportsmen or heart surgeons, or any of the other icons of modern
life. They should not bring this mercantile culture into the civil service and
destroy its old values.
Personally I would go beyond this. For me the Spartan ethic meant
giving up not merely the trappings of authority but authority and privilege
itself. I think this was the meaning of my leaving the civil service; I saw it
as an act of self-abnegation. That the purpose of life is not to be someone,
however powerful or important, but to do something worthwhile, however
insignificant it may seem to others. A man expresses his essential being
only in his actions. His actions alone have moral quality. The rest is only
words – mere dross. Every good deed, is good enough in my scheme of
things for the spiritual equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and in this field the
Prime Minister and his peon compete on an equal footing. Indeed, the peon
often has a better chance of doing something purely disinterested and
therefore morally superior.
I also define success and failure in a different way, some might say in
an idiosyncratic way. To my mind every life is a kind of failure. The
prospect of disease, the loss of loved ones, the travails of old age and the
final catastrophe of death, make a nonsense of our claims of success. But
real failure is in not being able to live up to your convictions; in not trying
to work out your dreams. To hold oneself back from some long cherished
goal for reasons of prudence – that is real failure. By the same token,
success is in taking the plunge – in challenging oneself, in making the
maximum demands on one's skill, ability, courage, etc. The cardinal virtue
of civil servants is caution, they are forever holding back, hedging their
bets, saving their skins and toning down their advice, with judicious
provisos and caveats. This is not my cup of tea, to me it is anathema.
I started this chapter with the concept of freedom. To me freedom
means standing alone. It means ploughing one's own furrow, it means
having the courage to stand on one's own two feet, without institutional
props. The civil service is a large organization with plenty of members who
are roughly equal in terms of ability, in such an organization it is the pushy
adventurer with the knack of handling important people, who makes his
way to the top. But the end does not justify the means. Indeed the end itself
is unworthy of serious effort, because at the end of the day, one only ends
up serving important politicians no matter how high one rises. The game is
therefore not worth the candle.
This self-assertion may be heroic but the sceptic may well ask, what is
one to do with this freedom. My answer would be – follow your natural
bent. I do believe that every individual is born with a unique individuality;
an inner nature that one must follow. Those who suppress this inner nature
lead miserable lives – however successful they may be in a worldly sense.
The problem is that most people do not know their own natures. They are so
much under the influence of conventional wisdom and social conditioning
that they take success in the worldly sense to be the only goal worth striving
for. Knowing oneself is the hardest thing in the world. Unless one is driven
by an inner demon, as great artists or revolutionaries may be, one may
never look deep enough to glimpse one's own inner depths. It requires a
discipline, a purification of the mind to know oneself.
Still without this self knowledge one can not find fulfilment. In my
case this knowledge came early. I knew, when I joined the service, that by
temperament and inclination I was a philosopher. My destiny was to
articulate the vague aspirations of youth into a coherent system, a blue print
for a better world. But I could not be content with mere abstractions. I
wanted to translate my vision into reality. I wanted to build a better world in
practice as well as theory, and I did not think the civil service provided me
with a large enough canvas for my dreams. That is why I am not a civil
servant.
 Postcript-Life Outside the Civil Service

I t is now more than two years since I left the civil service. Time enough
for stock taking – and that is what I proposeto do in this chapter. My
intention in writing this book was not merely to set out the personal and no
doubt idiosyncratic reasons for leaving the civil service but also to analyse
the grounds for the general malaise that seems to be afflicting that body.
Events have merely confirmed the analysis. In one thing however I have
turned out to be wrong. I had hoped, that after reading this book, people
will no longer ask me- why did you leave the service? That question still
continues to be posed, with the same sense of bafflement and pitying
condescension. Did I have a violent quarrel with the Chief Minister, was I
disgusted with the 'system' and thus making my protest by the extreme
expedient of leaving it, or was I the victim of some diabolical conspiracy
whose details are yet to revealed? Sadly for the lovers of conspiracy
theories, I have no such sensational disclosures to make. I had no quarrel
with the Chief Minister, nor was I making a dramatic gesture of protest. The
fact of the matter is, my leaving the service was not linked to any specific
incident. It was the result of long premeditation, very far from being
contingent or incidental. People could still have made some sense of the
whole thing if I had left the civil service to take up some highly paid job in
a multinational company, or secured a Rajya Sabha nomination, or done any
of the things that conventional wisdom could equate with bettering my
prospects. Perversely I did none of these things. Most people just shrugged
their shoulders and said – madman, the more charitable said – Hamlet or
Don Quixote and went on their way.
 Nonetheless what I did was neither whimsical nor deliberately
perverse. At the risk of repeating myself let me reiterate – I believe life is
too precious to be lived in conformity with conventions one does not
believe in. And it is too important to be left to the mercy of random events
or the dictates of some boss, or official superior or any individual other than
oneself. It has to be lived in accordance with whatever one believes to be
the right way to live. I have lived by my own credo, ever since I left the
civil service and it is in this framework that I wish to describe what I have
been doing since I became a free citizen.
But before I come to this, let me answer another question that arises
quite naturally and to which after this lapse of time I should be able to give
a definitive answer. The question is quite simple – do I have any regrets
about leaving the civil service now that I have had a crack at doing my own
thing? Do I still retain my idealism after having encountered the harsh
realities of the world outside the sheltered confines of the civil service? My
answer is – no ! I have no regrets whatsoever and yes! The idealism is still
intact. I should like, if I may, to quote a poem of Robert Frost, which often
comes to mind. The poem, which is called Into My Own is about a man
who sets out on an uncharted road, all alone:
One of my wishes is that those dark trees
So old and firm they scarce show the breeze,
Were not, as't were the merest mark of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day

Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back,

Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew –

 Only more sure of all I thought was true.

The fact is, now I am more sure of all I thought was true. It is this that
I should like to set down. The core of my beliefs boils down to four
propositions. The first of these could be summed up in the statement of the
poet William Blake: He who would do good to others must do it in minute
particulars, the general good is the plea of the scoundrel and the hypocrite.
There are a number of people who come up to me and say, "Don't you
think you could have done a lot of good if you had stuck to the civil
service?" These well-meaning and well-intentioned people don't realize that
what they are saying is not only incorrect, it is downright immoral. There is
no doubt that people in authority have a chance to initiate policies and
actions which affect the mass of people. But if we take this argument to its
logical conclusion it would mean that a Prime Minister is always a better
man than his gardener, because he has a greater chance of doing good, a
doctor is always superior morally to the nurse who works for him, and the
nurse again is a better being than the ward boy who assists her. The
argument is not only absurd it is also immoral because it reduces ethical
considerations to a quantitative measure.
If something is ethically right, it must be such that everyone can do it.
If the backing of authority is needed to do good, than only a few people
would be able to do it, which morally is an untenable position. In ethical
terms what counts is the feeling behind the action. If something is done
selflessly, with genuine love and compassion, it is good, whether it affects
one person or one thousand is really besides the point. This puts the Prime
Minister and his gardener on the same footing. Indeed the gardener has
quite often the better chance of doing something sincerely good, because he
is spared the corrupting influence of power. Those who insist therefore, that
persons in authority can do more good, are suffering from a sort of ethical
colour blindness.
As I have pointed out in the previous chapter, what is behind this
quantitative approach to ethics is simply a deification of authority, which is
such a deep rooted feature of our society. I meet a lot of people who use this
argument to justify their own craving to cling to office. People who move
heaven and earth to hang on to some sinecure, some high sounding but
otherwise meaningless job, simply that they may use their influence, as they
put it, for the greater common good. Such people are moral charlatans, who
only delude themselves, they succeed in fooling no one else. Their real
motivation is to enjoy the perks and prestige that goes with authority and
this I consider to be essentially an immoral attitude.
These are the kind of people who believe in health for all, but would
not donate blood to help a dying man. These are the people who are
passionate about tightening traffic laws but would not take an accident
victim to hospital. These are the people who believe in the brotherhood of
man, but would not give money to a beggar. They remind me of that line
from T. S. Eliot – "designing systems so perfect that no one will need to be
good."
Therefore whether you are a prime minister or a peon, if you are
serious about doing good to a fellow human being, you have to do it as a
personal act of service, off your own bat, without the aid of institutional
props. The best moments of my life, the only time that I have ever really
been able to get out of my self, have been those moments when I was able
to perform those 'little unremembered acts of kindness and of love', which
have enabled me to relate to another human being for a fleeting second.
Keeping this in mind, I decided, when I left the civil service, to set up a
home for the aged. The idea was to help those who were too old and infirm
to help themselves, or those who were down and out and condemned to
sleep on the streets and suffer the bitterness of the weather in the open.
This home I built on some land that I owned a little distance from the
town. Among the inmates of this home two deserve mention here, one a
truly remarkable character, the other a truly despicable one. They show the
height to which human nature can rise and the depth to which it can
descend, quite independently of a man's social status and external
circumstances. I should like to narrate their story briefly.
The first was a man, whom let us call Mastan. Mastan was a
scarecrow of a man, tall, lean, dressed in filthy rags caked in grime, with a
ragged white beard. He wasn't really a beggar however – he was too proud
to beg. It would be more accurate to call him a vagabond, who wore the
visible marks of years of vagrancy on his person to such spectacular effect
that he looked a walking ruin of a man. One of Mastan's favourite nightly
bivouacs was the sidewalk on Secretariat Road. I saw him every morning as
I went up to my office, looking more like a bundle of filthy rags than a man,
he would just be stirring into wakefulness as I passed him by in my
chauffeur driven official car. This open sidewalk was his home, hot weather
or cold. I often wondered how he was able to endure the bitter cold of the
night in the tattered quilt that he had. The sight of this man filled me with
pity. I resolved to take him to the home that I had built as soon as it was
ready.
I had assumed that having a roof over his head and without having the
bother of scrounging for his next meal among rubbish dumps would be an
offer that would be irresistible to the man. I was wrong. Mastan stayed in
the home only for a day. The next morning when I went there, I found him
waiting on the doorstep, impatient to leave. This is how our dialogue went:
"I can't stay here saab."
"Why, don't you like the food and the other arrangements?"
"No there is nothing wrong with the food, but I have done nothing to
earn it. It is my practice not to eat until I earn my meal. I am a masseur by
profession. It is true no one comes to me these days. But my grip is still
strong. See ..." so saying, he caught my ankles in a vice like grip and tried
to massage my legs. "I can't live without doing some kind of work, and
whom will I massage in this place? No saab, I can't stay here. Let me go
back."
"But Mastan!" I said, "haven't you had enough of sleeping in the open
and living on the street?"
"What's wrong with that? I like my freedom. I eat where I like and
sleep where I please. I never ask for food. There are people who come to
me and ask me to eat with them. But saab, I only accept their hospitality if
they agree to have maalish done by me. See, I can't live without some
work."
Mastan went back to his vagrancy. He liked the freedom of the road.
He preferred the uncertainty of his life and its hardship to living on charity.
I doubt very much if any one ever came to him for massage, but that didn't
dampen his faith in himself. I still see him sometimes wandering about the
town, more like a ghost than a real man, but still miraculously alive. I know
now that his decrepit appearance is deceptive. Mastan is a man of principle,
of real strength of character. And he still has a strong grip.
 The other man, I want to tell you about, was a man of substance and
property. Yet he came to me posing as a man who had fallen on bad days
and needed a shelter. I naturally took him in without demur. After all the
home had been built for just such people. He claimed to be a retired
executive of a big company, who had been left high and dry by his sons. He
had a daughter to look after, who had been abandoned by her husband. I felt
a great deal of sympathy for him. However after staying in the Ashram for a
few days, he asked me to give him a certificate. This certificate was to the
effect that Mr. X was an inmate of the old age home run by me. I gave him
the certificate in perfect innocence – it only stated what was a matter of
fact. After obtaining the certificate, the man disappeared. He came back one
day to collect his personal effects and left quietly without informing me of
his whereabouts. It then became clear to me that all he wanted from me was
the certificate. He had gone through the whole charade just to get that. Here
was a man, who had no compunctions about subverting a philanthropic
institution for his own ends. If Mastan was a case of real high mindedness,
here was a case of chicanery and deceit that was truly despicable. One of
the sad aspects of my experience since leaving the civil service is that I
have encountered more men of the latter type than Mastans.
The second principle which I live by is the obligation which devolves
on all citizens to participate in public life. Edmund Burke's statement, "The
only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
about sums it up. Politics is the field for those who are concerned about
changing the world for the better, for those who care about issues of
governance, and a tenure in the civil service only prepares you, as it were,
for the calling of politics. I see politics in the old fashioned way, as a
vocation which should be followed only by those who are called to it by a
sense of mission. That is why I have argued in this book that the high
minded young man who is inspired by the ethic of public service should
choose politics over the civil service. The difference between the two,
which should be fairly obvious, yet is seldom commented on, is that the
civil service, however one looks at it, is a profession, while politics, ideally,
is a vocation. The civil servant may be personally inspired by the loftiest of
ideals, but when you come down to it, he does what he does, for the sake of
his pay. The civil servant has to follow the discipline of the service, respect
the principle of hierarchy and in general abide by the mores and values of a
corporate body, which exists chiefly as a professional entity.
Politics, in contrast is a freemasonry where people are brought
together only by a shared interest in service. A politician, ideally renders
service only out of a sense of obligation, not for pay. This element of
service freely rendered, simply out of a sense of obligation, is crucial. I am
aware that this view of politics can be criticized as impossibly idealistic, but
that would be to miss the point. When we criticize present day politicians
for being mercenary, self-seeking and deceitful, we are only judging them
against an ideal. The ideal is not invalidated by present practice, it is present
practice that becomes more reprehensible by contrast.
It is quite another matter however to deliberately take a cynical view
of politics. To describe it as the last refuge of the scoundrel, and so on. This
view, which I have commonly encountered among India's literate classes, is
either a needlessly pessimistic view, or it is an escapist view. If we believe –
as seems to be commonly the case – that only the rascally, carpetbagger sort
of character will enter politics as a matter of course, we are taking a
pessimistic view. It is sad that a land which could produce a politician like
Mahatma Gandhi, has come to this pass.
The other view, the escapist view, that it is not worth a good man's
while to engage in politics and it should be left to the criminals and other
drop outs is even worse. It is escapist, because it tries to belittle politics as
such, without facing up to the fact that politics in a free society is bound to
colour every aspect of life. If men of talent and ambition continue to regard
politics as a third rate profession, fit only for the fringe elements of society,
we will ultimately get a society in which there will be no place, anywhere,
for talent and ambition. Do we really want that?
I know there are people who retort that American politics is run by
back room party bosses, sitting in rooms full of cigar smoke, that Japanese
politics is run on slush money and crony capital by geriatric party satraps.
They may well be right, but they forget one thing. In Japan and in America,
there is already a consensus about what every party in power has to do, and
what no one can do, regardless of politics. Such a consensus does not exist
in India, where the public morality is – anything goes. In such a situation
the talk of Japanese or American politics is worse than immoral, it is
irresponsible.
 In keeping with these convictions, I plunged into politics as soon as I
was free of the restrictions of government service and founded the
Nationalist Party with a few friends. This was less quixotic than might seem
at first sight. There is widespread disenchantment with political parties in
the country, because none of them practise what they preach. There is a
wide divergence between their public posturing and their actual conduct
when in power. This disenchantment with political parties and politicians
takes the form of wholesale condemnation of politics as such, which as I
have already shown is an escapist option. There is no getting away from
politics or from political parties.
Political parties in India, today represent sectional or regional interests
based on caste or language or even religion. There is no middle of the road
political party, which rises above narrow sectarian interests, or that does not
pander to the constituencies of caste and obscurantist religion. The idea
behind the Nationalist Party was to float a party that is free from these
parochial or sectarian loyalties, that presents a liberal, forward looking
version of Indian Nationalism and that is committed to fighting the evil of
caste. The last issue was in fact a key item on its political agenda and it
began its life with a convention against caste as such.
This conference was held in a convention hall that could seat a
thousand people. The fledgling party had only a handful of members. It had
no funds of its own apart from what I could spare from my own pocket. No
personal invitations could thus be issued. The convention was advertised in
the papers, and this we thought would be sufficient to ensure attendance. In
the event about fifty people turned up and heard the party president and one
other speaker expound his views on the abolition of caste.
If numbers are what count in politics, the convention wasn't exactly a
roaring success. But if the convention was less than successful, the public
meeting that followed can only be described as a fiasco. As publicity
through the print media was expensive, this time we decided to advertise
the public meeting by posters. About a hundred large posters were put up at
different spots in the town that appeared prominent to us. As before no
personal invitations were issued. We believed that people would turn up on
their own once they saw the posters.
The meeting was to be held in a maidan, where a weekly vegetable
market was also held. Our calculation was that people who came to the
market would also be attracted to the meeting, once they saw it in progress.
The big day arrived. We hired some chairs from a tent house, who also
arranged the public address system and the lighting. The whole thing came
to a tidy sum. The meeting began at 6:30 on the stroke of the appointed
hour. Everything was in order. The neat rows of plastic chairs, the booming
mike and the spotlight that focused on the makeshift dais. The only thing
that bothered us was the lack of an audience. It was assumed that once the
proceedings commenced people would stroll in. But that did not happen;
After the preliminaries were over, it was my turn to speak. I got up to
address rows of empty chairs, a daunting prospect for any speaker, but
pressed on regardless. The mike boomed on, the flood of eloquent, stirring
words (as I thought) went pouring out into the darkness, but people went
about the mundane business of purchasing their weekly groceries, and other
chores, completely heedless. It was like a drama mounted on a floodlit stage
by highly charged actors, without an audience to witness it. When we
wound up the show, only two people had turned up to hear us, an old man,
who lived nearby and had come to the market on his weekly round and a
friend who had by chance seen me holding forth and had wandered over.
To those wise people who are inclined to say, I told you so, let me
pose two questions. Is there any political party in India that does not
cynically exploit divisions based on caste, religion and language? And is
there any political party in India that practises what it preaches with regard
to probity in public life and eliminating the role of money and muscle in
politics? If the answer to both the questions is in the negative then the
attempt to build a party that lives by these values cannot be faulted at least
on ideological grounds.
Yes it can be faulted on tactical grounds. The attempt failed because
for one thing people join political parties that have a chance of coming to
power, not just out of idealism. This proposition is universally valid, but the
complete absence of ideological motivation, is, I suspect peculiar to India.
Here the same person can gravitate from one party that claims to be a
hardline nationalist party of the right to another that is radical and leftist in
its orientation. Here people join even the communist party without really
being bothered by what Marx had said or caring very much about
communist ideology. At the same time the political manifestos of the
various parties, whether of the right or left are strikingly similar. Their
economic policies are always populist and egalitarian, they are all
committed to value based politics, and all repeat the same cliches and
platitudes. It is not surprising that no one takes these pronouncements
seriously. But this cynicism about ideology leads to an unfortunate
stalemate. People are fed up with the present dispensation but unwilling to
support any new political outfit, treating it with the same cynicism with
which they regard the established parties. The result is a Catch 22 situation
that does not bode well for the future.
Ideology does however matter, especially for new parties, but in a
different way. A new political party can attract attention only if it
aggressively champions the cause of some one or the other organized
minority, some one or other special interest group. If in the process, it
descends to violence and terror tactics, all to the good, for it can then break
through the carapace of indifference with which all new attempts at political
regeneration are greeted and capture the attention of the media. Once it does
this, it is only a matter of time before it starts attracting funds and followers.
Unemployed youth, small time criminals, lumpen elements on the fringes of
society, the kind of riff-raff that furnishes the storm troopers of every party,
flock to its banner. Power brokers, wheeler dealers, and other operators who
flourish in every walk of life start parking funds in it; like punters hedging
their bets by putting some money on every dark horse in the field. After all
you never know, politics is a funny game. These parties however never
quite shake off the stigma of their birth. They only perpetuate the system
that they were supposed to destroy. Thus the cycle continues.
No one can therefore deny the need for a middle of the road political
party that can resuscitate values in our public life. I may have been wrong
tactically, but I was dead right strategically. Perhaps I was not the right man
to do the job, but the great enterprise remains, waiting for another Gandhi
or Nehru to give it form and substance.
This wasn't quite the end of my political odyssey, however. Proceeding
on the same principles which had made me launch the Nationalist Party, I
contested the 1999 general elections as an independent candidate. The
question that I am most often asked in connection with this adventure is:
"Why did you contest the elections when you knew that you had no chance
of winning?"
 Again, this question makes certain assumptions which I do not accept.
It assumes that a thing is worth doing only if there is a reasonable chance of
success in doing it. This is an immoral doctrine. I did what I did out of a
sense of obligation, calculations of success and failure did not enter into it.
Elections are not only about success and failure. They are also about issues,
they are about taking a stand, they are about offering the voters an option.
The major political parties fought the 1999 election on non-issues. The
nationality of Sonia Gandhi, or the Kargil imbroglio and the responsibility
for it, were not really issues of any moment. The population explosion, the
destruction of our environment, the failure of the criminal justice system,
the criminalization of politics, the increasing role of caste, were, and it is on
these issues that I fought my campaign.
My total expenses for the elections were Rs 17,000, all coming from
my own pocket. I used my own Maruti 800 car for campaigning and bought
a megaphone to address impromptu street corner meetings. We couldn't
afford the expense of a regular election meetings, with a public address
system, chairs, floodlights etc. My election team consisted apart from
myself of two other friends, and one or two sympathizers who were co-
opted from time to time to put up banners and stand on the podium to
provide moral support. The local media, apart from a few notable
exceptions, was generally indifferent. Nonetheless we tried to cover the
length and breath of the constituency, undeterred by the lack of funds or
organization. At the end of the day, I received about two thousand voters, a
disappointing tally, all things considered, but not unexpected.
It was disappointing because, I can say in all humility, that among all
the contestants in the fray, I was the best candidate. I had given up a
prestigious job in the civil service and a life time of security, to take my
chances in the rough and tumble of politics, simply because I believed, as I
do now, that the tone of politics in our country could improve only when
good men made it their vocation. My track record as a civil servant was
there to prove, for those who needed such proof, my integrity and my
commitment to the underdog. It was disappointing that these things cut no
ice with the voters. But I had an inkling of the shape of things to come,
because I had neither the money nor the organization to convey all this to
the voters.
 Nonetheless this election was invaluable as a learning experience. It
was only then that I lost some of my cherished illusions about politics. I had
always seen politics as a battleground between competing ideologies,
between different visions of how things should be ordered, even between
individuals who were to be judged on the basis of their ability to serve their
constituents. I now saw for the first time, a view of politics as a trial of
strength, where the stronger party commanded instinctive support. This
view of politics, which I call the slave's view of politics, accounts for the
fact that money and muscle play such a key role in our politics. This
reverence for power as such, and for its naked, brutal, and shameless
display, explains, for instance, why it is an advantage rather than a handicap
to have a criminal background in politics. Criminals are seen as powerful
people, who inspire fear and submission. If ethical considerations are
irrelevant and the issue is to be decided purely on grounds of brute power
then a criminal has an obvious advantage, over say, a social worker of
known integrity or even if it comes to that, a civil servant of proven
rectitude.
I had always known all this in a vague sort of way, at second hand as it
were. Still it came as a surprise when I found that most people who were
involved in the business of politics saw it as a means of reinforcing their
own position or cadging small favours from the official machinery. The
rural gentry tended to support the winning side as a matter of policy,
because they used their association with the ruling side as a means of
cutting a dash before the rural bureaucracy – of making an impression, for
instance, on the local police inspector. I could understand this, but it was
still a disappointment to learn that the entire population had turned into
camp followers and fellow travellers and ideas and issues had no role to
play anywhere.
This tendency of always backing the favourite, of supporting the
strongest party regardless of ethical considerations is dropped only when
caste considerations come into play. This was another thing that I had not
expected. I can say now, with the wisdom of experience, that had I
exploited the caste factor, I could easily have polled ten times more votes
than I did. Since all the political parties are naturally savvy about caste
considerations, this means in practice that the dice is always loaded in
favour of big political parties. The only people who can counter this trend
are movie stars or cricket players, or even, as has recently happened in the
state of Madhya Pradesh, hermaphrodites. People whose only motivation in
entering politics is to cash in on their celebrity status. The omens for a
qualitative change in the tone and tenor of our politics, it is safe to infer, are
not good.
The second thing that I learnt, came home to me when I started
delivering election speeches. Initially it perplexed me, when I found that I
was applauded at all the wrong places. Snatches of poetry, statistical
information, and forensic argument full of telling facts, were all digested in
silence. But rhetorical flourishes, which I tend to avoid, cliched and
hackneyed sentiments couched in orotund phrases, seemed to go down very
well. I realized then that we have reduced our political discourse to a
debased argot where only high sounding generalities and bombastic
language has any impact and where there is no room for serious discussion
in a restrained manner. It is not surprising that most of our politicians with
reputations as speakers are platform orators of the rabble rousing, tub
thumping kind.
The last thing, and this I consider the saddest aspect of the whole
matter, was the obvious indifference of the middle class, the educated and
literate class, to politics. I looked to this class as my natural supporters, but
most of them, when it came down to it, didn't even bother to cast their vote.
The escapist view of politics, and the pessimistic view of politics, which I
have already mentioned earlier, seemed to prevail everywhere. I say this is
the saddest aspect of the matter because it lies in the hands of the middle
class, and in their hands only, to set right all the ills which beset our
political system. Their retreat leaves us without the means of effecting such
a change.
However, hope springs eternal in the human breast. I do not intend to
give up politics despite these setbacks. I may never contest an election,
there is something about going around asking for votes, that goes against
the grain, but I will continue to speak out, to write about, and to mobilize
the public, on issues which agitate me, in particular the issue of caste, with
which I started out in the first place.
The third article of faith, which I hold is about doing some work with
one's own hands, however one earns one's own living. There is a feeling
about making something with one's own hands, about labouring over
unformed raw matter and shaping it into a useful commodity, according to
the dictates of one's own fancy, that is uniquely satisfying. It is only in
making something, by dint of his innate creative ability, that man becomes
fully human.
I had decided before I left the civil service that I would take up the
making of leather shoes and footwear. To my mind there was something
romantic about the cobbler bent over his work. This would be my way of
asserting the dignity of labour. It would also be, in a pointed way, a
rejection of the traditional social system which assigns a low status to this
work. What I did not realize was the technological resource and capital
required to make quality footwear. I enrolled myself as an apprentice in a
shoe manufacturing company, and after only a couple of days realized that
the work would be beyond my resources and competence.
The next option was to take up carpentry. This in its own way was no
less romantic. I bought a carpentry kit and some books on woodworking.
Next I looked for a master craftsman who could train me in his trade. But
here again I ran into difficulties. I found that while furniture shops were a
dime a dozen, there was a paucity of carpenters who could take time off
from their work to teach me. To become a passable carpenter, remains with
me an unfulfilled ambition, pursued fitfully, but still not fully realized.
There was, however, one trade where I could earn my living with the
sweat of my brow, and this was agriculture. My wife owned ten acres of
very good farmland just outside the city limits of Bhopal, and I could, if I
liked, be a bailiff, a farmhand, a tractor driver, a thresher operator, a reaper
or whatever and have my fill of honest toil. This I immediately proceeded
to do. I bought the best seed available in the market, invested in fertilizers,
weedicides, rhizobium cultures, sprayers and so forth. I learnt for the first
time, how fields are prepared for sowing, how crops are actually sown, how
they are watered and fertilized. I learnt to drive a tractor, and to plant the
seed in a straight line, each furrow evenly spaced, with the seed falling at
the right depth, neither too deep, nor too shallow. I learnt to run behind the
tractor in the slush, keeping an eye on the seed drill to ensure that the seed
fell at the right rate in all the furrows.
As the plants came up, I watched their growth with delight. I
compared my crops with the neighbouring fields and found that I was not
all that badly off. I made a daily round of the fields, stooping to examine
individual plants. I saw the delicate pink and purple flowers come out and
then the flowers dry out and convert themselves into tiny bean pods. The
plants that were more robust than normal gave me a special pleasure. I often
paused to count the number of pods on such plants and admire their
powerful trunks. In short I took to the business of agriculture with gusto and
enthusiasm, and though I ended my first year as a farmer with a net loss, I
can say with honesty that no farmer took a keener pleasure in his crops than
I did.
I still go to the farm almost every other day. And when I stand in the
midst of fields of wheat or soy bean, waving gently in the wind, with blue
mountains in the middle distance, I find many times that I am the only
human figure in the landscape. What I then feel is peace. Quite often there
are unexpected pleasures too. Only the other day, as I stood watching over a
field of ripening wheat, a black buck that had wandered over from the
nearby woods, and was surprised and finding me thus standing, went
bounding out of the fields, each leap taking him high over the stalks of
golden corn. I can still see in the mind's eye, the image of the deer arrested
in mid flight, the forelegs stretched straight ahead, hind legs arching back,
the graceful dip in the back, the whorled horns sweeping upwards, a tableau
of graceful motion. Yes, I am happy to be a farmer and to claim farming as
my profession.
Finally the fourth article of faith, to my mind, the real cornerstone of
the edifice. This can be summed up in one phrase, following your own
genius. I have already written about this in the last chapter, so I will not
further elaborate the concept.
As far as I am concerned, what I have always wanted to do is to write.
Right from boyhood when I first learned to enjoy the delights of language,
to early manhood when I went about with a volume of Keats in my pocket,
this is a destiny that seems to have been waiting to claim me. In a sense, the
whole of my inner life, upto the present seems to have been a preparation
for the business of writing, and I confess I like nothing better than the
restless toil of composing a paragraph of prose or verse in the mind.
The very first book that I ever wrote was the present one, and its
publication is an interesting story in itself. I wrote this book two years ago
and published it myself, being at that time quite innocent of the hazards of
self-publication and the restrictive nature of the publishing trade. Being of a
naturally sanguine temperament and having besides, an almost mystical
faith in my own abilities as an author, I sent the typescript to some well
known publishers, and sat back to await developments. When the
manuscripts came back, invariably with some impersonal note of regret,
which made matters not better but worse, I was surprised and hurt. These
publishers obviously couldn't tell wheat from chaff, or Shakespeare from
Shadewell. It was natural for me, with my instinctive distrust of the
establishment and my naïve faith in the power of native ability to triumph
over all obstacles – a faith which I still retain – to jump at self-publication.
Now two years later, a sadder and a wiser man, I know better. If you are a
budding author considering self- publication, let me dissuade you. It is
better to tolerate the indifference and obtuseness of publishers and keep
knocking at their doors, rather than take the risk of launching your own
skiff, as the following chronicle will bear out.
When John Milton said long ago, "A book is the precious life blood of
master spirit", he summed up what I suspect many authors feel when they
sit down to transcribe their thoughts for the benefit of posterity. Books are
written for many reasons, not least out of sheer personal vanity and a desire
to make money. But whatever be the individual author's motivation, there is
always that little sliver of exalted feeling, that whiff of good old fashioned
afflatus that raises the whole venture beyond the merely expedient and
mercenary. It is always a surprise therefore to realize that whatever be the
motivation of the author, books are published only for the sole and simple
reason of making money for the publisher. Publishing is a trade, every bit as
mercenary as moneylending or speculation in stocks and bonds. Only its a
good deal less risky.
It is less risky because publishers minimize their risks by sticking to
tried and tested names. New authors are risky, that is why new authors find
publication so daunting. It is a wonder that so many of us get published at
all. I had assumed, with all the innocence of a new author, that my
manuscript would be scrutinized by a highly literate and intelligent person
with a feeling for the rhythms of English prose. This was another fallacy.
Publishers, especially the better known houses, are probably besieged with
manuscripts from first timers, eager for publication. What happens to an
unknown author's manuscript in such a situation may be imagined. It is
looked at, if it is seen at all, by a person with as much literary sensibility as
a truck driver. Usually it is simply put into an envelope with a regret note
and returned to the author, without the bother of someone having to read it
at all.
The literary agent, that indispensable member of the literary
community, does not exist in India. Fortunately for new authors, some have
now come into business. But when I wrote my book, I did not know of any.
Accordingly, I decided upon self-publication after a few abortive attempts
to breach the carapace of indifference that I encountered from the
publishing trade. I designed the cover myself, on my computer, and collared
a printer to print the book. This man was as ignorant of the business of
publishing as I was. He and I did the best we could. We laminated the
cover, used a special glue to stiffen the spine, and procured a particular
brand of paper that has the off white colour that is used in printing the better
quality books. All to no avail. When I took the finished article to a
distributor, he looked at the book, rather like a doctor examining a terminal
case, and said, "Sorry, this looks more like a pamphlet than a book."
Another said, "Isn't this too slim? You should have made it a little thicker."
Had I known better, I could easily have used thicker paper for the cover,
and used a bolder type to make the book thicker. It was no use telling the
distributors that a book shouldn't be judged by its cover, or that brevity is
the soul of wit. They were in the business of selling books, and in their
world books were unfortunately judged by their appearance.
When I took the book to book stores the same story was repeated.
They couldn't stock a book which looked so unsaleable. Their shelf space
was limited. A new title could catch the attention of the reader, only if it
was prominently displayed. But prime space was even more limited. If they
put the book in some obscure corner, no one would see it, and therefore no
one would buy it. It made no sense therefore to waste their precious space
on a self-published title by an unknown author. Here the unsavoury aspect
of trade restrictions also came into the picture. Some bookshop owners told
me point blank that they could stock the book only if it came to them
through the regular distribution networks. After a week of going around
book stores and distributors, I decided to throw in the towel. The bitter
moral of the story came home to me, with a dismaying finality – it is much
easier to write a book than to sell it. For once, therefore, I had to accept
conventional wisdom, authors should stick to writing and leave publication
to publishers.
If in the end this book was still able to find a publisher, it is due to the
enterprise of a publisher, who had a little more discernment than his fellow
publishers. All I did was to send him a synopsis of my book. He read it,
called for the entire manuscript and decided to publish it. It was as simple
as that. In the end things turned out exactly right, confirming all the naïve
assumptions that I had started out with. I mention this story, not merely as
an interesting sidelight, but also as a cautionary tale for new authors, not
least because I consider myself a member of their fraternity and consider
writing my true vocation.
The business of writing appeals to me because this is where I can be
most myself. This is a business where being true to oneself is a positive
aesthetic virtue. The real writer is often solitary, reclusive, egotistical, self-
centred and unmindful of social conventions. He has to be. Because in
aesthetic matters, one can only rely on one's own judgement. Any creative
writer, if he is any good, has to subject his work to constant critical scrutiny.
The process proceeds simultaneously with the process of creation. If in this
process the writer allows himself to influenced by others, he is sunk,
because he would then not be truly himself. And because this abdication of
judgement will corrupt his whole work. Aesthetic judgements are based on
insight, not on abstract formulations, received opinions or literary fashions.
Insight, as I have already said comes from deep within. A writer who
sustains his faith in himself, in spite of general neglect and poverty, which
more often than not, is likely to be his lot, is of the same mettle as the
mystic who sets out to seek God, sustained only by a single spark of
knowledge deep within, when the whole material world seems to conspire
to prove him wrong.
Naturally I am not talking about the handful of authors who are
lionized by society, feted in the press and receive fabulous advances from
eager publishers. For every one such author there must be a thousand who
pursue their vocation, unknown and unsung. That is why I say that writing
is a lonely business. Writers are discoverers of forgotten truth. Their
ultimate satisfactions are intangible ones, their ultimate touchstone is their
own judgement, and what they seek to convey is their own truth. We all live
in the same world but we all see the world differently. The writer who
succeeds in the end is the one who remains stubbornly himself, in spite of
all odds. There is something heroic in this, one might almost say something
quixotic. That is why the whole thing appeals to me.
I have, I confess, an high idea of the craft of writing, and indeed a
proper sense of my own worth as a writer and a human being. Ultimately
writing, indeed all art in general, is a celebration of life. Of the simple joy
of being alive and of being a witness to the drama and mystery of life. It is
this that enables one to put up with the many small pinpricks and knocks
which one receives daily in the business of living.
I have now come to the end of this chronicle and having put the reader
in possession of all the relevant facts about myself and my vision of the
civil service, I can take his leave with a clear conscience. I hope those who
have had the fortitude to have read so far, will have the courage to act on
their convictions, whatever they might be. I wish them luck.