BHASKAR GHOSE

The Service of the State

 Contents

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

1. Training: The National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie

2. Training: Assistant Magistrate and Collector, Burdwan

3. First Years

4. Delhi: The First Deputation

5. Deputy Commissioner, District Magistrate, and Collector

6. The Network: Counting People and the Centre of Power

7. The Pucca Civil Servant

8. Commissioner of a Division

9. Generalist vs Specialist

10. Secretary, Department of Culture

11. Secretary, Information and Broadcasting, and Retirement

Copyright Page
 To my daughter
Sagarika
who grew up during
most of these events
Soft you; a word or two before you go.
I have done the state some service, and they know’t.
No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice …
—William Shakespeare,
Othello, Act 5, Scene 2
 Preface

The origins of this book were much grander than the book itself. I was asked if I could do a book on
the IAS on the lines of Philip Mason’s The Men Who Ruled India, without, of course, turning the
members of the service into mythic Knights of the Round Table as Mason did to ICS officers, each
charged with a Mission. That was clearly beyond me in every sense, including the inability to spend
the kind of time Mason spent researching his two-volume epic—I believe it was not less than seven
years—and the money that would have been necessary to travel to different parts of the country.
I settled instead, with the warm encouragement of Diya Kar Hazra of Penguin India, for a book on
my own experience of being a member of the IAS, seeking, where possible, to look at the relevance
of the service to twenty-first-century India.
I must emphasize ‘where possible’ because the relevance of the service to twenty-first-century
India isn’t the focus of the book. But I did record and use the experiences and comments of past
members of the service—the late M.G. Balasubramaniam, G.V. Ramakrishna, J.C. Lynn, V. Krishnan,
Probir Sen, and Ashok Vajpeyi—and present members whom I cannot name as they are still in
service. I will always be very grateful to all of them for the time they willingly gave me. There are
also a host of other past and present members of the IAS whom I may not have spoken to formally as I
did to the ones I’ve mentioned, with whom shared experiences and perceptions left me the richer.
In the end, I was glad I settled for the lesser goal of a modest book about a rather ordinary career in
the service. It serves to underscore the nature of the service more than a book on a great, well-known
career would. Mine is a tale of what most IAS officers did—the sort of problems they faced, some of
which they overcame and some which they could not. And, like many others, when our careers ended,
we left without a backward glance, without hanging about for the sort of posts and sinecures that a
number of us, sadly, lobbied to get or were given because of our perceived skills. Many of us went
back to our states, to old houses or to flats, and some, like me, sought modest places to stay in the
capital. Our retirement, like our careers, underscores the burden of my story.
I must place on record here my deep gratitude to the wise, perceptive and patient understanding I
got from Ranjana Sengupta of Penguin India (apart from the affection, which is mutual, for what is an
enduring friendship) and from others who have had to endure putting together a book that Ranjana was
able to convince me was actually readable.
I would like to thank my colleagues both senior and junior, some of whom became friends and
remain so. We faced much together at different times and under different circumstances and I think
that made our friendship even stronger. We have differed on our perceptions of the service; that we
have remained friends tilts the odds in my favour, which gives me a quiet sense of triumph and
satisfaction.

Bhaskar Ghose
Delhi
April 2011
 Introduction

The huge edifice of India’s bureaucracy is one that demands awe—awe because of its bewildering
complexity and its size—and a degree of apprehension, brought on by its inevitable slowness, its
innate negative view of activity that is not familiar or sanctioned by its own rules and conventions,
and, most dangerously, its occasional, if furtive, genuflections to the ways of colonial rule.
As we progress into the twenty-first century, it is inevitable that there will be an amount of debate
on the manner in which India administers itself. This is a time when India is being looked on as a
growing economic superpower and its achievements in the world of information technology, of
research in biotechnology and medicine, as well as in so many other areas of contemporary relevance
have been hailed as astonishing in their quality and comprehensiveness. It is also a time when India
has to face what it has not been able to do—to provide the infrastructure an emerging economic
superpower needs, to reduce, if not eliminate, poverty and disease, and to lift the curse of having
almost half its population uneducated, even if a portion of which are classified as literate for
publicity purposes.
Increasingly, the administrative structure of the country is being looked at. Efforts are being made
to reform it, to modernize it, to make it more effective, but all these succeed only to the extent of
talking about the problem, sinking into the swamp of reports with carefully indexed appendices; the
system continues more or less the way it did.
Central to the system is the Indian Administrative Service (IAS). This body of officers has
maintained a firm control over the system at the Centre and in the states from the time India became
independent. For a while it shared that control with the remnants of its earlier avatar, the Indian Civil
Service (ICS), till the last of the ICS retired or ceased to matter. After that its control has remained
unquestioned. If anything, it has grown, as IAS officers head more and more specialized agencies like
the Archaeological Survey of India, the state-owned radio and television networks, airlines,
universities, financial bodies, and even fashion institutes.
This has happened for two reasons. One is the fact that the IAS was a kind of continuation of the
ICS, and that service had some enviable qualities which persisted as myth even though the reality may
have changed. Probir Sen, an IAS officer from Madhya Pradesh, puts it this way: ‘pride of
profession, trust, support, the tolerance and encouragement of dissent, a sense of camaraderie, and
sharing of values made civil servants (i.e. the ICS) an extraordinary group of persons producing
extraordinary results.’1
I would take, out of all these, the sense of camaraderie as an attribute that characterized the IAS in
its first years, and persisted right up to the time that I left the service in the later 1990s. It may have
grown less, but as I saw for myself, it was still present.
In any event, these were all parts of the myth that surrounded the IAS in the first decades. This,
again, was something I saw first-hand. There was the deference, in those early years, to the officer as
a symbol of state power, even, quite ridiculously, from some ministers in the state governments. It
was not to individual officers but to the service he belonged to. I saw it in the almost desperate pleas
made by ministers to the Chief Secretary in my state for IAS officers to fill different posts. The Chief
Secretary’s requests that they accept perfectly competent state civil service officers were dismissed
out of hand. As the area of governmental activity grew in the form of numerous development schemes,
this demand grew more insistent. They wanted IAS officers for what they perceived they brought to
the posts, and, yes, to give them a status that they had earlier seen as belonging to the ICS. They saw
the ICS officers as pro-consuls who ruled, and obviously felt that if they had such officers working as
virtual subordinates they would acquire that status, that of rulers, which was secretly what they
coveted. At least, most of them did.
The second was a more distasteful reason; some IAS officers learned to adapt and to become
skilful courtiers, and became most solicitous of their ministers’ needs, and knew when a certain
amount of subtle flattery would get them what they wanted. They were thus able to persuade these
ministers to appoint them to posts that ought never to have been filled by anyone other than experts
and specialists.
This is not to say that a very large number of IAS officers did not do their jobs competently; in fact,
as they did, they created a demand for more IAS officers that did not, with the passage of time, have
anything to do with the ICS legacy.
A study of the service by two IAS officers, while pointing out the numerous shortcomings that have
crept into it, observes, ‘where the political executive has a clear and genuinely held policy view and
expresses it consistently, the civil service does usually deliver.’2 The study cites three examples of
this: the noon-meal programme in Tamil Nadu started by the former chief minister the late M.G.
Ramachandran, where ‘even today, a surprise visitor to any government school anywhere in Tamil
Nadu (even in the remotest hill villages) can see a hot meal served to every child’3 three instances of
massive influxes of refugees—from Tibet in the 1950s, East Pakistan in 1971 and from Sri Lanka in
the 1980s where ‘the civil service which is usually accused (rightly) of lethargy and lack of initiative
managed a response that was quick and effective. Each of these situations was handled without any
significant contribution from the ‘international community’ or the UNHCR by a civil service running
on a shoestring budget;4 and the organization of the Kumbha Mela in January 2000. ‘The scale of the
logistical arrangements … dwarf almost any other civilian event in the world… The arrangements,
for which IAS and IPS officers are responsible (again, on a shoestring budget), are generally
acknowledged to be very thorough and well made.5
The aim of the study is to examine some of the reasons for the decline in the standards and in the
performance of the IAS among all-India services, but in the process of the examination the authors
make the point that innovations by individual officers often bring ‘social rewards’ in the shape of
fame and recognition.
‘The eponymous “Lakhina experiment” in Maharashtra—where an officer, Anil Lakhina, radically
altered the work flow in a collectorate to resemble a client-oriented bank-teller-type system—earned
a place in IAS lore. The successful family-planning strategy of Tamil Nadu in the 1970s and 1980s
was spearheaded by an IAS officer (T.V. Antony) who made it a personal crusade. The Ernakulam
total literacy campaign in Kerala was likewise an innovation by an IAS officer. The privatization of
sewage-pumping stations in Madras Metrowater from 1994 onwards was an innovation by two IAS
officers (M.S. Srinivasan and Santha Sheela Nair), well before the World Bank or other agencies
began pushing private participation in water. There are numerous others. The political executive
rarely blocks, and often encourages, apolitical innovations, and this is one of the abiding attractions
of an IAS career.’6
As its control on the processes of administration, including recruitment and promotion, expanded
and became tighter, a distasteful and sleazy side of the service has come to public notice more and
more. A number of IAS officers have been charged with, even arrested for, corruption; and many,
many more have taken to ways that are not, strictly speaking, illegal but are repellent nonetheless—
the ways of nepotism, of intrigue, of lobbying and cultivating the politically powerful to worm their
way up the administrative ladder. Krishnan and Somanathan have reported wryly on a ‘formulation’
to which another officer, K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty, has, according to the two, made a contribution. I
cannot resist reproducing it in full:
In a sense, the IAS can be divided into three groups—the ‘wives’ (those who are attached to one party), the ‘nuns’ (officers
who remain unattached to any party), and the ‘prostitutes’ (who attach themselves to whichever party is in power and switch
when there is a change of government). The authors have been at pains to clarify that these terms are used metaphorically,
to make an analytical point and should not be misconstrued or misquoted, out of context.7

Point taken, and the quotation is very much in context and has not been misconstrued; in case
anyone has any doubts the metaphorical nature of the terms is emphasized; after all, whoever heard of
an IAS officer actually being a prostitute?
But this study, and others like it, have made the enquiry into the service and its relevance in the
twenty-first century not just relevant, but urgent. If India is to take its place in the world as an
economic superpower it cannot be burdened with an administrative system that is controlled by one
group of officers, some of whom have been exposed as corrupt and many more known to be courtiers
and arch intriguers and lobbyists.
This book is, however, no such study. All it does is look at the IAS from a personal, very personal,
point of view over a span of three decades, and give that look a slightly richer dimension by seeking
the views of those who were, or are still, members of the IAS. It cannot therefore provide any
answers or solutions. But it may help to set the service in one particular context which, personal
though it is, may serve as some kind of reference point.
It would be simplistic to ascribe a single or even a set of attributes to the IAS. In fact, some would
question the very notion of looking at the people who are recruited to the IAS as a collective entity
called the IAS. Doing so may be, it would be argued, a hangover of colonial days when it was usual
to talk of ‘the ICS’ as an exclusive club. It is true that the IAS is no exclusive club; there are too many
members, for one, and, more importantly, a large majority of them share little in terms of values and
aspirations. Some, indeed, do, but they speak only for the small group of like-minded officers within
the larger definition of the IAS, not for the service itself.
Perhaps the first recruits to the service did share common values and ideals across the board;
perhaps, again, these were leftovers from the days of ICS rule, appropriated and made relevant by the
demands on the rulers (as they certainly were in those first years) by events and circumstances. Many
of those first recruits would share the sentiments of R.P. Noronha of the ICS:
The Service as a whole—British and Indian—consisted of quite ordinary men, set apart from others by three things: a
dedicated sense of duty born of tradition and training; an independent outlook; and complete identification with the interests of
the people of wherever we were sent to serve. We deteriorated,’ he adds dryly, ‘later.’8

The late M.G. Balasubramaniam (1948: Tamil Nadu) recalled his early days when ‘people forgave
you if you made mistakes’. It still was rule by satraps, in those first years. But only for a while.
Balasubramaniam talked of the coming of new processes as, for instance, the general elections and
relief operations. They clearly tested the abilities of the young officer to adapt and change, and that
challenge, he said, was exciting. Clearly much was left to the officers, and that was what tested their
ability to take up the new challenges.
Very rapidly, though, the brief and strange holdover from colonial days was replaced by a
newfound confidence that grew among the political leaders who took their place as the new rulers.
And equally rapidly members of the new service adapted to their new roles as aides, advisers and
the carriers-out of orders. But in doing so they retained something of the independent outlook Noronha
mentioned; there were officers who declined to carry out orders they thought were wrong or even
illegal, and, in those days the political masters acquiesced in their refusal. G.V. Ramakrishna (1952:
Andhra Pradesh) says that when he joined the service and worked as a young officer, all politicians
treated IAS officers with respect. Perhaps the political leaders had not been able to rid themselves of
an almost Pavlovian reaction that officers served a greater power and the realization that they—and
not some shadowy imperial system—were rulers had not fully sunk in.
But the fact was that the administration of the country continued for a time to be little different from
rule by a colonial power, partly because the systems and manner of governance remained the same,
and partly because the circumstances of the time made it necessary. Stability and continuity as a
nation were the paramount interests, and this was best done by the structure left behind by the
imperial power. For those first years the IAS as a reinvention of the ICS was, consequently,
necessary and inevitable.
The transition to governments in the states and at the Centre elected by universal adult franchise
and to the initiation of planned efforts to develop the country economically and socially meant that the
structure of administration had to change. Having Collector sahibs ruling districts, however
benevolently, would no longer do; nor would ministers in state capitals and at the Centre be content to
acquiesce in the post-imperial tenor of decisions formulated by the remaining members of the ICS and
their younger disciples, the members of the IAS, couched though they were in very polite terms when
placed before the ministers.
There were, of course, leaders who stood apart; Pandit Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Pandit
Govind Vallabh Pant and others were not persons who could be bent to the collective ICS–IAS
decisions, unimpeachable though their decisions may have been in their post-colonial terms. These
leaders made their own decisions and required—sometimes peremptorily but more usually very
correctly—that these be carried out to the letter. Civil servants lost no time in recognizing this kind of
leadership and scrambled to carry out orders, to suggest courses of action very deferentially and
hesitantly and look up to the leaders for enlightenment. But these leaders were just a few, and in the
states there was usually just one of this kind—Dr B.C. Roy in West Bengal, Srikrishna Sinha in Bihar,
Biju Patnaik in Orissa, Morarji Desai in Bombay, C. Subramaniam in Madras were some. The rest
were hesitant leaders who looked to the ICS and IAS Secretary sahibs in the state governments and
the IAS Collector sahibs in the districts to tell the befuddled novices how best to rule.
With the years, however, as the first general election was followed by another, and then another,
political leaders began to realize that they were the rulers, much as the British were, and that the civil
service was there to carry out their instructions and to give shape to their ideas and policies. While it
gave some—not all—leaders a degree of responsibility, it also meant that the civil services, notably
the IAS, had to shift ground, to step back; it meant that they had to reinvent themselves as a service.
Not in terms of individual equations with individual leaders or with political parties, but in more
fundamental terms. Their mission and their relationship with each other and, more importantly, with
people, their procedures, the ones they felt they held in sacred trust from the imperial power who
once ruled the country, all of these needed to be radically altered—not suddenly, violently, but in a
graded, smooth manner, much as the ICS gave way almost imperceptibly to the IAS.
Did the IAS make that transition successfully? The short answer is no; it made the transition, but in
a rather messy sort of way, in many cases gracelessly, in others by moving to the role of a courtier
with the attendant servility and flattery. In others, again, there was stubbornness, a pathetic adherence
to values that should have been replaced with the changing times. One of the reasons behind this
disorganized and rough transition was simply that there was no one to guide the often-bewildered
young IAS officer through the process of transition and adjustment. G.V. Ramakrishna recalls that the
training he and his peers received was more theoretical, ‘not related to any real-life situations’.
Probir Sen (1965: Madhya Pradesh) says that as a probationer the training did not communicate ‘any
central ethic of what the service is all about’. ‘My idea of what a good officer should be,’ he adds,
‘came largely through my reading and watching some of the ICS officers.’
Ramakrishna was recruited and came in to the service when it was still mandated to rule, as it
were, maintaining order being the prime task. Things had changed very rapidly in the years between
his joining the IAS and Sen’s joining it—a period of sixteen years. The IAS officer was required to
do a basically different job, and his perception, which many will agree with, was that he got nothing
from the initial conditioning that equipped him for his role.
There has been change, and a great deal of it. The service I joined is not the service I left. Many of
us found that we’d become dinosaurs in the service, part of an age that has ceased to exist. But it
wasn’t always just a personal awareness; the times brought with it some changes that were harsh and
also personal. Chief among these was the steady erosion of the worth of what we earned. Not that
most of us joined the IAS for the money; no one in his right mind would have done that, even in the
age when we were young and eager to find employment. But money did matter, of course, to keep us
going, to feed and clothe ourselves and in time our families, and to do these in a manner that we
would consider reasonable without being in any way handsome enough to enable us to be considered
among the affluent, as those who joined the corporate world were.
When I joined the service I started on the respectable amount of Rs 350 a month, barely enough to
pay for my food and accommodation expenses as a probationer. When I got my first regular
assignment, as Subdivisional Officer, I earned Rs 440 a month; and with that it was possible for my
very careful mother to manage a household consisting then of one of my two sisters, herself, and me.
And I used to have some five rupees left over at the end of the month.
But, as I said, the times changed steadily, and though costs rose through the years, our pay scales
did not. Not very long after the carefree days as SDO I began to feel the pinch, as did all my
colleagues, and that pinch became more and more intense as the years went on. Eventually it was
possible for us to live the way we did, in a modest, very modest, but genteel way only because my
wife also began working. That was how it was until I left the service; personally it was an
embarrassment to have to entertain even one or two guests, and many of my colleagues did not
socialize for that reason. Those years of perpetual scrimping and making-do took its toll on many of
us; it was this one factor that was, sadly, responsible for some—not many, but some—to look to the
easy way out and put one’s hand in the till. A few left and others engaged in hard lobbying for foreign
assignments with the World Bank, IMF or a UN organization. But most of us who found both to be
distasteful just had to put our heads down and continue with what little we got. There was a jocular if
slightly bitter saying among some of us about this—when you pay peanuts you get monkeys. I think it’s
true to say that a number of us avoided simian behaviour even if we could not avoid the
anthropological similarities, and lived with a modest degree of honour.
It was doubly hard because we were expected to live in a particular way, by which I mean, we
needed, for example, to appear decently dressed, and, yes, occasionally, to have some people over
for a meal. We had our personal dreams and hopes as well, of which the biggest was that our children
got a good education. That meant money, and that meant even more economies and frugality in the way
we lived. I personally had only one child, a daughter who has been and is our pride and joy. There
was a great deal one wanted for her, but was never able to give her because we simply did not have
the money. I cannot remember, for example, our ever having gone on a holiday together, except once,
when I was a visiting Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, and at the end of my tenure my wife
and daughter joined me and we went on a short holiday across Britain by coach. This, in thirty-six
years of service.
But this book is, again, not about salaries and how low they were; nor is it an epic account of the
IAS in the manner of the marvellous two-volume epic written by Philip Mason, The Men Who Ruled
India.9 That was a grand tale of the ICS, and those who were its forerunners—officers of the East
India Company who belonged to what was referred to as the ‘covenanted’ service, which was, with
the taking over of India by the British government, converted to the ICS. This, on the other hand, is a
modest tale, and a very personal one at that, which looks at the question of the relevance of the IAS to
India in the twenty-first century through the prism of the personal experiences of one officer,
experiences that were on the whole rather ordinary, like those of many other IAS officers. Is the
service, the system that it came out of, and the manner in which it functions, of any meaning to
present-day India, with its new complexities, urgencies and demands?
Some scholars feel that the service is essentially unnecessary to the functioning of the
administrative machinery of India. A distinguished scholar, Professor S.R. Maheshwari, has noted
this trend, while arguing that the state should nurture just two All-India services, the IAS and the
Indian Police Service (IPS), and avoid creating any others. He writes:
Today, many even question the existence of these services. The IAS displays belief in its sure ability to deal with all matters
under the sun and its distrust of specialists. Self-conceit is barely hidden in the generalist service. The remedies for present
maladies and problems does not lie in recruiting more engineers and doctors to the IAS. Nor does it lie in creating special
streams of agriculture, information technology, conservation and other areas where technological change is very rapid. Nor
does the way out lie in recruiting more and more specialists. All-India services connote dual control, which is plainly not
acceptable to the lower state government in India. The constitution of all-India services erodes the autonomy of the states:
the latter resist proposals which adversely affect their power of patronage.10

Ironically, even though states prefer not to have such services there is, among different ministers, a
desperate scramble for IAS officers to man posts in their departments, which I have pointed out
elsewhere in this book. Part of the reason is that they do see that there is a degree of ability and a
sense of fair play in these officers, and part is, of course, status.
But whether they like it or not, the states need to realize that it is these all-India services like the
IAS that have helped keep the states knitted together; this may sound like a grandiose claim but I make
it with humility and repeat that it has helped in the process. The fact that the higher posts in the states
are manned by officers who have a kind of dual loyalty to the state and to the nation is a positively
welcome attribute to the administrative structure in a country as huge and diverse as ours. But has the
country outgrown such simple devices that help keep the total network whole?
This book can provide no answers, nor has it been written to attempt any. What I have tried to do is
provide an account of my own experiences in the IAS and let them speak for themselves; and it is for
the reader to determine if those still contain elements that would make such a service relevant today.
But I did speak to a few colleagues, some of whom joined the IAS almost as soon as it was formed,
and to others who joined later and to a few who are still serving, and whom I have not named as they
are still bound by the Conduct Rules which prohibit a serving officer from expressing his views in
public on matters of policy. Readers will notice that I have indicated the views of these colleagues
wherever I have used them. Where some of them have written about aspects of the service, having,
presumably, got permission from the authorities, I have quoted from their published works, and cited
the references. But the spine of the book, so to speak, remains my own experiences, because I lived
through them and they constitute what could perhaps be called ‘primary evidence’.
How relevant is the IAS, then, given its origins in the ICS, a creation of British colonial rule?
Among some of the IAS officers to whom I put this question, those who had joined the service in the
first years, G.V. Ramakrishna (1952: Andhra Pradesh) and the late M.G. Balasubramaniam (1949:
Tamil Nadu) were the two who were the most ambivalent. Both emphasized the fact that the
environment had changed radically; Ramakrishna felt that the IAS officer would have to change
completely. He has, in fact, stated his views on this in a paper, where he says that ‘the general
impression is that the civil service is not equipped to deal with specialized areas of the economy, and
that it is unwilling to let go of its traditional control. While partly true, this impression is already
changing with many technical bodies playing an active role in policy making.’ He goes on to say that
‘assembling diverse opinions and analysing them is an important part of a civil servant’s role. It is in
this role that intellectual integrity is really tested.’ He refers to ‘the civil service’, true, and that could
mean all civil services, but one can see that he really means the IAS from what he says about the role
of the ‘civil service’, which he says ‘extends beyond the “hightech” areas into those such as district
administration, rural development, conduct of elections, natural calamities etc., which are equally
important’.11
Balasubramaniam was even more ambivalent when I interviewed him. ‘It depends on what it is that
you want from the IAS,’ he said. ‘I feel you can have any kind of (civil) service that you want,
because it matters little—we have our political systems making all the decisions, and we accept
these, so how long will a service survive?’
Some of the officers who joined later have slightly different views. J.C Lynn (1960: Karnataka)
and V. Krishnan (1960: Karnataka) both felt that the service in some form or the other would not only
continue but would be necessary, but they stressed the fact that it would have to change to meet the
demands made on it by the administrative requirements of the day. Lynn pointed to some
characteristics that IAS officers need to continue to possess: ‘The thing is you have to have a stomach
for challenge … in the IAS if you do not have guts, courage, you are really not able to function.’ An
IAS officer, he said, still needs what he called ‘the ability to stand up to events.’
Krishnan brushed the technocrat-generalist debate aside as ‘not a serious controversy’ but felt that
a cadre-based service was necessary, which had to be broad-based and yet allow for officers to
grow and specialize in specific areas. He felt that the essence of the service had to be in ‘doing’, not
in finding ways to prevent an idea from being taken forward, as was all too often the case. He meant
that too much emphasis was placed on blocking ideas.
Interestingly, an officer who joined the service decades later and is still in service, held views that
were more akin to those of Ramakrishna and Balasubramaniam, and said, ‘I think we need to think
afresh on the question of whether we need the same kind of service or not. I do not think that we need
it.’ This officer’s contention was that administrative work had become much more specialized today
and required not just a general familiarity with the subject but professional knowledge and expertise.
‘We have not been able to keep up with changes and equip everybody,’ she said.
I personally would venture to suggest that there is a need for a service, for the IAS, because of
certain attributes that it can be made to possess, such as the ones Lynn mentions and the some of
which I experienced myself, of a familiarity and responsiveness arising from a knowledge that one
belonged to the same service. I am very conscious of the fact that I belong to an age that has passed
and the young officer I have quoted, whom I cannot name, is more aware of the service—or, more
specifically, of administration—as it really is today. But I maintain that for a variety of reasons,
which I hope my personal account will reveal at least in part, there is a need, as a proposition, for a
service like the IAS. I wholeheartedly agree, though, that it has to be a totally different service, and
be one that responds adequately to the priorities that present-day governance requires. It must have a
built-in adaptability, an ability to change as time goes on, without a great deal of effort. It is not a
question of individual officers wanting to specialize, or changing; it is a question of the service as a
whole reinventing itself as the demands of governance require.
To an extent the fact that the IAS has survived is because it has a degree of that ability to change.
And because of that we were, I believe, relevant for the time in which we served for the longest
period, in our thirties and forties and even in our early fifties. We were relevant because we adapted,
and it was when we stopped doing that, either because some of us could no longer find the manner in
which adaptation came, or because some of us chose not to, that we became part of the Jurassic Age
and our leaving caused not an extra wave in an already turbulent sea.
Another factor that needs to be flagged here is the changing social backgrounds of those who joined
the IAS from the early years to decades later. If there is a drift away from the earlier closeness that
Sen noticed in the ICS, it owes, in no small measure, to this. Initially those who joined the IAS had
some things in common, apart from the fact that they were well educated. All of them spoke English,
and were quite at home with it; that by itself brought in some attributes, however distantly related,
trivial in themselves but together reinforcing the ‘network’ and the bonding that existed.
For some years before I joined the IAS and when I joined it, the emphasis in the recruitment
process was finally on how one fared in the personality test, the ‘viva’. These were conducted in
English, and the apprehensive—in some cases terrified—young candidates were confronted by a
phalanx of distinguished, seasoned officers, some Secretaries to the Government of India, some
senior diplomats or police officers. All of them had been recruited and grew in their services in quite
different times, and therefore looked for certain familiar skills in the candidates—the ability to speak
fluently on a subject, in English, naturally, the ability to think clearly and answer seemingly innocuous
questions rationally, and, of course, respond with accuracy and knowledge to subjects they were
expected to know. Sometimes one got to hear of decisions taken by the selection board that would
have been absurd if it hadn’t involved the selection or rejection of a candidate. And some were
actually downright comic, such as the decision to deny a young woman candidate a position in the
Indian Foreign Service on the ground that she was ‘too pretty’ and would have inevitably got married
and that would cause ‘complications’ as far as postings were concerned. Her repeated pleas that she
had no intention of getting married fell on deaf ears; she was allotted to the IAS. Ironically, she never
did marry; she served in her state and later in the Central government where she became a Secretary,
and retired in the fullness of years.
But this personality test did ensure that the Union Public Service Commission selected the kind of
persons they felt would be right for the IAS; they could do this because, in those years, if one failed in
the personality test one failed the examination, irrespective of the marks got in the written
examination. It was only some years later that the primacy of the personality test was reduced, and it
was given the same, if not a slightly higher status than any of the subjects in which the candidate had
chosen to be examined.
The practice had its advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages were highlighted by
political leaders and various opinion groups—that it preserved the old elitist values, it disregarded
the intelligence displayed by candidates who did well in their written papers, and it ensured that a
coterie of upper-class people were recruited. Chief among the advantages was the fact that seasoned
officers were able to assess who among the intelligent lot who appeared for the personality test
would be able to face up to the pressures of governance at various levels and, most importantly,
whether they felt that the candidate showed evidence of firmness and moral fibre, but these were
dismissed out of hand.
I mention this because, looking back, there is no doubt that the personality test was a major factor
in maintaining a certain degree of responsiveness to one another, if one would like to put it that way,
among IAS officers. With the devaluation of the personality test that bonding became even more
fragile and in some cases disappeared altogether. A woman officer recruited many years after the
stepping-down in the importance of the personality test told me specifically that what IAS officers
had in common was their sense of status, that they were of ‘consequence’ because of the posts they
held. Nothing else. She was emphatic that there was hardly anything like a ‘network’ or any bonding
except when self-interest was involved.
To this must be added the fact that recruitment was confined to persons between the ages of twenty-
one and twenty-four, and no one was allowed to sit for the exam more than three times in between
those four years. This meant that those joining the service were from the same generation, and young
enough to be moulded to respond to situations in a more or less similar manner, and also develop, or
at least be aware of, some values that were considered to be desirable in a good IAS officer.
Interestingly, there is talk at present of recruiting even younger persons to the IAS—those who have
completed their class twelve—and putting them through a more intensive three-year training course.
Clearly there is some realization that there is considerable virtue in having a younger lot come into
the service; the experience of taking in older persons, some of whom are married and have children,
who have worked in various positions elsewhere, has not been a very good one, obviously. Older
people come in with their ideas set, and certain attitudes, some not very desirable ones. This makes
them act in a manner that is often negative, at best, and downright dishonest at worst. Younger people
are easily moulded to develop certain values; this is something the French do when they take in young
recruits to the Ecole de l’Administration, and at home, what the armed forces do in the National
Defence Academy in Khadakvasla.
The other great change in which I was personally involved, in the sense that I went through the
experience, was the introduction of the concept of in-service training and ‘reorientation’. IAS officers
from different states and different years of allotment were sent together to two-week orientation
courses. Unfortunately they worked in a very limited manner, and as far as I could see made little
difference to the officers attending them. Perhaps the primary cause for this was in the selection of
‘trainers’. The faculty of training institutions used to handling raw, impressionable young people are
hardly the kind who would be able to make any impression on IAS officers who had already begun to
feel their oats. If, on the other hand, the faculty consisted of senior IAS officers it would certainly
have made a difference. The languid, often contemptuous, attitude that a sizeable number of
participants in these courses have would have vanished.
Nevertheless, the objective was, and is, laudable. Officers do need to get away from their work
and meet their own kind in different surroundings; and even if it benefits a modest percentage of those
attending these courses it is worthwhile. I mention this merely to indicate that attitudes within the
government to the IAS have begun to change, which is a good sign.
Less laudable has been the steady erosion in the criteria being adopted to recruit people to the IAS.
While one has to live with the concept of reservations, the unfortunate fact is that it has been taken too
far in too many directions. Candidates from certain reserved categories can have a large number of
attempts to qualify, appearing, in some cases, as many as seven times. Besides, candidates can be,
and are, much older, and have already worked in different jobs, often with the government. Some
come to the IAS often with the baggage of unsavoury practices and attitudes which has contributed to
the dilution of the nature of the service, something that the training in the Lal Bahadur Shastri National
Academy of Administration has not been able to alter. And being older, and more worldly-wise, their
more cynical attitudes has an effect on the impressionable younger recruits straight out of college.
Added is the fact that for many years now a significant number of positions in all state cadres of the
IAS have been kept aside for officers promoted from the state civil services and other state services.
It is a little rash to make generalizations, but having seen this practice at close range in my own cadre
I can say that it is a major factor in the dilution of those characteristics of the service that are
generally agreed on as being essential, such as adaptability. The system of promotion has thrown up
some fine officers, true, but in general it has been a major source of inducting into the service, in the
guise of experience, undesirable features like an obsession with rules and regulations, usually based
on wrong premises, and a kind of acquired resistance to anything new or out of the way. These were,
it needs to be remembered, officers who had been accustomed, for long stretches of their careers, to
following orders and giving them in a very limited field, in which they were, as one saw only too
often, rather disinclined to display any initiative. To have them then inducted into the IAS meant they
came with all those ingrained responses, because by the time they were considered eligible for
promotion they were well set in their ways. Another factor was that they all knew that, given the age
difference, they would retire well before they reached the level of Secretary to the Government of
India, though they would, some of them, become Secretaries of departments in the state governments.
It was natural, then, for them to be more oriented to what was of local importance to the states; the
national perspective that younger officers deputed to the Centre would develop more quickly came to
them with some difficulty, if it did at all.
But these issues are for someone else to study. My limited objective is to tell a story, of a service I
was in, and as a member of which I served the state as best as I could. If the telling of that story is
even of passing interest, I will be more than satisfied.
 1

Training: The National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie

There was a time in the first days after India became free, when it was a young nation fiercely happy
in her freedom, but anxious not to let it drift into a raucous, acrimonious country of endless argument
and eventual chaos. To those who had to lead the country then, the prospect must have been daunting,
even fearful. An empire had collapsed in the face of the orchestrated opposition to it; an opposition
built on the wise, far-seeing perception of a frail old man who fashioned the kind of effort to free his
country that had never been seen before. He countered the force of the rulers not with force of any
kind, but with the collective will of thousands and thousands of Indians. That will, expressed in many
ways—rallies, demonstrations, deliberate disobedience of oppressive laws—brought freedom, but
would it take the young country into unrest and turmoil?
As leaders gathered to frame a Constitution in the finely appointed Constituent Assembly chamber
—now the Central Hall of Parliament—reason and foresight, the urgent need to preserve the fledgling
state, came up against barely controlled emotion, anger, that demanded the removal of all things that
were seen to be a part of the apparatus of imperial rule. One of the focal points for this anger was,
inevitably, the administration. The freedom fighter and parliamentarian, Mahavir Tyagi, gave voice to
his emotion when he spoke on the Article on the administrative services that was being considered
for inclusion in the Constitution, now Article 312. ‘The country fought for freedom,’ he declared in
ringing tones, ‘not against the British, as Mahatma Gandhi said. It was not against colour. It was
against the bureaucracy that we fought, and wanted to be free from it. Now the very same bureaucracy
stands as is. According to my opinion, Government must not be allowed to be run by persons who are
mercenary, who come and offer their intellectual talents on hire.’1
In 1936, during the years of confrontation with imperial power, embodied, more often than not, in
haughty members of the ICS, deputy commissioners and district magistrates, even Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru, the first Prime Minister, wrote:
Of one thing I am quite sure, that no new order can be built up in India so long as the spirit of the Indian Civil Service
pervades our administration and our public service. That spirit of authoritarianism is the ally of imperialism, and it cannot
coexist with freedom. It will either succeed in crushing freedom or be swept away itself …2

But he saw the dangers of losing an ordered administrative structure and declared, in the
Constituent Assembly, as the first Prime Minister of India: ‘First things must come first and the first
thing is the security and stability of India.’3
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, home member in the interim government, had made up his mind on two
things. One was that the ICS, disliked though it was, had to stay on in the surcharged time that
followed Independence, when it seemed that the country could, at any time, topple over into anarchy,
and be replaced in the fullness of time by a service modelled on it, to help the new Government of
India, and those in the then provinces, to administer the vast, brawling, emotionally tense country. He
had made his decision on this known to a Conference he had called in 1940 of premiers of the
provinces, and had, with his steely determination, got them to endorse that decision. In the Constituent
Assembly when the pent-up anger against these consuls of the colonial power found angry voices, he
let members have their say. And then in a sharp, compelling statement, he made his stand on this very
clear. The ICS would have to stay if the country wanted order, not chaos, he said.
As a man of experience I tell you, do not quarrel with the instruments with which you want to work. It is a bad workman
who quarrels with his instruments. Take work from them. Every man wants some sort of encouragement. Nobody wants to
put in work when every day he is criticized and ridiculed in public … So, once and for all decide whether you want this
service or not. If you have done with it and decide not to have this service at all … I will take the Services with me and go.
The Union will go—you will not have a united India if you do not have a good all-India service which has the
independence to speak out its mind, which has a sense of security … If you do not adopt this course, then do not follow the
present Constitution. Substitute something else. Put in a Congress Constitution or some other Constitution—whatever you like
—but not this Constitution. This Constitution is meant to be worked by a […] Service which will keep the country intact.4

There was then the silence of acquiescence, and the continuance of the ICS was secured. And, by
implication, the notion of a similar service, an all-India service that was to take its place. Article 312
of the Constitution as it now stands provides for this and other all-India services.
What was an ‘all-India service’, exactly? The word is admittedly a little fuzzy but what it means is
a service or corps of civil servants who are recruited by the Government of India; their terms and
conditions of service are determined by the Government of India and they are sent to different states
where they are absorbed into the state’s cadre of all-India service officers. They serve the state
governments as any other civil servant employed by the state government directly, except that they can
and do serve the Government of India to which they are ‘deputed’ from time to time. The fact that the
state governments thus could not control these officers fully irked many states and still does; and yet,
oddly enough, they do not seem to be able to do without them.
But the initial opposition to these services notwithstanding and despite the reservations of the state
governments, the Sardar was not to be denied, and two all-India services were established under the
Constitution: the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service. India had to be
administered and order had to be maintained. This was, as Pandit Nehru said, the first thing that
needed to be done, and that was clearly the mandate of the new services.
By the time I joined the IAS some years had passed; in 1960 the convulsions following
Independence and Partition were behind us, though not some of the after-effects. I joined because at
that time, in St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, that was one of the few options before young men
graduating from there: either one joined a corporate house, invariably British, in what was called
their ‘covenanted service’, or one joined the IAS or Foreign Service. Some—a few—went on to
become lawyers or doctors. But that was more or less all that seemed possible to a twenty-one-year-
old leaving the lotus-eating existence that life in St. Stephen’s was.
Quite a few from St. Stephen’s joined the IAS—that is, they sat for the IAS examination and passed
not just the examination, but, what was then a very daunting prospect, the interview in the Union
Public Service Commission. I became one of them right after five years of acting, excited, eager
arguments in college, and many golden days of drifting through the hours in that very lovely, enclosed
and enclosing space that St. Stephen’s was. It meant I went from a world that was filled with ideas—
youthful, eager and often childish—to one which was quite different, as I was to discover: a harder,
more demanding world. But not immediately after joining the Service; before that there was a year in
the National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie.
Those were years of relative political stability; at least, it seemed so to a twenty-one-year-old.
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, handsome, sensitive, intelligent and erudite, was our heroic ideal and he
was Prime Minister. The Congress Party seemed to be destined to rule India forever. True, there was
poverty, and abjectly inadequate health care, and education was still the preserve of much too small a
number of the young in the country. But there was in us an air of optimism, of expectancy; it was also
a world where institutions seemed to be cast in stone, institutions like the IAS, basking as it did then
in the reflected glory of the ICS, like the great merchant houses in Calcutta and Bombay to which
many young men went, and where they then entered a world of carefully cultivated behaviour which
placed a premium on being seen at the right clubs and of having a drink in the evening, of dressing for
dinner and leading a rather grand life both in their offices and homes. I decided fairly early that I
wanted to join the IAS as it seemed to me, childish as I was, a way of working to better the country
and more worthwhile than working in a corporate house, where the life was of a kind I found
distasteful and rather pointless. I didn’t make any special preparations, though; I didn’t feel I needed
to, except brush up on my general knowledge which was very basic at the time, to put it mildly.
There were other, harsher realities of course; I knew that, having lived with my careful, loving
mother and my brother and sisters in very modest circumstances. But we saw the world ordered in a
particular, and fairly definite way, in a rather simple way, and in that the IAS officer figured as
someone who had the trappings of awe and power that seemed to be desirable—it was, after all a
service of men who ruled rather than served, and if I wished to be part of the process of improving
our world then it seemed necessary to possess these qualities. To this world I was admitted one day,
having heard in the AIR news bulletin that I was among the first ten to have passed the IAS
examination.
The world seemed to change; I seemed to stand on the brink of high adventure and many wonderful
things. My mother was delighted, but expressed her delight, characteristically, in a gentle, subdued
way. But she stroked my cheek often, and said she had always known I would pass the examination.
She used a fair amount of her frugal savings to buy me a suit and a warm coat, and came to Calcutta
with me to see me board the train for Dehra Dun, from where I would take a bus up to Mussoorie, to
the National Academy of Administration.
I arrived on a bright day in May 1960 with another young recruit who later became a very
distinguished officer. But at that time he was, as I was, young, full of wonder and also perhaps a little
apprehensive. What would this new Service be? What were we expected to do? The questions did
not help if you were in a bus and had motion sickness. I did not, but my young colleague did. As we
got down at the imposing gates of the National Academy of Administration, he was copiously and
noisily sick all over the spotlessly clean driveway. I tried not to think of it as a portent, but on several
occasions during my years in the service it seemed to have been one. Stepping across a pool of vomit
I entered the National Academy of Administration; it was, I suppose, a little like death, as I entered a
realm from which I could not and never did return, even though I carried with me the memories and
associations of earlier years.
The Academy was, in 1960, still little more than the gracious old Charleville Hotel which had
been taken over and made the National Academy of Administration. In fact the locals referred to it as
Charleville for as long as I was there, and so did we, on occasion. The way up to it was a fairly wide
driveway from the gate cut into a slope of the hillside, which opened to a spacious lawn with lovely
dark fir trees. The main building was directly in front of the driveway, wooden and dark and rather
quaint. To the right were a set of double-storeyed buildings, also wooden, a part of which was the
director’s residence, and also housed the library and reading room. In a building to the right of that
were rooms—once suites, and now used to house two probationers in each, one in the outer room, the
living room, and the other in the bedroom behind it. This was where I began my stay, in a back room
of a set of two, with a very pleasant IPS probationer in the outer room. He sadly died a few years
after leaving the Academy. The rest of the Academy was spread out behind the main building in long
double-storeyed buildings all of which had single rooms.
The training began with what was called the Foundational Course. This had recruits to all the
services—the IFS, IPS, the Audit and Accounts Service, the Postal Service and the revenue services
—go through a general course on the administrative structure, history, economy and other aspects of
the governance of the country. One of the main objectives was to bring the probationers together, but
it worked only partially, as there were too many of us, and from very different backgrounds; some
came from English-speaking schools and colleges, others had learned English painfully in district
schools and got through their college education by studying hard, living in cramped hostels or in very
orthodox homes. Some found speaking to a group easy, others found it a terrifying ordeal. This is
what made them stick to those who came from the same background, and these groups stayed pretty
much together and by themselves—Tamilians, Bengalis, and of course the English-speaking lot who
came from a variety of backgrounds but had English in common as the language they were most
comfortable with.
After six months, the Foundational Course ended, and the Academy became the exclusive preserve
of IAS probationers. That was when our IAS training really began.
A good part of our training was, I soon discovered, being groomed to be ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’.
This meant, for one thing, that we had to dress ‘correctly’, that is, we wore blazers and ties or suits
(very rarely) during the day, and our formal dress—a dark suit with a closed-collar coat—for dinner.
A tie during the week was a must; only on weekends were we free to wear jumpers or cardigans. We
were taught, and we scrupulously followed, the Western variety—the proper use of knives and forks,
soup spoons, managing one’s table napkin, murmuring ‘Excuse me’ if one had to leave the table, and
so on. It might now appear to be ridiculous, but I think this kind of behavioural training needs to be
seen in its context. Ashok Vajpeyi (1965: Madhya Pradesh) says that it would never have done if
what he calls ‘the inheritance part’ had been done away with. His comment is valid. These were
aspects of a pattern of behaviour, a patter that was shared, and the importance was not so much in the
rituals taught and learned but in that they were shared. This was what held ‘the service’ together, a
factor that was much more important than one would have thought.
In the years that followed, what we and others called a bond grew, in part out of these shared
rituals. That bonding helped in times of crisis, where a request from a member of the service for a
quick, crucial decision, or immediate help had another reaching at once for the telephone, or directly
issuing an order which was later to be justified in the appropriate file with appropriate notes. One is
not saying that the use of cutlery helped stave off a riot or expedited the disbursement of relief. One is
saying that shared rituals—which caused us as probationers a great deal of amusement and diversion,
and often nervousness—helped in creating that bond so very difficult to define between IAS officers
of those times, a bond which was, as I said, at times vital in the process of administration, and
something that other officers not of the service regarded with active dislike, and, one suspects, envy.
There was riding and, in the year I was a probationer, rock climbing. My acquaintance with horses
had, till then, been limited to the ponies in Naini Tal, where my parents took us in the summer, and
where we sat with great delight on these patient animals as they plodded along the bridle path next to
the lake. The horses in the Academy were much bigger, glossy and spirited. If the mere sight of these
creatures was unnerving, mounting and sitting astride one of them was to enter the realm of pure
terror. One was so far from the ground on an animal that seemed to decide for itself what it would do,
how was one to ride it without falling off and breaking a bone or even one’s head? All my energies
were directed to staying on the horse, even though I achieved it in some unusual ways; at times I was
splayed on its back trying to embrace its neck, at other times holding the top of the saddle while the
horse turned this way and that and our instructor bellowed imprecations at me.
Eventually, though, I was able to sit in a more dignified way, and hold on to the reins and actually
get the horse to turn when I wanted it to, to trot, canter and also to stop. But it took weeks, and the
instructor, Nawal Singh, seemed to me always to single me out for his more choice descriptions of the
way I rode. He told us we would have to straighten our thigh muscles, and ordered us to do some
exercises which would help: sit on a chair and hold a few books between our knees and then press.
‘Press!’ he bellowed, ‘Press! Keep pressing!’ He was so terrifying, with his fierce cavalry
moustache, that I spent hours every evening doing just that. My legs ached horribly and I think I
developed a kind of walk which I can only call the probationer’s shuffle. It didn’t impress Nawal
Singh. If you can’t press a horse between your legs, he would jeer at us, how will you press a
woman? Not surprisingly many of us didn’t exactly know what he meant.
I passed the examination after six months, much to my relief, and made up my mind that I would
never ride again. It was, in retrospect, a silly decision, one I regretted ever since. I had grown rather
fond of riding, and sought out the more spirited horses to ride, not because I was a brilliant rider, but
because I discovered that one needed to do less with a spirited horse—the gentlest of pressure on the
reins was enough for the horse to respond. The more placid animals needed to be goaded to do what
one wanted them to do, which was a nuisance.
Was riding a necessary part of an IAS officer’s training? Was it worth the very large sums spent on
maintaining a large number of horses, syces, instructors, the riding school, and everything else? As a
skill it was certainly unnecessary, as very few of us ever rode after leaving the Academy. And none
of us needed to; if one or two did ride, it was for pleasure. I never rode again, I must confess. But as
a part of the training we were given it was, I think, a very vital part. Riding instilled certain qualities
in most of us that were of abiding value, qualities that no classroom lectures would every give us.
We were, except for the handful who knew how to ride, frightened young probationers when we
first mounted our horses; when we completed our training I think all of us had managed to get over
our fear and developed the ability to control our mounts, to make them respond to commands. That
ability to get over nervousness and fear, whether it was of riding or anything else was, to a
probationer then, an asset. It had to do with the kind of work expected of young IAS officers at that
time, just a decade and a half after Independence—it had to do with learning to keep one’s
composure, and not panic in any situation, even to indulge, however briefly, in the euphoria that that
kind of control meant.
One is not saying that riding a horse meant we were able to quell riots or deal with a flood; I am
saying that the qualities of self-control that we—certainly I—perceived as qualities, only vaguely
earlier, became real and we did try to bring them into our own awareness. In this process the training
in the riding school did help, to a very great extent.
Again, this is no general proposition, however qualified, that is being held up as an immutable
truth. It was true at that time, that is all. That was a time when we needed to keep our wits about us in
times of crisis, we needed to be able to exercise control in the middle of a turbulent event, and while
times are still turbulent and there are crises that present-day IAS officers have to face today as well,
perhaps there are systems in place that they can rely on, as we could not.
There was rock climbing as well, at least when I was a probationer. We were told this was a
special course and those who took it would not have to attend the morning physical training class. I
opted for it like a shot, because I loathed the mindless repetitive physical training exercises we were
made to do. I thought, besides, that it would be fun—all to do with rushing up a mountain slope with
others. And that’s just what we did, on the first day of the course. Our instructors were two Sherpas
from the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling. Ang Temba had climbed Mount Everest,
and his young colleague, Dawa Tshering, was to do so in later years. They had chosen a steepish
slope next to the driveway leading from the entrance gate to the main building, and once all of us got
there we clambered up the slope with much noise and hilarity. We didn’t get far, and many of us
couldn’t come down in any order, but slid down on our bottoms.
The two Sherpas watched all this impassively, and then explained to us what rock climbing meant
and showed us the path we would be taking up. It was almost vertical, but had a number of ‘holds’
and ‘steps’ in the shape of rocks and tiny ledges. I think most of us were petrified, but couldn’t dare
show it. Soon we were linked together in ‘sticks’, with an instructor leading each stick. It was not just
terrifying, it was exhausting as well. All our hilarity vanished as we huffed and puffed up the rock
face, gingerly feeling out each hold, testing each step with our toes, and then going up, often to lose
our grip or our toe-hold and staying alive because of the rope that linked us to our instructors.
Our instructors, especially the genial, imperturbable Ang Temba, were brisk, at times peremptory,
but gently so. They were also infinitely patient and never hesitated to take a particularly frightened
member of our group, often me, through the steps one needed to take in starting our climb. There was
much delight as well, as we were taught the joys of rappelling, with the luxury of carabineers (or
clasps through which the rope was twisted to make the descent slower), and without, with the rope
wound between our legs in a distinctly uncomfortable manner.
Weeks of work followed on that now formidable slope, climbing up chimneys, around bulges in the
slope, and up completely vertical sections. The instructors had chosen the path carefully, and
deliberately, taking it through all the problems a rock climber would face when going up a far bigger
and more awesome rock faces. Finally they took us to the polo ground of hallowed memory which,
having been literally hewn out of the mountainside, had a tall, vertical rock face on one side. Much
taller, much more complicated than the slope on the driveway.
We began work on this, first ascending to intermediate levels and rappelling down, and then
working up to a complete ascent to the top, which may well have been two or three hundred feet
straight up. Then, one day, Ang Temba announced we were ready to climb the rock face on our own.
The instructors would watch from the top. To my horror, Ang Temba pointed to me and said I would
lead one stick. That meant there would be no one above me to whom I could be securely linked by a
rope; others would be linked to me, and if I were to fall, my only hope was that they would hold firm
and not fall as well. It was not a nice thought, but Ang Temba left me with no choice.
Up went the stick, led by a trembling, terrified leader. I managed to find the right holds and steps,
though, and was able to get up in stages, as is the practice—getting to one level where they was
enough space for two and then signalling the second by tugging on the rope to come up. As he did, I
climbed up one more stage, and the third came up to the second, and so on. As I came to the top, my
lungs on fire, breathing in gasps, Ang Temba looked at me and said, gently, ‘You are afraid. You must
not be afraid.’ And he pushed me over the top. Of course he had a hand on the rope that linked me to
the second in the stick, and as I went over and grabbed at whatever handhold I could, he pulled me up
short, so that I was securely held and could find hand-and footholds to make it up again. But I have
never, ever, been as dreadfully frightened as I was in that moment when I was pushed over the top;
and, yet, maybe because of the rope, I was able to focus through that fear to finding a handhold and
then a foothold, looking at the mountain face, not down into the valley.
And what did this have to do with our training to be IAS officers? Roughly what riding did. We
had to think in adverse circumstances, in situations where a wrong move could have meant death or
serious injury. Some qualities distilled from these experiences presumably affected our thinking,
perhaps our responses. Again, the rock climbing in itself was not as important as what the perceptions
that it brought to us, to me, certainly. And it clearly did to J.C. Lynn, (1960: Karnataka) former Chief
Secretary of Karnataka, who says what all these gave young probationers was ‘a stomach for
challenge’; according to him, if an officer did not have guts and courage he would not have been able
to function, he would not have respect for himself, he would not have been able to stand firm on
issues, deal with difficult people and say, ‘This is where I stand.’
Perhaps it was true of what he and I and all of us faced then, in those early sixties; as he says
ruefully, now one isn’t sure what training really does for the young recruits to the IAS. ‘They are
clever and end up knowing a great deal, but qualities like courage, decisiveness …’—he leaves that
unsaid. Not that one is implying an absence of these attributes; one simply doesn’t know if they exist
and are valued by the IAS officers of the present generation. As I have said more than once, it is the
context that has changed, and changed completely. It is amusing to be told in rapt tones that latter-day
managers are made to play games—game theory is one of the techniques used for problem solving, I
am told—and more esoteric training sessions involve yoga, even cooking. It seems that trainers are
coming back, down a tortuous winding route, to some of the basics one is now able to perceive
underlying what we went through almost half a century ago.
No grand claims are being made for its validity. I have no illusions, as none of my peer group will
have, I am sure, about the rather blundering nature of our training. It was, for one thing, an extension
of an inherited system, the training given to ICS probationers during the years of World War II in their
training camp at Dehra Dun. That, in turn, was built on the kind of training, or conditioning, that was
given to ICS officers prior to the war, in the UK. The system grew out of notions of ‘officer-like
qualities’ of justice and firmness, elements easy to list and laud, but difficult to conceptualize, except
through indirect means.
The celebrated theatre director Peter Brook, in his book The Empty Space, talks of a great actress
who perfected her acting through a very private process that she could refer to only in comfortable,
domestic metaphors. ‘Just a few days more, dear,’ she would tell Brook, ‘one side’s done nicely,
now we’ll turn it over and give it a baste.’ He points out that this actually explained a very
complicated process of building a character that the actress, immensely gifted though she was, simply
could not articulate in more direct, if less interesting, terms.
Something of this sort may well have been in the minds of those who designed the training we went
through. Vague notions of certain desirable qualities translated into riding, rock climbing and, in later
years, trekking and other such activities. And what they did more or less instinctively is what very
clever, highly skilled management teachers are now doing, and giving impressive names. What our
trainers and the designers of our training courses as well as these very clever management men were
seeking to define and communicate were qualities; the rest, as Lynn says, was just knowledge.
The knowledge we were given was, in part, very general; we were taught what the basic structure
of India’s economy was, we were given shortened courses in history, and we were taught how the
development of India was planned in that exciting new institution, the Planning Commission. But the
core of the knowledge we had to imbibe was law, and the administrative process. Law meant the
criminal laws—the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Penal Code. This was seen as crucial,
because in practically all the states the judiciary had not been separated from the executive, and IAS
officers had to sit in court and try cases as subdivisional and district magistrates.
We plodded through case laws and judgements, through dreary example after dreary example (‘A
attempts to attack B. C intervenes and in protecting B kills A. C has exercised the right of private
defence.’) I often found myself thoroughly befuddled by the ramifications of laws and their seemingly
endless provisos, and almost always counted the minutes to the end of each class. My results in the
paper on law, in our final UPSC examination, were not very impressive, to put it mildly. But I passed,
which was what mattered.
We were taught about the administrative structure of states, about Collectors, Commissioners and
Secretaries to the governments and other high functionaries. Mainly, however, we were taught about
the head of the administration in a district, the pro-consul of the state, Collectors, or District
Magistrates or Deputy Commissioners. We were told what the virtues of a good Collector should be,
the traits he should avoid (be accessible to the people; listen carefully to their grievances; never
patronize them, etc.). All this and more, in great detail, with instances drawn from the experience of
the instructor, in this case the diligent and earnest Deputy Director of the Academy, an officer who
had started his career as a State Civil Service Officer in UP, and then been promoted to the IAS; he
had been Collector in a number of districts and consequently spoke with great sincerity and feeling
about what he thought a good Collector should do.
The trouble was that I had not been a Collector, and had no notion of what exactly such a creature
was. Yes, we were being told about him, but it was like telling me about how to be a good Martian,
how to be accessible to other inhabitants of that planet and so on. So it was all very strange and
incomprehensible and, frankly, boring. Not as ghastly as law, but boring, nonetheless. Collectors,
tehsildars, subdivisional officers … they all seemed to be weird and uniformly dull. During these
classes I often looked out of the window at the golden sunlight on the lawn where the Director, Aditya
Nath Jha, sat in a cane chair, puffing on his pipe.
Jha sahib was an unusual officer. He was what was called a ‘brilliant’ student, which meant he
was extraordinarily clever and passed all his examinations in the First Class. A distinguished
alumnus of Allahabad University, he was conferred the title of Mahamahopadhyaya in Sanskrit before
he went on to read for an Honours degree in English at Oxford which he duly obtained, again, with
distinction. He joined the ICS and had held a variety of interesting posts before he became Director
of the Academy. His English was impeccable and his knowledge of Sanskrit profound. He also liked
his drink, and his well-worn pipe, which he smoked with affection; a true Renaissance man.
Of real administration we, or at least I, learned a great deal from him. Between classes we would
gather round him where he sat on the lawn with his pipe, and he would recount fascinating anecdotes
of life in the districts, and in the Secretariat. He told us that we would learn little at the Academy, and
added with a gust of laughter that the Home Ministry and ‘these people’, waving at the main building
to include the entire faculty, would not thank him for telling us that. Get out there, and you’ll get the
hang of it, he would say. ‘Mind you,’ he would say with a charming smile, ‘I didn’t tell you this, did
I?’
He also explained to us in detail all that we wanted to know, and being very young then we asked
him a great many questions about the Academy and how it functioned, and about our training. At the
time that seemed the world to us. He answered all our questions with good-humoured patience and
very lucidly. One probationer once asked him, during one such session, what his functions were,
since he seemed to spend all his time on the lawn. Jha sahib said that he agreed he seemed to be doing
very little, and then added that it was like being captain of a ship. He told us that if we ever travelled
on a ship we would see the captain strolling about doing little while everyone else was busy with his
appointed work. But when the captain starts running about, he said, you can be sure the ship’s about to
sink. And his laugh rang through the sunny afternoon on the lawn.
I was to meet him again under different circumstances, but more of that later. For now it is enough
to say that he was what we all thought the ideal IAS officer should be: confident, fully in control,
perceptive and intelligent—and a man who was a good judge of other men, and of situations.
 Winter saw us set out on a long tour of a part of India, called appropriately the Bharat Darshan. We
were divided into groups: those from the northern regions going south and vice versa. ‘North’ was
obviously a very wide term because I found myself in the group going south, and not west, which
would have been more logical. But before we went off in different directions we spent a few days in
the lovely Forest Research Institute in Dehra Dun, then a quiet district town. This was a first
introduction to India’s forests and the dangers facing them, and a little more detailed introduction to
the kind of forests we could see in the country explained in the course of walking tours through the
tree-filled campus of the Institute.
Our stay was pleasant and enriching, and for me memorable because of a stroke of luck such as I
have had only once or twice in my life. Before we left the Academy each of us was given an advance
from our travelling allowance, which to young probationers in 1960 was a very large sum. I had kept
it all in my purse which I had put away in the inner pocket of my blazer. The day was warm, however,
and I took off the blazer and slung it over my arm. Some time then my heavily laden purse slipped out
from the inner pocket.
Around noon we stopped at a far corner of the Institute and I discovered, to my horror, that my
purse was missing. I informed the Institute officer taking us around and he immediately informed the
main office through one of his messengers. I retraced my steps fearfully, dreading the consequences of
starting a month-long tour penniless, and followed the route we had taken when we started out that
morning. There was no trace of the purse. By the time I neared the main Institute building where we
had assembled before starting out it was late afternoon. An officer from the Institute came out
accompanied by some staff and he informed me that they had searched everywhere but found no trace
of the purse. Taking me aside he said he had no hope that I would find it, and, after saying he was
sorry, that was all he could do, he left. So did his staff.
I stood there, in near-tears. Apart from my own expenses, I had put aside some of my money to give
to my mother who was going to Hardwar where I had planned to meet her just before we started on
our tour. What was I to tell her and how would she manage without that money? I was numb and
unable to think coherently. I turned away from the building and, as I did, I saw something shining on
the lawn, right in front of me. It was my purse, lying out there for all to see, and in it all my money
was intact. I can still remember that I looked around me, and the sunlight seemed more golden, the
light caught on the leaves of the trees shone silver, and the sky was an intense blue and the tightness
inside me gave way to an extension of myself to all these, in relief and joy. The world was whole
again.
The month-long journey round the south was a kaleidoscope of images; great temples, the beach
and turbulent sea at Kanyakumari, the serenity of the city of Madras, and a host of other vivid
memories made up an impression of the south which was for me the evocation of my childhood. I had
spent many happy years in Rajahmundry, Coimbatore and Madras when my father was posted at these
places; they were my childhood years and I lived them with my brother, sisters and parents in the
green quietness of the two towns and the city of Madras, and in the cool valleys of Ootacamund
where we were taken from Coimbatore in summer. I had forgotten much of all that, being about four
when we first went south, and nine when my father was transferred to Lucknow; this journey brought
back old memories and names, images of our house in Madras on San Thome High Road, Mylapore;
images of the cottage in which we stayed in Coimbatore from where we could see the bluish
mountains which we learned were called the Nilgiris; of Vatsala, our maths teacher who always
smelt pleasantly of cloves; and of the sea, which was close to our house in Madras, its sound always
with us as we slept and when we woke.
One abiding impression the Bharat Darshan left me with was an awareness of the immensity and
diversity of the country. We’d been told about it all; but to journey through a region that was so
different and yet familiar made one intensely aware of the size of the country. Later, as Commissioner
in North Bengal, I suggested to the Chief Secretary that we send groups of young people from
Darjeeling on such trips; to most of them Darjeeling was the world, and if they saw just how small a
part of the country it was they’d see their demands in a different perspective, I felt. As usual, nothing
came of it.
We returned to an icy Mussoorie, and the road up to the Academy was literally that. The cold had
laid a coating of frost on the road and our bus slid and slipped on it as it negotiated the many turns
leading to the main gate, making us finally get out and walk.
In our rooms there were coal heaters, called bukharis, which served not only to heat the room but
to dry clothes that always seemed damp. In that bleak, grey season we prepared for the last UPSC
examination we would take, reading, making notes. Finally the examination was held there, in the
cold of Mussoorie, and we were free to go home at last. In the last weeks we got our first postings; I
was to go to a district called Burdwan in the state I had been allotted to, West Bengal, as Assistant
Magistrate and Collector. I actually had a designation, the first of many.
There have been many occasions on which I have wondered if the first year that I spent in the
National Academy of Administration had had any lasting effect on my perceptions and reactions,
making me perhaps a better officer than I might have been. I do not think that there can be any clear
black-and-white answer to this. Even if one discounts the standard modes of taking refuge in
vagueness—contextuality, the differing requirements of different situations, the difficulty in
articulating the perception and inculcation of qualities and so on—there is a problem. What did those
who designed the training course really want? Had they thought the course out carefully, or settled for
some standard ICS-driven responses? And did they see the course as producing a well-rounded
officer embodying all that they wanted to see in an officer, like a sleek car coming off an assembly
line? Would they have been justified in expecting conditioned officers, much in the way that the
National Defence Academy produces conditioned officers for the armed forces?
I have neither the ability nor the inclination to delve into old files and papers to discover the
answers to these questions, if indeed such answers can be found in such places. I can only suggest
some approximations to some partial answers, based on the experience of a few officers and my own.
I have quoted J.C. Lynn earlier and it is worth recalling here what the basis of his comments were:
the development of qualities that were considered to be necessary for an IAS officer of the time.
That, in turn, implies that some qualities were essential because of the nature of administration then.
Briefly, as we saw it when we became a part of the system, there was a requirement, said then to
be receding in importance, that law and order be maintained, and even while there were voices being
raised calling for it to be seen as a specialized skill to be left to officers of the Indian Police Service
(IPS), the system continued to look to IAS officers to have a vital say in maintaining peace and order
in civil society and in dispensing justice to people in the matters that concerned their day-to-day
lives. The conception of governing had not been given up then, and in this lay the key to the manner in
which a young IAS officer was trained and to what was expected of him. He was still a pro-consul,
even as the winds of change were blowing more and more fiercely around him.
G.V. Ramakrishna (1952: Andhra Pradesh) says that though the training was ‘useful’ it was ‘not
related to real-life situations’. The training, he recalls, consisted of classes in basic administration,
legal procedures, how to function as magistrates and so on. He says, significantly, that in those days
politicians were not much in evidence—in other words, officers had to administer, to rule in so many
words, on their own.
The emphasis on training young pro-consuls five years after Independence was no different,
obviously, from what it had been earlier; they were taught what they needed to know—the law and
procedure. The rest depended on their innate ability to adapt and absorb, and ultimately control
events in the regions, or, in the echelons of the Secretariat, subjects for which they were made
responsible. Eight years on, the development of qualities were specifically sought to be inculcated,
not through classes but through activities that would need responses that would in turn lead to a
perception of and a conscious adoption of these qualities. Thus we have the emphasis on riding, on
rock climbing, and the comments made by J.C. Lynn.
Another assessment of training comes from V. Krishnan (1960: Karnataka) who was Secretary to
the Government of India in the Department of Coal, I think in 1994. He feels it was too theoretical,
and a greater emphasis should have been put on case studies. More or less what I felt, when I thought
all that stuff we were being fed about the virtues of a Collector was boring, and had me looking out of
the window at the golden sunlight on the dark trees on the lawn. Krishnan adds that the grounding we
got in law should have been stronger, as in later years we would have to interpret laws whether we
were magistrates or not; he cites examples of IAS officers who had caused major problems by
interpreting the law incorrectly—in one case the officer was sent to prison by the High Court for
contempt because of his erroneous reading of the law.
Probir Sen (1967: Madhya Pradesh) was in the National Academy seven years after Lynn,
Krishnan and me; and even in that short period the shift away from any response to the training given
emerges from his comments on it. The training was a set of classes in subjects like law, economics
and so on, he says. ‘It had nothing to do with officer-like qualities’. In the time he was at the
Academy, Sen recalls, he was not communicated ‘any central ethic of what the service was all about.’
Twenty years on, in the early 1980s a totally different perception emerges. An officer of that
generation—unusually intelligent, articulate and perceptive—considers the training she and her
colleagues received to have been irrelevant, ‘stereotyped and pre-packaged’; the training was still set
in the mould in which it had been cast in the sixties and seventies while the kind of people being
recruited had changed. The officer assumes—and this is again a comment on the perception of her
time—that feedback from those being trained is a vital input in the training process, a feature related
directly again to the kind of persons being trained, and says that it was not encouraged in her time in
the Academy.
She sees the ‘mismatch’ in training as stemming from, firstly, the difference in social and
professional backgrounds of the probationers over the years. I was, as were all those who joined the
IAS with me, a rather childishly wondering, totally clueless student from a university—the oldest
among us was about twenty-three, and the youngest just over twenty-one. In her time there were many
who were in their late twenties, and had previously worked in different capacities—in government at
lower levels, or in banks, and a fair number were doctors, lawyers and graduates in business
administration. To expect this lot to sit through basic lectures on the Constitution, on the history,
geography and economic structure of India (rather fewer sessions on law, I would imagine, as the
judiciary had been totally separated from the executive two decades before), was to exasperate them,
besides it being a waste of everybody’s time.
Secondly, this officer says, the problem lay in the fact that those who were in the faculty of the
Academy then were people with little or no exposure to hands-on administration. Apart from some
guest lectures by distinguished administrators most of the regular lectures were, as a result, not really
‘vibrant motivators’ or any kind of role models. She adds that matters were not made better by the
training being too long, thanks to what was known as the ‘sandwiched’ course: six months in the
Academy were followed by a year in the field and then six months in the Academy again. In our time
there was a three-month foundational course with just about everyone the government had recruited to
what were called the Class I services (an example, if one were needed, of our perennial dependence
on the caste system) followed by a nine-month training course after which we were sent away forever
to our careers in the IAS. We spent the next year as probationers, true, but were a part of the
administrative system, and never went back to being student-probationers in the Academy. Although
the total time spent as probationers was the same in our time and twenty years later, one can see why
it seemed too long for the younger officers.
Where the training system seems to have clearly failed is in its being adaptable and responsive to
changed needs and requirements, on the one hand, and to the kind of persons being recruited. We
were taken into the IAS when the needs were known, even though this perception had begun to falter
and fail, as we discovered when we went out into the states, but the nature of the recruits was clearly
known—we may have come from different social backgrounds, but were, by and large, middle-to
lower-middle-class products, and fresh from universities. Very few had any previous work
experience worth the name. Tackling us was not therefore difficult, and producing ‘conditioned’ or at
least ‘semi-conditioned’ pro-consuls was relatively easy and successfully done.
As we packed our suitcases and boxes in Mussoorie for the last time, excited and eager to take up
our new assignments, I for one was glad to leave; I had lived in a glass house for too long, and had
been told a great deal of the exciting world outside. And now, with all those ideas and concepts and
all the classes, riding and climbing as extra baggage, I walked through the gates of the Academy with
anticipation, and perhaps just a little nervousness.
Looking back, we were a strange assortment of young men and women. There was little that all of
us had in common, though some of us did become good friends as time went on. And that diversity
showed up in later years. One of my batchmates, Yashwant Sinha, has been Minister of External
Affairs and Finance in the BJP-led government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee; another, N. Vittal,
became a distinguished Central Vigilance Commissioner. Many retired as Chief Secretaries or
Secretaries to the Government of India. And some were less fortunate.
 2

Training: Assistant Magistrate and Collector, Burdwan

After a month’s leave in our tiny flat off Lansdowne Lane, in Calcutta, cosseted and pampered by two
loving sisters and my mother, who was quietly but very greatly delighted that I was in the IAS, I took
a train to Burdwan, to a world of which I had no conception. I could have been Robert Scott or
Amundsen, venturing to the South Pole. Like them, I too had a vague trust in the unknown; unlike them
I had no intrepid team of explorers and sleds and dogs, only a battered suitcase. They sailed in a
chartered ship across turbulent seas; I sat in a carriage of a passenger train from Howrah station to
Burdwan Junction.
Opposite me in the same compartment sat two men, one a rather shabby man in a crumpled bush
shirt and a doleful expression; the other a cheerful, talkative person. Salesmen? I thought at first,
teachers in some small mofussil college? They looked at me speculatively as they talked about
something to do with funds not being received or being sent or something like that. Minor officials of
some kind, I concluded dismissively, and looked away at the magical green countryside rolling past
me.
‘Where is the journey to?’ The morose man, who had hardly said a word, was speaking to me his
question put in the impersonal way that is common in Bengali.
I said I was going to Burdwan. He asked me what I was doing there.
‘I am an IAS officer,’ I said, perhaps a little grandly, ‘I am Assistant Magistrate, Burdwan.’
The morose man said nothing. His companion looked at me and smiled. ‘Assistant Magistrate,’ he
said genially, ‘Very good.’
I maintained a lofty silence, but remember feeling a little smug and thinking that they were clearly
suitably impressed.
As the train was pulling into Burdwan, the morose man turned to me and said, ‘Take a cycle
rickshaw to the Circuit House. Turn right from the station and over the bridge across the railway
tracks. And be nice to the chowkidar.’
I wasn’t going to take this lying down. ‘How do you know I want to go to the Circuit House?’ I
demanded.
‘I was District Magistrate here till last month,’ he said expressionlessly and left.
The other man laughed. ‘Typical of S.R. Das,’ he said, ‘but do as he says.’
Properly abashed, all grand notions went out of me like air from a balloon. Just my luck, I thought
unhappily, that the two persons I was travelling with were IAS officers, and one of them had been
DM of the district to which I was going as a probationer. But I did what S.R. Das had told me to do,
and arrived at the Circuit House, suitcase in hand.
The building was typical of the bungalows the British built in most district towns: solid, with a
deep verandah at a considerable height from the ground, behind tall Corinthian pillars, and a sweep
of steps leading up to it. It was not the most handsome of buildings, and it was set in a dusty
compound with no fence or boundary walls. The deep verandah led to a large hall on one side of
which there were two large bedrooms. On the left was a tiny little room, perhaps once a box room,
but with windows. It had one bed and a table and chair. To this I was led by the chowkidar, who
announced that this was where I was to stay. It had no bathroom I could see and I ventured to mention
this to him. He thereupon led me into the hall, and to a staircase behind it that led down to the ground
level which was dark and smelt of some animal. In one corner was a small bathroom. ‘Your
bathroom,’ he told me.
The building, I was to find out, had originally been the residence of the District Magistrate; what
was the residence of the District Magistrate was the residence of the Commissioner, Burdwan
Division. But several decades ago, one Commissioner was irked by the fact that the Maharajadhiraja
of Burdwan had a very imposing palace, and was a personage of some consequence, and so had
moved petulantly away, to Chinsura, on the banks of the great Hooghly river. The government, always
indulgent to its satraps, acquiesced in the move for whatever reason, though the post continued to be
called Commissioner, Burdwan Division, as it still is.
Anyway, that was when the District Magistrate moved to the residence of the Commissioner, and
turned his residence into the circuit house. Hence the hall, the large dining room behind it, and just the
two bedrooms. Circuit houses usually had at least four rooms, some even more. And Assistant
Magistrates, being the junior-most of the civil service officers were put in the box room.
I was rather unhappy about this primitive accommodation, but I had no choice in the matter. I
unpacked my few clothes and set them out. There was no food and, I was told by the chowkidar, there
was no prospect of my getting any that day, so in the evening I trudged back to the station and had a
frugal meal at the one food stall there was. Not the kind of start to my posting as Assistant Magistrate
and Collector that I had imagined.
The next day I took a rickshaw to the Collectorate, a sprawling building, again all pillars and
verandahs but not as imposing as the Circuit House. I went hesitantly to the room of the District
Magistrate, but was told haughtily that he was out on tour. One of his personal assistants, however,
directed me to the Additional District Magistrate or ADM.
The ADM had a room almost as imposing as the DM’s; I went in and was greeted warmly by an
officer not much older than me. This was S.M. Murshed, of the 1956 batch of the IAS. He was very
hospitable, waved away my hesitant queries about training and, after we had talked the morning
away, and he had met some visitors, took me to the Circuit House for lunch. I found that he stayed
there, in one of the two imposing bedrooms.
‘You can’t stay in that poky room,’ he told me firmly after looking briefly into the room I had been
given.
He summoned the chowkidar and peremptorily ordered him to shift my things to the second large
bedroom. ‘No one comes here,’ Murshed told me, ‘It’s too close to Calcutta. They come here in the
morning and go back in the evening. So you can stay in the other room without any problems at all.’
Murshed was not only kind, but hospitable to a degree I found overwhelming. He said, that
afternoon, ‘You’re my guest from now on. I’ll be paying for your board here.’ He brusquely overruled
my feeble objections. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know what you’re paid. You can’t get two square meals a
day with that. We’ll settle up later, when you get the senior scale.’ That was the next level of the IAS
pay scale.
He may well have been right; I was being paid Rs 350 per month. But I refused to accept this huge
amount of charity and protested vehemently. Finally he said, ‘Okay, let’s settle it. We get the
chowkidar to prepare a total bill for us both. I pay two thirds and you one third. Agreed?’ I had to.
This was my first encounter with the generosity and camaraderie that I was a recipient of in my early
years in the service.
‘How did you manage as Assistant Magistrate?’ I asked him.
‘Easy,’ Murshed replied, ‘I got money from home.’
He came from a well-established old family of Calcutta; his father was a senior officer in the state
government. No problems there, clearly; but that option wasn’t open to me. My mother could barely
make ends meet with the meagre pension she received. His generosity was therefore more than just
kindness; it was literally a bailing out of someone in distress. I never found out if he knew about my
family circumstances, and he never told me.
In the afternoon he told me to look around the Collectorate, and walk around the town. He was
going to be busy in the office. I wandered around the rambling building, crowded with people, all
carrying papers of some kind; later I went into the narrow lanes of Burdwan town, which I decided
was a tour I could have done without.
The lanes were, almost all of them, muddy; heaven knows where the water came from but one had
to tread carefully through the slush, occasionally skipping—literally—from one dry patch to another.
The few shops there were had little besides standard, and rather soiled, toiletries—soap, toothpaste
and stuff like that—and some kind of eatables in large glass jars which I learnt were called boems.
And, yes, lozenges which were universally known as lojence. Between these shops were shabby
doors opening, I suppose, into houses or, from the looks of some, into godowns of some kind. The one
or two shops selling sweets were swarming with flies and I hurried past them. (It was much later that
I found out that the town was renowned for its langcha, a syrupy sweet made out of cottage cheese, or
chhana as it was called, and a variety of this was called ledikeni, the variety being mainly in the
shape. The ledikeni was triangular, and a little lighter than the deliciously light original. The name
was apparently a version of Lady Canning, wife of a past Governor of Bengal who loved the sweet
and had large amounts of it taken to Government House regularly.
Cattle wandered through these lanes, making progress even more of an ordeal, and there were the
cycle rickshaws with their high-pitched squeaky horns being used incessantly. I found nothing
attractive in this shabby, run-down warren of lanes and bylanes and never went back unless I had to.
The next day Murshed and I went to the office in his official jeep, which he drove. When we got
there I was told that the DM, who had returned from tour, wanted to see me. I was ushered into his
room. He rose and shook my hand, and pointed to a chair. The DM, Amal Dutt, was ten years my
senior. I thought he was as old as the hills; actually he was then hardly thirty-two. But his manner was
grave and he spoke softly. He was very kind and considerate but there was a reserve which Murshed
did not have. He called Murshed in and they discussed my training.
The DM said that to begin with I should work with the head clerk in each of the departments of the
Collectorate—starting in the Loans Department in what was called ‘the English office’, and then in
other departments. After three weeks in each of them, I was to inspect them, that is, conduct a formal
inspection in the manner laid down in the Inspections Manual, a document from British times, like
many in use then. He said it was the best way I would learn how a Collectorate worked. Besides this,
he specified that I should attend all the meetings he took on different subjects, all to do with the
numerous development schemes and projects the government had initiated.
Thus began my career as a civil servant, working with head clerks in the Collectorate in Burdwan,
and learning more, I think, than I ever would have had I been put in charge of one or more of these
departments. But having started me on my training, Amal Dutt had little to do with me. It was Murshed
who checked on my training every two or three days, and invariably called me into his room for a cup
of tea while he reviewed my work. His comments on my rather childish inspections were terse,
sometimes not very complimentary. His knowledge of the working of the Collectorate was, I
discovered, exceptionally thorough. I also discovered that our seasoned bara babus, or head clerks,
held him in great respect because they knew they could not fool him as they could some other IAS
officers, whose knowledge of procedure and law was not as good.
Meanwhile I proceeded to call on all the senior officers in the district, in the manner we had been
taught in the Academy. Call and leave one card if the officer you are calling on is single or if his wife
is not there; leave two cards if his wife is ‘in station’ with him. I decided I would start with the Civil
Surgeon. When I told the gentleman I wanted to call on him, he said, in Bengali, ‘Certainly, certainly.
Not feeling well? What are your symptoms?’ I said I was perfectly all right, I just wanted to make a
courtesy call. He became a little wary. ‘Certainly,’ he said a little less enthusiastically, and then
added very frankly, ‘what for?’
I persisted, nonetheless, eager to do all that was expected of an IAS officer new to ‘the station’. He
agreed, a little reluctantly to my calling on him the next evening.
In the afternoon of the next day I received a note from him. His wife was not well, he said in the
note, so could the call wait? I decided the call could wait.
I was more fortunate with the Superintendent of Police, P.K. Sen. When I told him I wanted to call
on him he grinned and asked me to come over that evening.
I was received with warmth and a friendliness that continued for many years, and he was generous
with tea and shingaras, the deep-fried snack which in Bengal is filled with potatoes or cauliflowers.
‘Forget all this calling nonsense,’ he told me plainly. ‘No one does all that any more. It was all right
for the British but is just not our way.’ He was completely right, of course; that bit of training in the
Academy was farcical, a mindless imitation of what ICS probationers had been taught.
When I mentioned my experience of calling on officers to Murshed he said something I cannot
repeat here. My callings-on came to an abrupt end with one truly tragic instance. This was my calling
on the District Judge. He was a mild, rather bewildered man, but was very kind in a vague way, and
agreed I should call on him after he had made sure it was not to do with any matter he was hearing at
that time.
 When I got to his house he received me with great kindness, and told me he had invited the DM and
the ADM as well. Murshed came in soon after, and seated himself, after greeting the host. I was soon
to discover that Murshed, in his rather inexplicable way, was quite fond of this vague, good-natured
man, and went out of his way to help him. I had asked him why he was so considerate to the District
Judge. ‘Well,’ said Murshed mysteriously, ‘you never know.’ But more of that later.
I was introduced to the judge’s wife and had hardly sat down when from within the house appeared
a girl of about eighteen or so who was quite the most beautiful girl I had seen. Curly hair round a
perfectly oval face, long lashes framing lustrous dark eyes, and a slender neck—that was all one
could see above a plain but elegant cotton saree. ‘My daughter,’ the kind judge said, and must have
told me her name but I was too enchanted by this vision to hear, or remember it. I know she asked me
how I liked being in Burdwan, but have no recollection of what I said, or what followed by way of
conversation. I was lost, I knew, in the pools of those dark eyes.
Then the DM walked in. He too was introduced to the beautiful daughter who was a little bashful.
He asked her what she was doing, and she said she was reading for her Honours examination in
Bengali. ‘Do you like poetry?’ he asked, and she eagerly said she did. Whereupon the man brazenly
put on the most open example I had seen of what was called ‘line-maaroing’ in those days—also
known as ‘making up to a girl’ or ‘ ‘giving her Those Ones’. He recited poetry, in careless snatches
and she smiled radiantly, lighting up the room, with eyes only for him.
I seethed with jealous rage. ‘Isn’t he married?’ I hissed to Murshed.
‘Yes, he is,’ Murshed replied sardonically, ‘but what’s that got to do with it?’
I was horrified at the lack of propriety on the DM’s part. Actually flirting with a girl half his age, I
raged inwardly, young enough to be his daughter. And the girl’s father’s just smiling through it all.
‘Got to you, has she?’ Murshed asked mockingly.
I was overcome with rage, jealousy and embarrassment. ‘Of course not,’ I lied.
But I hated the DM then, and could have cheerfully murdered him.
With this my attempts at calling on officers ended, and I moped for a few days till I went to
Asansol, a sudivisional headquarters of the district. Asansol was more a city than town; and a
welcome change from the dullness of Burdwan. Besides, the subdivisional officers who were posted
there during my stint as Assistant Magistrate were cheerful and very hospitable young officers, just a
few years senior to me. P.R. Balasubramaniam, or Balu, as everyone knew him, was SDO when I
joined as Assistant Magistrate; a boisterous, bright and cheerful young man who kept a firm grip on
the turbulent subdivision and, while he was very friendly and encouraging, never let me forget I was
there to learn the ropes, and made it clear I could do that only by watching him and following him
around in his day-to-day work. More of this later.
My training was interspersed by visits to the interior of the district. I soon discovered that roads as
we know them stopped fairly close to the towns; thereafter there were paths across fields and open
spaces, rutted by generations of bullock carts and the yearly monsoon rains. Traversing them in a jeep
was a jolting, bone-jarring nightmare, and at times positively dangerous as the jeep canted over at
steep angles as it negotiated a particularly rough patch. It was less tense when one walked, which I
did whenever I could.
 The villages I went to had people who were, for the most part, apathetic and indifferent. The harsh
poverty they had to endure made them so; and the schemes for development I had read about seemed
to have had some other people in mind. Irrigation was a problem, drinking water available some
kilometres away, there was no access to medical facilities, and they had an apology of a school. I
came away from these villages not just despondent but also ashamed; it seemed to me we were
playing out some kind of elaborate and unreal game, turning our faces and consciousness away from
the reality of these villages and the people who lived in them.
There seemed to be nothing being actually done; perhaps there was just not enough money at that
time. In fact, the country was—and West Bengal certainly was—perennially on the very edge of
penury. The plea ‘funds are not available’ was something one grew up with in those early years.
While this was true enough what I found inexplicable and infuriating was that no one seemed to be
bothered; not the officials like the BDO, SDO and others, and not the local MLAs. The Communist
Party did occasionally organize demonstrations but these again were irrelevant.
Years later, when I returned to the state as Commissioner, there was a profound difference. There
was more cheerfulness, and there were schemes being executed to help village people. But in those
early years one couldn’t foresee such changes, and it left me despondent. Like many others, I tried not
to think of it, as there was absolutely nothing I could do to alter things even to a small degree. I got
that opportunity later, as Deputy Commissioner and District Magistrate, as we shall see.
In those early years I never ventured to share my feelings with Murshed, with whom I talked about
so many other things, and never with the DM. The DM was an enigma to me. I had heard he had a
wife who was not well, who kept to herself in the great house that was the DM’s official residence. I
was never asked there, as I had heard many of my peers were to the houses of their DMs or
Collectors. I did go there a few times, though, once to give the DM a progress report, if I remember
correctly, and once when he had a probationer from the Indian Foreign Service over.
A part of the training of Indian Foreign Service Officers consisted of spending a few months in a
district; it was as a part of this training that the probationer had come to Burdwan. The DM had
invited him to his house for tea, and had asked me to be there, as a sort of companion, I suppose. He
made much of the probationer, chatted with him about his training prior to the district attachment, as it
was called, where he came from, and so on. I sat there rather resentfully, I must say, because the DM
had not really bothered about me or fussed over me in that manner.
There was another reason for my irritation, which had to do with my vanity. In the Academy we
had been notified soon after we had started our training that the IFS was two or three recruits short
that year, as very few of us had opted for it, and we were exhorted in a notice up on the notice board
to reconsider and, in case any of us decided on reflection to join the IFS, to inform the director. I
don’t think anyone did, because those of us who were among the first fifteen on the merit list were
then summoned individually to the director’s office for a talk with him on the virtues of the IFS.
‘Why won’t you join the IFS?’ Jha sahib asked me when I went in.
‘I don’t fancy spending my time going to cocktail parties and dinners, sir,’ I told him.
One of Jha sahib’s very unusual traits was his insistence that probationers speak to him completely
frankly. Never, in the rest of my service career was that to be said to me again.
 ‘Come on, there’s more to the IFS than that,’ the director said.
‘But really, sir,’ I remember saying, ‘I want to work for the country.’
‘They do that in the IFS too, you know,’ he replied.
‘Yes, but they have to give dinners and entertain,’ I said with the earnestness of the very young, ‘I
don’t like that kind of thing, sir. I hate it.’
‘You’re sure?’ Jha sahib said thoughtfully.
‘I am, sir,’ I replied.
He looked at me and suddenly smiled. ‘I had been told to speak to you personally, and I have,’ he
said, ‘Now that I have your answer I can tell you that I fully agree with you. You don’t want to be
there in a world where you don’t really count for anything. Good for you!’ And he laughed his loud,
infectious laugh.
In today’s India, on the other hand, we have presidents and prime ministers trooping in to visit, as
India is seen as one of the rising economic super-powers. As Shakespeare might have said, ‘Thus the
whirligig of time brings in his changes.’
But then, in 1961, there I was, playing second fiddle to a probationer in a service I had turned
down, someone who the DM seemed anxious to put at ease. I thought it an affront to my vanity.
‘You will look after him,’ the DM instructed me. ‘See that he is given a good room in the Circuit
House, and that the chowkidar arranges for his food.’
We went out of the great house together, and I was exceedingly pleasant to him. I knew in which
room in the Circuit House he was going to get to stay.
This was only one aspect of the DM that puzzled and at times irritated me. Usually I kept out of his
way, and he rarely wanted to see me. I was far more at home with Murshed, who became a friend, a
sort of mentor. Sometimes the DM would suddenly send word that he was going to some village or
block headquarters, and I was to go with him. I trailed along on these tours, sat in on his discussions,
only half listening to what was being said, and looking with more interest at the green of the
countryside, the tall areca-nut palms beside still ponds, cattle grazing in the green fields, and children
running across them.
On the way back from these trips he never asked me what I thought of the visit, if I had noticed
anything worthwhile in the village, or noted any issue that had come up. He used to be wrapped up in
his private world, and I, too, was glad to be left alone. After one such visit, however, he abruptly told
me I was to go to a block for a few weeks with the Block Development Officer.
The nation had been divided into thousands of development ‘blocks’. An unlovely word that meant
a tract of country that was a part of a district, and which became, as a block, the recipient of help
under the different development schemes and projects that had been formulated. In each block there
were block-level officials to look after agriculture, animal husbandry, minor irrigation, education,
and health; there were primary health centres, or there were supposed to be, at any rate, and the
offices of all these functionaries. A farm was supposed to be set up in every block to grow seedlings
for farmers that were of improved varieties of the crops they were sowing, and so on.
The Block Development Officer was by no means the equivalent of a District Magistrate at the
block level; he had his job and the others had theirs, and no one had, at least when I was being trained
in Burdwan district, thought of the BDO performing any kind of coordinating function. But in the
National Academy, up in the cool sunlit halls in Mussoorie, we were told of the great efforts being
made to develop the country, of ‘extension’ methods and community development—an exciting
picture was painted of dedicated activity across the face of the country, in which the Block
Development Officer played a key role. He was the fulcrum in the development effort, we were told,
and represented the shift away from the old notions of administration to the heady challenge of
development administration. We, as IAS officers, were to effect the transformation in the districts
away from the image of the Collector/District Magistrate as a dispenser of justice and punishment to
an agent of change.
So I went to the block I was sent to—a place not too far from Burdwan town, some two or three
hours in a jeep across the horrific, rutted tracks that passed for roads—with some expectation. I was
to see the actual hub of development at last, away from the dusty, musty Collectorate. I met the BDO
on arrival, a rotund young man, a little older than me, with a wide, thick-lipped smile perpetually
pasted on his face. After some initial rituals—the introduction, some facts about the size of the block
and so on—we went to his office room, where he sat, smiling and perspiring and received a number
of village people, all with petitions of some kind.
I asked him about the development schemes he was responsible for. Could we see some? Where
were they? How did he get them on the ground? His smile widened.
‘I only give money,’ he told me.
I didn’t understand what that meant and told him so.
‘I only give money,’ he repeated. ‘You see, I am allotted money from the district office. Then I
sanction loans to farmers from that money. These are the people who are coming to collect their
loans.’
I asked him what happened after that. More smiling. ‘I don’t know, really,’ he said casually.
‘But don’t you go and see what happens?’ I asked.
‘No time,’ he smiled and smiled, ‘I am too busy sanctioning loans.’
‘Is that all you do?’ I demanded.
‘It is my job,’ he said simply. ‘I have been posted here and told to disburse loans.’
I asked him about the whole idea of community development, and what was going on in his block.
‘I don’t know about all that,’ he smiled, ‘I just disburse loans.’
I found out in a few days that the state government, terribly short of officers to post as BDOs and
not able to recruit them as quickly as they needed to, posted recruits straight to different blocks after
selection by the Public Service Commission and the issue of their appointment letters. No training, no
orientation, nothing. These were young men appointed to the state civil service, the West Bengal Civil
Service, a state counterpart of the IAS; they too sat for an examination, but, as I said, ended up, in
those days, immediately thereafter as BDOs. Whatever they got to know about their work was from
their head clerk.
So the rotund young man was simply making the best of a bad job. He knew nothing of what he was
doing, and was frank enough to say so. He was the result of appallingly bad human resource planning,
the result of appallingly bad planning by the Planning Commission, by the Government of India, and
by the Government of West Bengal. They, all of them, had no idea what needed to be done in terms of
coordination, and it was their ineptitude that made for the kind of farcical efforts at development I
witnessed as a probationer. The only excuse was that they were all new to their jobs. Their new jobs
as agents of change.
I was, obviously, only dimly aware of something being gravely wrong about the business of
development. What I do remember vividly is the sharp sense of disappointment at what passed for
development set against the exalting discourses given to us in Mussoorie. I don’t know what exactly I
had expected, but it certainly wasn’t a sleekly plump BDO who smiled and doled out money. In later
years the kind of BDOs one came across were much better, more motivated and eager to get things
done, at least some of them were. And I dare say even in my time as probationer there were other
BDOs who were more committed to their work. It was just my luck to have to encounter this
particular creature.
My block training ended mercifully soon, and the DM decreed I should go to Asansol to get a feel
of an industrial subdivision, after my first encounter with rural development. I have recounted my
entirely pleasant encounter with Balu, then SDO Asansol, who was three years my senior, and who
stayed only a few weeks before being given the senior scale of pay and moved as Additional District
Magistrate to another district. In his place came another officer who was a Tamilian, K.C.
Sivaramakrishnan—Kallaidikuruchi Chidambaram Sivaramakrishnan, to give him his full name, one
he trotted out sometimes to create shock and awe in his listeners. He was generally known as
Shivaram, as no respectable Bengali could really differentiate between an ‘s’ and a ‘sh’. He was just
two years senior to me, and we soon were on even more friendly terms than I had been with Balu.
Shivaram was at that time unmarried, and both of us sat down in the evenings in his nearly bare
house, and he would sing rabindrasangeet in a remarkably melodious voice. Often we went to the
rather splendid Asansol Club, or the even more splendid Burnpur Club of which the SDO Asansol
was an honorary member. We met various dignitaries of the Indian Iron and Steel Company, which
had set up the township of Burnpur and had a large steel plant next to Asansol there, and had a drink
or two and went our merry way back to the SDO’s house. We were joined frequently by the
Additional Superintendent of Police, Asansol, Rathin Bhattacharya, known to all as Lochchu, and
whom I called Lochchu-da, ‘da’ being the Bengali suffix denoting ‘elder brother’. He was a cheerful
young man who spoke in half-sentences when he did speak, but was pretty business-like when it came
to a drink. Lochchu-da and police regimentation didn’t quite agree, and we once came upon him
driving along in his jeep smartly turned out in his uniform but, with his feet discreetly hidden, as he
had on a battered pair of chappals (slippers), having forgotten to put on his shoes.
I had too much of a good time in Asansol to learn anything either in the SDO’s office or anywhere
else, and Shivaram soon became a friend and didn’t really impose any training routine on me, to put it
very mildly. We were frequently invited out to dinner, and when we were not, we sat on the first floor
verandah of his house, talking idly, watching the red glow from the furnaces in Burnpur. To young
men just beginning their careers in the IAS, the prospects appeared exciting and we had much to talk
about and imagine.
There was just one event which gave me a taste of what an industrial subdivision was—a
demonstration in the growing steel city of Durgapur, which was a part of Asansol subdivision. It was
a demonstration by workers that turned violent, and police reinforcements had to be rushed there to
contain the situation. Lochchu-da had left for Durgapur earlier, when news of the demonstration came;
when Shivaram heard that it had turned violent he drove there, taking me along.
We got to Durgapur police station, which was then full of police vehicles bringing in contingents of
the armed police, and the men were getting into other vehicles and being sent to different points
where violence had broken out. Murshed arrived soon after, from Burdwan, and took charge of the
situation. When a report came in that the mob had attacked the police unit outside the main gate of the
steel factory he jumped into his jeep, with a police officer and men following in a larger vehicle, and
sped off, shouting to Shivaram, ‘Get the jail warrants ready!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Shivaram called after him.
After Murshed left, Shivaram turned to me and said, ‘I didn’t go because once the ADM’s there I
don’t need to be there. You understand?’
I said I did.
Then Shivaram said, ‘I say, Bhaskar, you’ve just done your training in law. What’s a jail warrant?’
I didn’t know, and told him so. He looked despondent. ‘I don’t, either,’ he said, ‘What do I do?’
I thought hard and then said, ‘Why not ask your court clerk?’
‘I can’t do that!’ Shivaram said firmly.
I suggested he ask the court clerk to come to Durgapur with the Subdivisional Magistrate’s seal and
we could make out stern documents that read, ‘I, K.C. Sivaramakrishnan, IAS, Subdivisional
Magistrate, Asansol, hereby send you—leaving a blank for a name—to jail.’ I told him that if he put
his seal on it that would be a jail warrant. ‘What’s a jail warrant other than an order sending someone
to jail?’ I argued.
Shivaram was doubtful, said it sounded very odd, but agreed. His agreement was, I remember,
hastened by the arrival of the first lot of rioters sent back under arrest by Murshed.
The court clerk arrived, with the all-important seal, and we fixed it to the documents we had made.
Then we handed them over to the Police Inspector and told him to take the arrested men to the jail in
Burdwan (which was closer) with those papers.
Murshed arrived soon after, inquired if we had sent those arrested to jail with warrants, and we
said they had been sent. After sorting affairs out, like posting pickets, keeping a reserve force, and so
on, Murshed said he was going back to Burdwan.
‘Want to come back?’ he asked me, ‘Or you want more of the good life in Asansol?’
I had actually come prepared to go back, and went back to the quiet of Burdwan with him.
Late that night the phone rang; it was the Jail Superintendent. Murshed spoke to him, and, since I
had woken up, I listened in. He turned to me after a while and said, ‘Just what papers did you send
those arrested men with to the jail?’
‘Jail warrants,’ I said easily.
‘The Superintendent says they’re complete garbage and he has no written orders committing the
men to prison.’ He sounded angry.
‘Well, they were orders signed by the SDM,’ I began defensively.
 ‘Were they jail warrants?’ Murshed shouted.
‘No,’ I said fearfully, ‘they were sort of orders …’
‘What nonsense!’ Murshed roared. ‘What the hell do they teach you? Don’t you know what a
warrant of arrest is?’
He went into his room and emerged dressed. He got on the phone and I heard him tell the operator,
‘Get me the SDO Asansol,’ and then he asked me to dress, as we had to go to the office.
As I got ready I heard a tirade on the phone, from a very angry Murshed, directed at poor
Shivaram. Shortly after this, perhaps partly because of it, I was asked to try criminal cases on my
own. The judiciary and executive had not been fully separated at the time; with my posting orders had
come a separate order vesting me with the powers of a Magistrate of the Third Class. It meant I could
sentence a convicted person to seven days’ imprisonment or a fine of twenty-five rupees.
I sat timorously in a small, dusty courtroom, with a court clerk who was clearly bored; what was
worse was that the man on trial was also bored.
All that I had been patiently taught in the Academy vanished in the face of this reality; and I
realized, with a cold dread, that it had nothing whatsoever to do with actually trying a case. The
lawyer perfunctorily stated his case, the court Sub-Inspector—prosecutors at that level and up to even
higher levels were police officers of the rank of Inspector or Sub-Inspector—stated his, and then
there was a painful silence. I had no idea what I was to do then.
‘Say he is guilty,’ the court clerk said in a low voice.
I said the accused was guilty.
‘Two days,’ the court clerk said sotto voce.
I said that, and the man was taken off.
I had dispensed justice, and I remember it left me feeling quite bewildered.
I did not try cases for too long—I sat in court for about a fortnight, if I remember correctly. I
became a little more familiar with the procedures, and did not need to be coached by the court clerk
quite so often. Then I was summoned by the DM. I had to undergo three months’ training in a
subdivision, he told me.
I was excited, sure that I would be sent back to glamorous Asansol.
‘You’ve had a taste of what an industrial subdivision is like,’ he said, ‘so you need to go to a rural
subdivision. I’m sending you to Kalna.’
I must have looked very crestfallen, because he smiled—a little maliciously I remember, in the
clarity of hindsight and the resentment I felt then, and said, ‘Yes, I know you wanted to go to Asansol.
But you will go to Kalna. You’ll learn more there.’
And, in the way he had, he indicated my interview was at an end.

Kalna was a sleepy little town, with a narrow crowded main street, and an untidy sprawl of buildings
housing the SDO’s office, or courts, which is what they were, actually, apart from housing his offices,
beside a sluggish river or stream, and some other buildings. All of them were old, faded, red-brick
structures with the now familiar deep verandahs in front of them. The roofs over the verandahs were
low and behind them the higher roofs of the rooms rose, with the parapets done as imitation
battlements. They were surrounded with stalls selling various trinkets and some foodstuff, and people
milled around them. It depressed me greatly.
Fortunately, the SDO had had a room allotted to me in the inspection bungalow of the Public Works
(Roads) Department, a little distance from the town on the road connecting Kalna to the other rural
subdivision, Katwa, and places further north. This was a pretty little building, set in a small garden
which had a few green shrubs, and my room was airy and clean. But there was no electricity, only oil
lamps that the chowkidar lit at night.
I had gone to Kalna quite prepared to dislike the place and the training. The training, such as it
was, was dull and forgettable, to do with forms and procedures and also a fair amount of time sitting
with the SDO in his capacity as subdivisional magistrate in court. I have only the faintest of
recollections of what it was.
What I do remember is the reading I did for my departmental examinations. Apart from the
examinations we did in the Academy, all of us were required to pass examinations in the state
organized by the state Public Service Commission on revenue matters, and in law. Probationers
whose mother tongue was not Bengali had also to pass an examination, at two levels, in Bengali.
Being a Bengali I was exempted from that examination but only because of my origin, not because of
my skills in Bengali.
A word about this oddity would not be out of place. Like many children of the forties I was sent to
schools where the language was not only English, but where speaking in any other language was
considered, for some reason, improper. My brother, sisters and I decided we would speak in English
at home, so that we became really familiar with the language—fluency in English set one apart in
school then, not mere fluency, but a sort of English-oriented fluency, using English colloquialisms, for
example instead of those that were Indian. Our parents were alarmed, after a time, at the rapidity with
which we lost touch with Bengali, and a small fine of one pice was levied by our father for every
English word used at the dinner table. This did not deter us; we developed a sign language to ask for
the salt, or for a dish. And after dinner our conversations continued in English.
This helped our English language skills, but we lost touch with Bengali almost completely. We
could understand it, but that was about all. This did not matter too much as we completed our
education, but once I joined the IAS and went to the National Academy of Administration it became a
personal problem. I had asked for, and been allotted to West Bengal as the state I was to serve in; my
reason for asking for it was pure convenience, because my mother was there, but there was the matter
of Bengali. There were classes in different languages for probationers in the Academy, and, after a
few weeks I went hesitantly to the Bengali class, only to be waved away by the cheerful instructor,
who said cheerily, ‘You don’t need to come to this class, this is only for those who don’t know the
language.’
I told him that I just wanted to brush up my Bengali a little, so he agreed to my joining. ‘You can set
them a standard,’ he beamed. But then, when he asked us to write some simple sentences, and saw my
doodling which I had tried to fashion into the Bengali script, he lost his good humour.
‘You had better come every day,’ he said. ‘You are undoubtedly the worst student in the class.’
 And so I did. By the time I left I could speak, read and write reasonably well, thanks to good Mr
Pal, who was a kind man, and spent many hours outside class with me, patiently taking me through
Bengali texts, and making me write and write.
So, when I came to the state I could confidently say I knew Bengali well enough not to sit for
another examination. But, even though I was exempted from Bengali, I still had the papers in law and
land revenue to read up on and pass. There was no one to teach; one learned on one’s own. Rumour
had it that the examinations, especially the higher-level papers in law and land revenue were
formidable obstacles, and that most probationers sat for them at least twice. That had made me
slightly nervous and I addressed myself to passing the examinations as best I could.
My stay at Kalna was, in that respect, a bit of a godsend. I was let off—literally, as the SDO
readily agreed that I should be given time to study—by about 3 p.m., and soon after sat down with my
books. The bungalow was, as I said, set in a quiet area, away from the town; it had its own garden,
set with bright green plants and vividly red bougainvillea which cascaded down the sides of the
entrance. There were no other buildings on either side or across the road; the bungalow was the only
building in that area. The only sound was of birds—the mynahs and koels that were noisy in the
evenings as the sun set in a red glow bathing the countryside in a warm light that lasted all too briefly,
before night enveloped it and the bungalow.
Occasionally there would be the sound of a truck groaning its way to Katwa or other places, and
now and then there was the faint squeak of the rubber horns on cycle rickshaws. Other than this there
was complete silence. As it grew dark the chowkidar would silently light the oil lamps which bathed
the room in a soft light, and shut the windows against the swarms of mosquitoes that would have
otherwise tormented me till I crept into bed behind the mosquito nets. He filled the room with fragrant
incense smoke which also helped.
Thus, enclosed in the silence, and, in the evenings, by the darkness of the night, I read old colonial
laws and manuals on the collection of revenue. My study would be interrupted by the chowkidar
informing me my dinner was ready, and after I had had whatever he had made for me, I went back to
my books but not for very long, and then climbed into bed. I spent over two months in this fashion,
and was, I remember, strangely at peace with myself, and everything else. I grew fond of the pretty,
quiet bungalow; and, as the cool of winter crept near, I revelled in the silence and the stillness.
Once, during my stay there, the DM came on tour. He spent the night in the bungalow, and we had
dinner together. He was much friendlier, and asked how my training was going. Then, he asked me if I
wanted to go back to Burdwan. I told him I would much rather stay on at Kalna, which surprised him.
‘I need to study, sir,’ I told him. ‘I need to pass the departmental examinations.’
I remember he looked at me with what appeared to be fondness, which surprised me. ‘All right,
Bhaskar,’ he said. ‘You stay on for as long as you like. But if you want to go back, just tell the SDO.’
After a while he said, ‘I am glad you’re working so hard for your examinations. The SDO tells me
you’ve been very regular and thorough with your training. Are you still annoyed that I didn’t send you
to Asansol?’
I told him I was not annoyed at all, but glad I was at Kalna.
‘Yes,’ Amal Dutt said with a smile. ‘It was a good decision. You’ve made good use of the time
here.’
Slowly, winter was setting in. The air was cool in the evenings; in the morning there was a light
mist. The sun was beginning to lose its fierceness, and the light changed to a gentler and darker shade
of gold. I had, regretfully, to leave Kalna then, and went back to Burdwan, but only for a few days
before going to Calcutta, and the departmental examinations. There were just three of us IAS
probationers of 1960, but a whole lot of new recruits to the West Bengal Civil Service (WBCS)
appearing for the examination in the halls of the Public Service Commission. We had a choice of
appearing for all the papers, that is the lower and higher levels, or doing the lower levels first and the
higher later on. I had chosen to do them all together, which was an ordeal, but I was desperate to stop
appearing for examinations and had reasoned that if I failed the higher-level papers I could always do
them the next time, which would then be as if I had chosen to do them later. That, at any rate, was my
rather juvenile reason for doing all the papers together.
Examinations over, I spent a few precious days with my family and then left for what was a major
event in the lives of all assistant magistrates in West Bengal: settlement training. This was field
training on land settlements; how they were made and more importantly how they were recorded. It
was organized by the Director of Land Records and Surveys, West Bengal, a senior IAS officer, and
supervised more immediately by a Settlement Officer, also an IAS officer but a younger one. The
training may have been an archaic remnant of the training given to ICS officers in the years gone by,
but it had suddenly become very relevant, as the state government had passed the Estates Acquisition
Act, under which the maximum holding by an individual was fixed at a modest fourteen or fifteen
acres, and the rest of the land came to the state, for distribution to those who had no land, or very tiny
uneconomic amounts. This meant that an enormous amount of work had to be done to identify and take
over the excess land—or, in the terms we were to become familiar with, vested land—and resettle
the entire state, so to speak.
On the ground it meant literally mapping every square inch of the state, doing what was called a
cadastral survey, on a giant scale of sixteen inches to a mile. That scale made it possible to map
every tiny plot of land, every path and every little pond. This is what we had to do ourselves, helped
gently by the seasoned revenue personnel detailed to oversee our work. It was painfully slow work.
After mapping, the land had to be identified and settled with the rightful tenant. Under the law the
actual owner of all land was the state; everyone held land under the state, in one capacity or the other.
One could be a full-fledged owner, but technically one held land under the sovereign, that is, the state.
Picking one’s way through a maze of relationships and disputes took years. All this was what we
were going to learn to do in our settlement camp.
In the context of the importance that was given then to the redistribution of land, this was perhaps
the most relevant training we received. What we learnt in the settlement camp served me well in the
years I spent in the districts. The training apart, the real joy was in living out in the open in tents. In
the mild winter of southern Bengal the days spent in the warm sunshine and the nights in the chill of a
tent, a thick razai serving as a warm cocoon, were a joy. There were no cars, no distractions, nothing
except the blue sky, soft breeze and sunshine that washed over us as we trudged across fields with the
equipment needed for the survey work we were being trained to do.
 There were sessions which were in a large tent where instructors took us through the maze of the
khatian or the record of rights, the one document a peasant had to establish his claim to a piece of
land, and through such processes as khanapuri and bujharat which were processes involved in the
entering of the data we collected during surveys into registers and into the khatians. Sometimes we
had senior officers come and speak to us. It was a dreamy idyll, and the tragic part was that it ended
far too soon and we mournfully packed up and returned to our districts.
Soon after my return, the Commissioner, Burdwan Division, came to Burdwan, on an inspection.
As I have explained, the original headquarters of the Commissioner was Burdwan, but some British
Commissioner did not fancy playing second fiddle in that decrepit, fly-infested town to the
Maharajadhiraja of Burdwan and shifted his headquarters to Chinsura in Hooghly district. The
designation stayed, though, one of the many oddities that the British secretly enjoyed, obviously. At
that time the Commissioner was one of the most colourful characters in the IAS cadre of West Bengal,
Ivan Surita.
I was told that the Commissioner’s inspection was an elaborate ritual. About a week before he
arrived, his personal assistant (not a clerk but an officer of the State Civil Service) accompanied by a
head clerk and others came and conducted a painstakingly detailed inspection, looking at every
register, file and return in the different departments of the Collectorate, that is, the DM’s office; they
then wrote up a fairly voluminous inspection report. The Commissioner would spend a day looking at
some of the more glaring shortcomings unearthed by his PA and the team, and then have a discussion
with the DM and his officers. The actual inspection report came a few days later, pointing out lapses,
asking for remedial action and so on. It was, of course, the report drafted by the official team, which
the Commissioner merely approved.
This was a truly fine example of the way the British administered the country. Much importance
was placed on inspections, and rightly, because these were the means by which officers were kept on
their toes and the administration on track; but they had devised a means by which the tedious and
wearying examination of registers, of which there were dozens, and files, reports and returns and all
the other papers that the Collectorate was expected to maintain, was done by a team of the
Commissioner’s own staff, who, being what they were, wielded a fair amount of clout. The great man
then did a sort of test check and went on with his life. So one Commissioner could keep his five or six
districts in line, not be inundated with the paperwork that inspections meant, and go into the field,
inspecting the work being done there from his camps. They kept control but got the natives to do the
actual work.
Some of the officers who were appointed commissioners after Independence began to take on the
paperwork themselves, seeing much virtue in being immersed in bureaucratic procedures, and
declaring proudly that they did not depend on their PAs for anything. In the bargain they became
babus, rarely going into the field, where the real work was done. To them an inspection report was
more important than listening to a peasant’s grievances and getting the DM or his officers to remedy
them.
Not Ivan Surita. He was a Commissioner in the classic mould, perhaps a little more eccentric than
most. Ivan Surita was an Armenian, one of the few left in Calcutta after Independence, another being
his elder brother, the well-known cricket commentator Pearson Surita. Ivan Surita had joined the
army and had served as a young captain in Italy. During the thrust up from the south by the British
Army, he was leading a patrol one night which came upon a German position. In the fierce fight that
followed the position was destroyed, and Surita was personally responsible for the attack that
destroyed them. He paid a heavy price for it, being grievously wounded. But he survived, and was
awarded the Military Cross.
After the war he chose to stay on in India, although many Armenians left when the British did.
Officers in the army were offered positions in the ICS after the war, as the army was reducing its
numbers and there was at the same time a great shortage of ICS officers. A number accepted the offers
made to them, but then Independence came, and the offer was modified to appointments to the IAS.
Some refused what they saw as a second-rate service, but Surita, and some others did not. This must
have been a surprise to the establishment and to his friends; he was a fun-loving, very Anglicized
man, identified because of his rather wild ways and his European complexion with the British, and
not really someone who would work in the new civil service which was being created by
independent India. It was, in the eyes of those who were his contemporaries, too Indian for Ivan
Surita. But he joined it nonetheless.
Surita never married, and was not known to have had any affairs. It was whispered among younger
officers that he was gay, though that word had not then become current in its present avatar. He still
had a number of friends among the British expatriates who worked in the great mercantile houses and
in the tea gardens of north Bengal, but his deep loyalty to his state and to the country was, again,
something that took people by surprise. Some years later, when he was Commissioner, Jalpaiguri
Division, which meant the whole of the northern part of West Bengal, he undertook a daring plan
which horrified the administration; he gave land along the border with what was then East Pakistan to
Santhals whom he moved up from the western districts. His intention was, he told me later, to have a
sizeable number of Santhals settled in with the local population, which was almost entirely Muslim.
He had moved in a number of families, and had some others waiting for land to be earmarked for
them, when the government discovered what he was up to, and he was ordered to stop the
resettlement immediately. ‘It’s the bloody babus in Delhi,’ he said bitterly, ‘and of course they have
an even bigger babu right here to carry out their orders.’ He meant M.M. Basu, an ICS officer who
was then the State Home Secretary of whom he was actually rather fond, and whom he enjoyed
teasing, much to Basu’s indignation.
‘If the Government of India asked you to wipe your arse four times, would you do that?’ he once
asked Basu slyly. Basu marched into the Chief Secretary’s room, and complained angrily.
‘Ivan’s constantly hectoring me,’ he said to an amused chief secretary.
When I was Under Secretary in the Home Department a few years later and had come to my room a
little late, I discovered that Surita had been there—he had cut his nails and left the parings on my
table in a perfect circle.
He was a colourful, cheerful man who cared very little for file work, spending his time touring,
where he did little more than pass the time in good-humoured banter with officers. It was in out-of-
the-ordinary projects, or in times of violence, that he stood forth, as it were, as a firm, quick-thinking
officer. But to get back to his arrival in Burdwan, where I met him for the first time.
He swept into the Circuit House in Burdwan which had been cleaned and tidied up, the rather
shabby sofas dusted and plumped out, and a resentful Assistant Magistrate—me—banished to the box
room on one side. He established himself with great élan; his orderlies, particularly Kancha, who had
been his batman in the war and was now his devoted manservant, bodyguard and friend, took over the
kitchen, polished the cutlery and wiped all the plates.
Where it was customary in other states, according to my batchmates, for the Commissioner to be
wined and dined lavishly by the officers of the district, Surita did the opposite. He invited the DM,
SP, the Additional DM, and the sullen Assistant Magistrate to dinner. This was arranged by his men
on the deep verandah in front of the Circuit House, and preceded by drinks being served to those who
wanted it. I had been warned by Murshed that he did not like officers who did not drink, but could not
bear officers getting drunk.
‘This is Bhaskar Ghose, sir,’ the DM said to him deferentially. ‘He’s the Assistant Magistrate.’
I found I was being appraised by a pair of shrewd blue eyes. ‘Oh, Assistant Magistrate, is it?’ he
said softly. ‘Have a drink, Mr Assistant Magistrate.’
I diplomatically accepted.
‘Very good,’ Surita said, still appraising me. ‘And where have we been educated?’
‘I studied in St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, sir,’ I said.
‘Oh, St. Stephen’s, is it? So we’re all very pucca, are we?’ he said. ‘But don’t worry. The shalas
here will take all that out of you.’
He turned to the other officers, refilled glasses, and regaled us with hilarious anecdotes concerning
M.M. Basu, other senior officers, and a whole lot of others in Calcutta’s fashionable set.
‘Another?’ he asked me although my glass was half full. ‘No one has just one.’
I thought it wise to agree, and accepted the second drink. When it came, I, for purely practical
reasons, poured it into my first drink. Surita saw this.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, and solemnly shook my hand. ‘I’m impressed, Mr Assistant
Magistrate.’
A month later the DM called me into his room, one of his rare summons. He was looking a little
grim. ‘I hear you’re drinking too much,’ he said abruptly. ‘I don’t want to interfere, but you’re young
and it’s not good for you to get that kind of reputation.’
I was astonished. Except when the Commissioner had come I had had no occasion to have a drink. I
told him that.
‘Well, Ivan Surita has been saying you drink like a fish,’ the DM said.
I told him that I had accepted two drinks from the Commissioner at his dinner, more because I
thought he expected me to, and had, only for practical reasons poured one into the other.
‘That may well be it,’ Amal Dutt said. ‘I must tell you—be careful when you’re with Surita. He’s a
fine man, but a great gossip. Don’t give him any cause to spread tales like this. He can make stuff up,
as you see.’
I was quite horrified, and must have shown it, because Amal Dutt smiled, and said, ‘Don’t worry
about it. I’ll tell him,’ he said.
 I didn’t see Surita for some time after that, fortunately.
Meanwhile I was asked to go to Kalimpong, that lovely town in the Himalayas, for advanced
settlement training. The other two IAS probationers and I would be required actually to map fields
and then fill in the maps with details and then draw up records of rights. I packed my rather modest
belongings for the last time; I knew that even if I came back to Burdwan it would be for a brief
period. Just before I left I was informed that I had passed all the departmental examinations. That was
a major event; I would never, ever, have to sit for another examination again. I had no one to share my
delight and relief with, but the journey up to the mountains was, I remember, one of the most joyous I
have ever made.
‘Split camp’ as it was called was what I thought it would be. They were days of painstaking work
in the mellow sun, except that, as we mapped the field allotted to us, we went further and further
down into the valley and then in the evenings we had to trudge up longer and longer stretches to get to
our camp. As our work progressed, so did our evening exhaustion. The Settlement Officer, T.S.
Broca, a brisk, no-nonsense IAS officer who was Murshed’s batchmate, visited our camp and brought
some welcome good humour and friendliness. But the next day, when he ran what is called a partal
line, that is a line traced with the help of offsets across our map, a sort of test line to see if our work
was accurate, he was quite horrified.
‘It’s totally wrong,’ he said. ‘You’ve made a mess of it.’
We offered to do it again. ‘Well, you’ll have to,’ he said, ‘but you won’t be able to finish it. I just
hope none of you ends up in the Settlement Department.’ He laughed uproariously, and we joined in
without much enthusiasm.
He proved to be prophetic. None of us were ever posted to the Settlement Department. Perhaps
Broca’s report on our skills had something to do with that.
This part of our settlement training came finally to an end with the beginning of the tourist season;
as busloads of tourists wound their way up to Darjeeling and Kalimpong, we went back to our
districts. Burdwan was uncomfortably hot again, but I had only a few days there; my orders posting
me as Subdivisional Officer, Barrackpore in the 24 Parganas district were soon given to me by the
now very respectful Office Superintendent. I took my leave of the district and, finally, of my training,
at least officially. I had now been given charge of a subdivision, one of the most violent,
industrialized and ugly regions of the great district of 24 Parganas; I rejoiced in my new identity but
apprehension hovered in the periphery of my world, like a dark shadow.
 3

First Years

What did it mean, then, those first years as an administrator? Did the training that one was given, such
as it was, equip one with fine skills which one brought to bear in the managing of a violence-ridden,
ugly subdivision that was little more than a large and grotty suburb of Calcutta? Or in doing the job I
was asked to do a year later, that of the Under Secretary to the Government of West Bengal looking
after some personnel matters and protocol?
The plain fact is that, far from using the acquired skills of a trained administrator, I had rapidly to
unlearn a great deal. Managing a subdivision—administering it, governing it, call it whatever you like
—had more to do with qualities of the head and of one’s emotions, oddly enough. Schooling oneself
to think calmly in the face of a turbulent and violent mob, or in handling a matter that had the potential
of becoming an ugly political affair was something one tried to learn, to look for. No one taught that in
the National Academy, and no one told me about it in my rather lackadaisical time as Assistant
Magistrate.
Nor did those awesome skills serve when I became Under Secretary in the Home Department. I
had to learn what a file was and I was taught this by no less than the Chief Secretary, Ranjit Gupta of
the ICS, one of those educated in Britain and more pucca than any other officer I had seen. He was a
tall, very handsome man and a firm administrator; and he was also an officer who had all the time in
the world for young, inexperienced officers, and very little for others. He patiently showed me what a
file was, where the notes were written and where the correspondence was kept, and then he showed
me how files were numbered so that I could make out from the number quoted just which one was
needed.
There were a great many things I learnt from him; to think quickly, yet clearly, which he encouraged
even when I made dreadful mistakes, to try, even as a very junior officer to assess people, try to
discern what their abilities were on the basis of their work and by talking to them. My education with
him started when I was Subdivisional Officer, Barrackpore. In that capacity I was Chairman of the
governing bodies of a couple of colleges, and these were, as was usual in all these bodies, ridden
with factions and intrigue. One faction of a particular college was close to a senior functionary in
Calcutta University, and this lot had the Inspector of Colleges suddenly come down, look at various
papers and files in the college office and then prepare a report which said that the governing body
was unfit to manage the affairs of the college and had to be dissolved. A distraught Principal of the
college told me all this. I was mystified, as the Inspector of Colleges had not thought it necessary to
have a word with me, the Chairman. So, as befitted an impetuous young officer, I wrote a letter to the
Vice Chancellor pointing all this out.
The letter obviously reached the Inspector of Colleges and the next thing I knew was that the
Statesman carried a story about an ‘arrogant young SDO’ who had the temerity to write to the Vice
Chancellor himself. That story clearly caused a certain flurry in various quarters, and soon I got a call
from no less than the Chief Secretary. I was to see him the next day.
I went to Writers’ Buildings with considerable apprehension, having taken care to wear a freshly
ironed shirt and a tie. I was shown in to the Chief Secretary’s large, cool room and Ranjit Gupta
asked me to sit down.
‘Now, what’s all this about?’ he asked with a smile.
I nervously began, told about the college, the factions and the Inspector of College’s visit and
ended by telling him I felt, as Chairman of the governing body, I needed to bring these facts to the
notice of the Vice Chancellor.
‘Show me your letter,’ the Chief Secretary said.
He read it through then asked his private secretary to get the Vice Chancellor on the phone.
‘I’ve just seen the letter the SDO Barrackpore has written to you,’ he said as soon as the Vice
Chancellor came on, ‘and it’s a perfectly straightforward letter. He’s written to you as Chairman of
the governing body, not as SDO, as you can see. He’s entitled to do that, isn’t he?’
There was a lengthy reply.
‘Yes,’ Ranjit Gupta said, pleasantly, ‘I understand. The papers are always doing that sort of thing.
Why don’t you see the young man? He could be there in about half an hour. All right, I’m sending him
there now.’
‘He says the papers have got him all wrong,’ the Chief Secretary said to me, wryly. ‘He had not
thought your letter improper and so on. Go and see him and calm him down. It’s a matter of his ego,
you know.’
I got up to leave.
‘Tell me what he says,’ Ranjit Gupta said. ‘The man complained to the Governor, you know,’ he
laughed. ‘The old lady called me up yesterday and said he was very indignant. Said IAS officers think
they can do whatever they want. I’ll have to speak to her.’
I saw the Vice Chancellor who was defensive to the point of being apologetic. I, too, was careful
to be as deferential as possible. He liked that, kept me in his room for over an hour, talking about his
tribulations, asking me to function as his representative on the governing body to which I agreed, slyly
and with great meekness.
The Chief Secretary was very amused by my account of the meeting, and said I was not to let it
bother me any more. He would speak to the Governor and see that the matter was forgotten.
I went, greatly relieved, back to Barrackpore in my battered jeep and wondering how a Chief
Secretary of a state could find the time personally to resolve a small matter like this, instead of
leaving it to some minion in the Secretariat. It was the first step in my finding out how Ranjit Gupta
functioned. I realized only years later that he had called me because he knew the tension and anxiety
that would haunt a twenty-three-year-old officer being written about, for the first time in his short
career in the foremost English language paper in the state, and in terms that were not only not
flattering, but sharply critical. He was not, I was to find out, so interested in the incident, but in the
effect it would be having on me.
 I wonder if any Chief Secretary would do the same thing today. Perhaps some would, one never
knows. But the intervening decades in the civil service after that incident make me a little sceptical.
I found that Ranjit Gupta had one clear-cut principle. He had all the time in the world for young
officers; the senior ones had to wait.
‘What does Ronu mean by this?’ fumed B.B. Sarkar, also an ICS officer, and Member, Board of
Revenue, sitting in my room, which was next to the Chief Secretary’s. I was Under Secretary in the
Home Department, then, more the executive assistant to the Chief Secretary. ‘He’s talking to the DM
of 24 Parganas, you say. And he keeps me waiting!’
‘Why don’t you go back to your room, sir,’ I suggested, ‘and I’ll let you know the moment he’s
free.’
‘Certainly not,’ Sarkar snapped. ‘By the time I get here from my room he’ll probably be talking to
some other young whippersnapper. I’m waiting here.’
He was right, of course.
Another officer from whom I learned of hands-on administration, of what responsibility meant, was
J.C. Talukdar. He was a war-service recruit to the IAS, having served in the army as an officer in a
cavalry unit; he had an almost casual manner, which concealed a shrewd and razor-sharp mind. When
I was SDO in Barrackpore he was Secretary in the Department of Cooperation. Cooperatives were
then considered the revolutionary institutions that would transform the development effort, and an
indication of the overriding importance given to them was that the Chief Minister, the redoubtable Dr
B.C. Roy, handled the department himself.
The funds that were made available to the cooperative societies led, inevitably, to them becoming
small but formidable centres of political power. One of these was a cooperative society in the
Barrackpore subdivision, set up by a lady known to be very close to Dr Roy, a Mrs Das, for the
welfare of refugee women, who were taught how to operate power-looms and produce a range of
sarees. The society prospered, thanks to the work of these women and Mrs Das’ efforts, but she was a
terrible autocrat, and kept the women of the society, for whom she had built housing within the
society’s land, under stern control. Eventually they revolted, and trouble began. Instead of trying to
talk to them, Mrs Das persuaded the Chief Minister that they were evil, that they were troublemakers
who wanted to destroy the society and she wanted them to be summarily removed. The women
refused to move, so Mrs Das started building a wall sealing off the housing area from the factory.
This led to an even greater agitation, and Dr Roy sent J.C. Talukdar to find out how this could be
resolved.
Talukdar asked me to be there when he went to the cooperative society, so I presented myself, and
watched him listen to the women, all of whom wept hysterically—largely for his benefit—and told
him grim stories of Mrs Das’ attempts to keep them from their work.
‘Oh, you’ve come, have you?’ Talukdar said to me, as if we were at some social engagement. ‘I
didn’t see you because of these, er, emotional ladies,’ he pointed to them carelessly. So what d’you
think?’
‘I think sir,’ I said eagerly and breathlessly, ‘Mrs Das is a tyrant, and that wall is an example, she
has no business putting it up, not till it’s decided if these women are valid members of the
cooperative society …’
‘Hold on, hold on,’ Talukdar said, drily, ‘Slow down, young man. One thing at a time.’
He then went over all the facts, and said, finally, ‘All right, I’ll go back and let you know what’s
been decided.’ He turned to a livid Mrs Das. ‘The wall will be built only after I’ve spoken to the
Chief Minister. Please stop all work on it.’
He left, with the women showering him with praise, and a furious Mrs Das swearing she would see
how he had the work on the wall stopped.
About a couple of days later he sent me a letter. I read it quickly, and it seemed to me that he was
asking me to go ahead and see that the wall was built. I told the Subdivisional Police Officer,
informed Mrs Das, and the next day, the SDPO and I went to the society with a squad of policemen to
make sure there was no trouble when the work on the wall started.
‘Is that what Talukdar sahib really wants?’ the women asked again and again. I told them it was.
‘All right. Then we, too, will have to think of what to do,’ they said.
All of us knew what that meant. Major unrest. Political turmoil.
‘Are you sure that Mr Talukdar has asked that the wall be built?’ the SDPO asked me, as we
returned after leaving a police picket there. ‘It is so different from his whole attitude when he was
here.’
‘Here,’ I told him, giving him the letter. ‘Read it yourself.’
The SDPO read it through then looked at me rather strangely. ‘You have not read the letter
correctly,’ he said quietly. ‘Please see. He has said the opposite.’
I looked at the letter again, and, to my horror, realized he was right. What Mr Talukdar had written
was: ‘I told the Chief Minister that if he wanted major trouble he should allow Mrs Das to build the
wall, and he agreed.’ In other words, the wall was not to be built.
By then it was too late to stop the unrest. The CPI made it a major issue, citing it as another
instance of the anti-worker attitude of the government.
Playing the noble martyr, I wrote a letter to Mr Talukdar reporting my role in all this, taking the
responsibility on myself. A day or two later, I was called up by his office and asked to see him, and
to bring the whole file with me. I did that, and as soon as I went into his room, Mr Talukdar told his
PA to open my file, and take out the copy of my letter to him, as well as the original letter he had
written to me. He then dictated another letter to his PA, which said that I was to go ahead and see that
the wall was built, and that this had the approval of the Chief Minister.
The revised letter was brought to him; he signed it, giving it the same date as his original letter, and
asked me to put it in my file. He then tore up his original letter, and both my copy and his of my
martyr’s letter to him. I was aghast.
‘Sir, what have you done?’ I burst out.
‘When you get to be as old as I am,’ Talukdar said in the pleasant, almost casual manner he had,
‘you’ll develop a thick hide, like a rhinoceros. You’re still young, and vulnerable. I’ll look after my
end of this, don’t worry.’ Then his voice becoming a little harder, he said, ‘But read your letters
carefully in future.’
I was to learn that the Chief Minister was furious, and let Talukdar know, in language that was very
colourful, what he thought of Secretaries who messed up decisions that they had helped formulate.
Once, some months later, I spotted Talukdar in Writers’ Buildings where I had gone for some
meeting, and ran up to him.
‘Sir, I am really …,’ I began, but he cut me short.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘You are never ever to mention that matter to me again, or to anyone else.’
And he strode away.
I’ve not heard of anything like this happening to anyone else, nor unhappily did I ever do something
of this kind myself, not in exactly this way. But covering up I did when I was convinced a youngster
had made a genuine mistake. No specific examples come to mind except some trivial ones not worth a
mention. But what did happen once was the reverse of this—a younger IAS officer took the
responsibility on herself, in my presence, for an error by her junior colleagues.
That kind of protection of younger officers who have made a mistake, of taking the responsibility
which would certainly have damaged my prospects as an officer very badly, is something I must say I
never ever came across in my service career again. Nor was this something that I was even remotely
aware of during my training, either in the National Academy or in Burdwan district. In fact, both the
incidents I have recounted represented a host of situations that a young officer was never even told
about when being groomed for positions in the administrative hierarchy. But the point it illustrated
was underscored, and the larger, wider point that some values were indeed enshrined in the service
through the ages by an incident involving a young Deputy Secretary, an IAS officer, Anshu Vaish, of
the MP cadre who was working with me when I was Secretary, Ministry of Culture. She was looking
after relations with foreign visitors and a counterpart of mine from Uganda came to India on our
invitation. He visited a few places in Delhi and was to go to Mumbai, visit a few places there, meet
the state officers handling cultural matters and then leave. When I went to see him off at the Delhi
airport I found to my horror, just as he was leaving the terminal, that he had been given an economy-
class ticket and boarding pass. Protocol demanded that he travel by executive class but someone had
obviously made a silly mistake somewhere.
It was too late to do anything about it except to smile at him with all the warmth one could muster,
and wave him goodbye. Later in the Ministry I summoned them all and told them what I thought of
them and their carelessness. ‘Who,’ I demanded angrily, ‘was the fool who got his ticket?’ For a
while there was silence, and then, gently, Anshu said, ‘Sir, the fault was mine.’ I was astonished, and
disbelieving. Anshu would never have made such a mistake. ‘You did it?’ I asked. ‘The fault is mine,
sir,’ Anshu said steadily, ‘I was in charge of all the arrangements and so I am responsible for this
mistake. I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.’
I was at a loss for words and all of them silently left the room. It was only afterwards that I
realized Anshu had done roughly what J.C. Talukdar had decades ago when he covered up for me. It
made me feel rather small, but also grateful that there were officers like Anshu Vaish in the service.
That said, as a young officer I found that, to a very large extent, I had to put aside a good deal of
what I had been taught as a probationer; the kind of conditioning that one was given in the Academy
and in the district had little to do with facing situations such as the one involving the women’s
cooperative or the Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University. But sitting in court as a Magistrate III
Class when in Burdwan did help a little when I became SDO Barrackpore. That post meant I was
also the Subdivisional Magistrate, and as the judicial and executive functions of the state had not been
totally separated, I had necessarily a fair amount of judicial work to do.
That meant sitting in court every day, dealing with what were called the General File and Police
Papers—the General File meaning cases filed by individuals and Police Papers meaning those filed
by the police. As a rule, new cases were transferred to magistrates who did judicial work full time,
but a few cases I had to keep in my file, more for form’s sake than anything else. The first few days
with the General File and Police Papers were a bit rocky, but my bench clerk stood beside me and
told me sotto voce just what to put on each case record.
‘Seen,’ he world mutter. ‘The case is transferred to Shri N.N. Bhattacharya, Magistrate First-Class
for disposal.’
Or, ‘Accused produced by police. Perused police report. Issue [warrant of] arrest of the other
three named in the FIR.’
Or words to roughly the same effect, which I dutifully wrote into the case records pretending I was
doing it on my own.
Much as I did as Magistrate Third-Class in Burdwan.
Occasionally this would not work. The police produced an eleven-year-old boy one day, who had
stolen the tube of a bicycle wheel worth a few rupees. He had been in custody for eight months and
the police request was that he be remanded to judicial custody for another two months. I thought this
absolutely intolerable and asked the court inspector why he did not release him.
‘Because there is a case against him,’ he said.
‘If there is why don’t you prosecute him?’ I demanded.
‘We still have to locate one more witness,’ I was told.
‘I cannot accept that,’ I said. ‘He has to be released. What is the procedure?’
The wily old court inspector did not want a certain conviction slipping away from him and his
record of successful prosecutions, and said, ‘I don’t know, Your Honour,’ with an oily smile.
But, ignorant as I was, I wasn’t going to give up. ‘I want to release this boy,’ I said to the lawyers
in my courtroom, ‘How can I do it?’
‘You need laws of all kinds to deprive a person of his freedom,’ one old lawyer said to me softly,
‘but none to give it to him. Just let him go.’
I turned to the boy and said in Bengali, ‘You can go, there’s no case against you any more.’
Almost before I had finished saying that, he bolted from the room, never to be seen again. It was
one of those rare moments I treasured, and remember vividly to this day. I learned something valuable
from that old lawyer, which was never ever taught or mentioned when we were being groomed for
high office.
And for the record, over twenty years after I had joined the service, officers emphatically made the
same point, that the training was irrelevant, ‘a potpourri without focus,’ as one officer said. It really
is what happens around you, in the middle of events; the point is: are there any ways at all to
condition reactions to events? Young army officers are conditioned to think quickly and coolly under
fire, but how do you condition a person to handle a pompous Vice Chancellor one day and a group of
demented, if hysterical, women the next? Is there a larger canvas of which these are parts that are
identifiable and therefore something for which one can prepare?
Not that any of these questions occurred to me then, in those first years where I was reacting more
out of an instinct to survive than anything else. Survive as a credible IAS officer, whatever vague
notion of it I had then. I think it had to do with a continuous attempt to order affairs, events, decisions;
to do it with some determination and after trying to get all the information on the matter one could.
The alternative was to let things slide, sign the file and pass it on, and that seemed like a kind of
death, a negation of all the reasons why I joined the service.
But there were times when my attempts to order events and issues went completely wrong, and
usually because of an unfamiliarity with the world and a consequent inability to see that no two
individuals were really the same, no one was predictable, not unless you knew more about that
person than a callow young IAS officer could. One of the most embarrassing and exasperating of such
incidents was something that happened when I was Under Secretary in the Home Department, to
which post I was appointed after I had been Subdivisional Officer, Barrackpore, for a little over a
year, and the occasion was the visit to Calcutta of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands in 1963. As
Under Secretary I was the state protocol officer, reporting directly to the Chief Secretary.
We had been told by the Ministry of External Affairs that the Queen was a rather unusual
personality, not the sort of waxwork that modern monarchs are expected and tend to be. She was
impatient with elaborate protocol and rituals and determined what she would do or not do, within
limits, of course. In Calcutta, she had made it very clear that she wanted to see how the ‘real
people’—her own words, I believe—lived, and not just famous monuments and buildings. As the
Under Secretary I was asked by Ranjit Gupta to think of some areas that she could be shown.
Now Calcutta was not just teeming with slums, which of course we couldn’t show her, because she
would probably have a fit, but it also had large areas of what we called middle-class areas, such as
Ballygunge, Gariahat, Rashbehari Avenue, Southern Avenue that fronted the lakes, and places which
we considered genteel but were a little shabbier like Bhowanipore and the areas on either side of
Russa Road. All of these we, as residents of the city, knew and accepted as fairly pleasant residential
areas, even though the garbage was hardly ever removed, and the roads had large potholes and most
buildings had not been painted for decades, and were streaked and mouldy—examples of what
planners sometimes call urban blight. But even though we could not get the buildings repainted, we
could deal with the garbage and potholes, I thought, at least in a way that would fool Queen Juliana.
But a long drive through these areas left me depressed. The buildings were really shabby and
mouldy, and the dreary hoardings and cloth banners that were torn and hung between lamp posts were
limp and sodden. And I was very keen that Queen Juliana see a Calcutta that was grand and gracious,
or at least as grand and gracious as it could be in those years. And then I had a very clever idea. We
would take her on a drive through the best areas of the city, and pass them off as just an example of
what the city was—we would take her past the Maidan, then past the zoo, through the quiet and
gracious streets of Alipore that had grand mansions on either side, whisk her back down Lower
Circular Road past the Calcutta Club, cross over to Lower Circular Road, turn right into Ballygunge
Circular Road, which had some lovely old buildings on one side and the open spaces taken by the
army and the Calcutta Football and Cricket Club on the other, follow that road as it turned towards
Gariahat Road, then take a left turn down Gurusaday Road, a right turn to Camac Street, then left to
Park Street and back across the Maidan to Raj Bhavan.
I took this plan to the Chief Secretary who looked at the route for a while.
‘She’ll think that’s how Calcutta looks, sir,’ I said eagerly. ‘And she’ll think it a fine city. All we
need to do is get the Calcutta Corporation to clean the route up.’
He nodded, finally, and said, ‘Well, all right. Go ahead. But I hear she’s a pretty shrewd lady. She
won’t be fooled.’
‘It’s just a day’s visit, sir,’ I said rather smugly. ‘She’s got a dinner in the evening with the
Governor and leaves early the next morning.’
The Corporation was told to do a good scrub and clean job of the selected route, to remove all torn
cloth banners and broken hoardings on the way and repair the roads.
And finally, the royal guest arrived late in the evening, was greeted with the warmth and
graciousness characteristic of our Governor, Padmaja Naidu, and taken away to Raj Bhavan. The next
day the Queen’s convoy, escorted by police outriders drove down the selected route with the
Governor (who had been told of the little plan) kindly pointing out—I was told later—some of the
more remarkable buildings and sights.
The next day, after she had left, the Chief Secretary sent for me. I went to his room feeling rather
pleased with myself.
‘Your clever little ploy didn’t work,’ Ranjit Gupta told me.
I was astonished. ‘What happened, sir?’ I asked, ‘Did they change the route?’
‘No, they didn’t change the route,’ he said and laughed. ‘Bhaskar, she’d obviously done her
homework for this visit. I happened to be talking to her at the Governor’s dinner, and asked her what
she thought of the city after her trip through it. She looked at me and said, “Oh those poor, poor
people! What terrible conditions they live in! Such misery! But we will be happy to do all we can to
help, if that is what your government would like.” You can imagine I was completely astounded. I
mean, she was talking about the best areas of the city. And then the old lady took me to one side and
said, “I have a little guidebook, you see. But I enjoyed the drive very much, very much. So
instructive.” She had a good laugh then. A really good laugh. So you see, young fellow, it was she
who took you, and all of us, for a ride.’
I left his room not just dejected, but furious. That clever old bag, I thought; never let on that she
knew what we were doing. But then the foolishness of my plan became apparent. I had assumed a
degree of ignorance in Queen Juliana that I had no business to; I had thought in stereotypes and on
assumptions that were juvenile. It made me squirm with embarrassment, once the rage had died down.
It was fairly frequent in those early years—trying to get a situation to fit into the comfort of known
profiles and outlines, assuming reactions based on nothing more than a cocktail of responses, some
only half-realized or thought out, from echoes coming in from what one had read, been told, and
sought from the darkness of assumptions that had been shaped by a range of factors from parental
comments to dimly perceived moral attitudes from childhood years in school taught by Jesuits, and the
much less intense but no less insidious attitudes absorbed in one’s adolescence.
 Another such incident had occurred when I was SDO, Barrackpore, a bizarre incident that was, the
first that took me totally by surprise and left me mortified. One lazy, warm Sunday in winter, under a
gentle sun, my brother, who was visiting from Nagpur, and I put a couple of bottles of beer in a bucket
of water and ice—I had no refrigerator—and sat in the shade of an old tree in the spacious compound
of the residence of the Subdivisional Officer, Barrackpore. The great river Hooghly flowed past the
compound, and sometimes boats went by under sail, or rowed by sweaty men. Both of us slipped into
a time of tranquillity when time seemed to slow down; and then I was told that someone wanted to see
me.
My irritation was the greater because I was told he insisted on seeing me, and would not take no
for an answer. I went up to the driveway and saw a calm old Sikh standing there. He told me he was
going to be killed by his cousin, and wanted to give me the name and whereabouts of the killer. I first
thought it was the beer, but I’d barely had a sip when the man arrived so it wasn’t that, obviously. I
told him he had best go to the police station if he felt threatened by anyone.
‘You are mistaken,’ he said calmly. ‘I will be killed and I do not want protection. I want to give
you his name and address, here and in Punjab, so that you can get him after he has killed me.’
On the face of it the story sounded like a fairy tale, but something about the man—his calmness and
very apparently rational demeanour—made me call up the Subdivisional Police Officer and ask him
to provide the man with police protection.
‘It will not help,’ the elderly Sikh said.
‘Well, an armed policeman can be a deterrent,’ I told him.
The SDPO was very reluctant to provide an armed guard. ‘He should go to the police station,’ he
said to me.
‘He’s come to the Subdivisional Magistrate,’ I told him firmly. ‘I have noted his statement. He
knows what he’s doing. I’m sending him to you. Hear him out, and provide him with a guard.’
The armed guard was provided, the SDPO told me a while later, but it was clear he was humouring
a young, inexperienced officer.
The next day, I was in court when the SDPO came to see me, looking rather disturbed.
‘The Sikh man has been killed,’ he said, ‘Another Sikh came up to his room and in full view of the
guard pulled out a revolver and shot him. Then he handed over the weapon to the guard.’
‘Where is he now?’ I asked.
‘In the police station,’ the SDPO said. ‘He says he has no desire to deny having killed the man who
was, he says, his cousin.’
The fact that the killer could go up to the victim in front of the police guard told me just what kind
of guard had been provided but my initial anger ebbed quickly as it was obvious that such a
seemingly ridiculous story would warrant that kind of reaction from the SDPO.
‘I was wrong in treating the matter so lightly,’ he admitted to me. ‘You had clearly read the
situation more accurately than I did.’
I said nothing. But I did feel, then, that for once my inexperience had actually been an advantage. I
looked at the visibly uncomfortable SDPO who had seen many more years of service than I had, being
an officer in the West Bengal Police Service, whose members had to put in several years at junior
levels before they were made SDPOs, unlike officers of the Indian Police Service, whose very first
posting was as SDPO, as mine was as SDO. Those years had bred some standard reactions,
obviously, and I wondered with some apprehension if I would also become so conditioned as the
years passed.
Some weeks later I faced another, far uglier, situation. The workers of a jute mill in Titagarh, an
area slightly to the south of Barrackpore town, had been restive for some time over the amount of the
Puja bonus being given to them. There had been angry demonstrations, fuelled by the CPI-controlled
trade union. Finally, a few days on, they came out on the main road, the Barrackpore Trunk Road,
which they blocked.
Appeals to them to let the traffic move were ignored; slogans, which were aggressive and
menacing, blared over loudspeakers. And on either side of the major arterial road traffic piled up for
miles. The SDPO reported the developments and advised that we go to the spot at once, which we
did.
Our arrival was greeted with even more strident, hysterical slogans, not only about the workers’
demands but against the police. Clearly the angry crowd was not going to listen to any reasoned
requests to lift the blockade. Within minutes stones began to arch overhead; the police force used
their wicker and cane shields to ward them off.
‘It is essential to disperse them with a lathi charge,’ the SDPO told me. ‘Do I have your
permission?’
That was one of those crucial moments I had faced till then. We had been told about the use of
minimum force, and the warnings required to be given before force was used; but this was the very
first time I was actually up against a situation where the police were asking me, the Subdivisional
Magistrate, to permit them to use force—to beat people.
I must confess I hesitated for a little while, but then it was clear that violence was in the air, and
would grow fast. There was not much time. I told the SDPO to go ahead, but after the crowd had been
given the necessary warning. The warning was given; the result was the shower of stones and bricks
became thicker and more dangerous. Then some policemen went a little ahead and fired teargas
shells. The crowd retreated a bit but the shouting increased, and they were surging back when the
police force ran towards them, lathis raised, and laid about them with considerable fierceness.
In a few minutes they had dispersed the mob except for one or two who turned back to throw
stones. They brought in some of the crowd, now fearful and pleading to be spared. They were not, I
regret to say; I pretended not to notice that one or two were pushed about before they were all taken
away in a van. The local officer in charge of the police station, the OC, as he is known in the state,
then took some men and got the traffic moving. The hundreds of trucks, buses, cars and other vehicles
began to move slowly along the road. I went back to my office and waited for the SDPO’s formal
report which I had to forward with my own report to the District Magistrate.
The feeling of a kind of emptiness is something I still remember. And I remember with what
vividness I recollected my life of not so long ago, in college, reading Marlowe and Eliot, and the
quiet residential court around which our rooms were. It seemed to me that I had moved irrevocably
away from it, and it filled me with a sadness I couldn’t understand. After all, the thing had to be done,
and was done. I knew that there, on the dusty road with grimy factory buildings hazy on either side, I
had no alternative to what I had ordered; but the sadness stayed for longer than I thought it would. I
recalled it occasionally in later years and never have forgotten it.

Just as I was beginning to find my work reasonably familiar in Barrackpore, and had moved away—
not fully, but to a significant extent—from being the fumbling, wide-eyed novice, listening furtively to
his bench clerk before passing a judicial order, hesitant and nervous in acrimonious meetings of
managing committees of schools and colleges of which he had been made Chairman, to an officer
more sure of himself, able to formulate a judicial order, able to take control of turbulent meetings
with a practised peremptoriness, able, in other words, to manage the subdivision with a degree of
firmness and confidence, I was moved to Writers’ Buildings as Under Secretary.
And I had hardly settled in as Under Secretary, having spent just about a year getting used to the
marvels and mysteries of the Secretariat, when I was sent to Darjeeling as Additional Deputy
Commissioner. I know that sounds very like chief assistant to the assistant chief but it was a little
more substantial as an assignment. Deputy commissioners were in fact the district magistrates, and
today that is what they are. The old designation belonged to a century or more ago, when some newly
taken-over areas were given to the charge of commissioners who decided which of the laws then in
force they would extend to these territories, or whether they would rule them as they saw fit. They had
large tracts—districts—for each of which they had a deputy, hence the name; but as the years passed,
and all these areas came under the laws then in force, and consequently under the direct rule of the
Governor through his pro-consuls in the Secretariat, the commissioners faded away, becoming little
more than inspecting officers; the deputy commissioners, who were also district magistrates under all
the rules in force, reported directly to the government in Calcutta, as did other district magistrates.
So I was actually an Additional District Magistrate, and was directly looking after all matters
relating to land and land revenue, apart from some other work which I shall mention a little later.
Away from the files and notes of the secretariat I was in an environment with which I was more
familiar—district administration, even if it was only a part of the work of a district officer.
Memories of the hustle and bustle of the Collectorate in Burdwan faded away when I entered the
old wooden double-storeyed house that was the Collectorate—or the DC’s office as it was known—
in Darjeeling. There were tall fir trees along one side, and not much of a garden, but some space that
fell away into the valley below the town. The building itself had narrow wooden corridors that
opened into rooms with shabby carpets and the usual, ugly government desks and chairs. But the
building and the offices it housed were not really relevant to me then.
This was a district where I spent most of my time touring, and a good deal of that was to the then-
growing town of Siliguri in the plains of the district. Not because I liked the place; it was a straggling
set of wooden houses with aluminium or CI sheet roofs, and among them there were a few crudely
built brick-and-mortar and cement concrete multistoreyed structures. The roads were narrow, with
noisome drains beside them carrying black, viscous filth, and the markets were raucous, utterly
disorganized warrens of rows of vegetable-and fruit vendors and sellers of other household
necessities and a bewildering variety of odd things like plastic dolls, rubber sheets, hairpins, bangles,
spectacle cases, rubber slippers of the kind commonly called hawai chappals, and stuff like that.
When it rained, which it did frequently, the roads were masses of mud and smelly water through
which one grimly waded in rubber boots, with sodden umbrellas. Most roads were unpaved, though
some had gravel layers that kept the slush out.
I had to go to this dank, crowded town often, for two reasons. One was because I had been
appointed Director of the Siliguri Planning Organization, set up with generous help from the Ford
Foundation to prepare an urban development plan for the town, and the other was because, by being
Additional Deputy Commissioner, I was directly in charge of the civil defence of the town. Those
were the days when relations with Pakistan were positively unfriendly, even hostile, and what is now
Bangladesh was East Pakistan. The border was just thirty kilometres from Siliguri.
Siliguri was strategically vitally important, despite its ugliness and its filth. All the tea from the
Darjeeling tea gardens, from the Dooars, and from the whole of Assam had to pass through this town
to head south to Calcutta. Apart from the tea, literally everything else that had to go up to the states in
the north-east of India had to pass through Siliguri—whether it was by road or by rail. The defence
forces in the north and east had to use Siliguri to move men and materials; relatively little of what
was needed could be flown there, because of the unusual nature of the geography of the place.
Siliguri was located in an area of India where, to the west, the Nepal border came to within
twenty-five to thirty kilometres of the town; and on the south-east was the very hostile East Pakistan,
about as close. To the north were the towering Himalayas. And all of the north-east lay beyond this
narrow strip of land. If that were cut off, the whole of the north-east would be isolated from India and
be accessible only by a narrow air corridor that was tricky to negotiate at the best of times owing to
the turbulence caused by the presence of the Himalayas.
As relations with Pakistan became more and more bitter, a Civil Defence Organization was set up
for the town, perceived, naturally, as a potential target, as it had, next to it, the airfield of Bagdogra,
an air force base, but used by civilian aircraft as well. Hence the requirement to set up a Civil
Defence Organization for the town, which was, frankly, a pathetic affair; the whole town, or at least
ninety per cent of it, was made of wood, and we had two fire engines which had to tow water carriers
as the town had no water supply except tube wells. The shallow but turbulent river Mahananda
flowed through the town but was virtually inaccessible as the banks were packed with huts, in some
areas like huge nests of ants. Access to these was through lanes usually three feet wide, so, short of
laying hosepipes from the river to the fire engines, the river provided little hope of being a source of
water in case of a direct attack on the town.
But the Civil Defence Organization had to be set up, and that took me to Siliguri very often, to
argue and plead for telephones, to have the Public Works Department install air-raid warning sirens
and, above all, to recruit volunteers who would work as civil defence wardens and workers when
needed. To help me do this I had a very frightened SDO, backed by staff who were even more
frightened than him. My only source of some help was the local police headed by a young SDPO who
was brisk and energetic and on whom I began to depend for almost everything that needed to be done.
While I had been at Barrackpore I had been sent on a training course on civil defence, then kept
rather quiet, probably because it would have looked as if we were preparing for war. It was,
consequently, called something rather elaborate and clumsy—civil emergency, or something like that,
and it was taught at a place in Nagpur called the Institute of Civil Emergency. I found it difficult to
believe that this silly cover name would fool anyone but if the government was fooled by it that was
all that mattered, I suppose.
While I retained some of the procedures and systems we were taught during the training, the
introduction to the course is something I find difficult to forget. The commandant was a jolly, smiling
Sikh army officer who told us benignly that we were actually going to be trained in civil defence, the
process by which one copes with air raids in times of war. Then he proceeded with lesson one.
‘What,’ he asked us all cheerfully, ‘is an exployon?’ (He meant an explosion, but then this is a
word many from the north of the country have problems with; the sound ‘zh’ defeats them.)
There was a terrific bang, bigger than the biggest Diwali cracker or ‘bomb’ I’ve ever heard. All of
us were startled, even stunned.
The commandant smiled even more broadly. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is an exployon.’
He then proceeded to tell us, quite sensibly, that if we were to deal with air raids we had to get
used to exployons. Fortunately, he seemed to think that one exployon was enough to familiarize us
with what they were, so we had no more bangs during our training.
Setting up a civil defence system wasn’t therefore something about which I was totally ignorant,
something rather unusual for IAS officers then, who came to any job outside the standard law and
order–revenue collection work we were trained in with a blissful ignorance that was touching in its
totality. But it did not therefore make the civil defence part of the job any more distasteful than it
always was to me.
On the other hand the other charge I had been given, that of Director of the Siliguri Planning
Organization (SPO), was much more interesting and one of which I, in proper IAS tradition, knew
nothing at all. I knew that the Ford Foundation was helping in the preparation of some kind of urban
development plan, but that was about it. My ignorance was taken in hand by a kindly and wise chief
of urban planning from the Ford Foundation called Leo, whose surname I sadly cannot remember. He
was of Finnish origin, and had taken American citizenship only a few years before he came out to
India. Leo introduced me to what was to me, then, the fascinating world of town planning, as it was
then called; he told me of the importance of determining what people wanted and needed and of
seeking to build plans that addressed these needs and wants. Concepts—since outdated, I understand
—like the Central Business District, of neighbourhood markets and schools were ideas that seemed
wonderful at that time; I had visions of a clean, new and attractive Siliguri planned by me, built by
me, (with, of course, some help from Leo and his colleagues).
Thus it was that I spent much time in the grotty lanes and shanty towns of Siliguri, either on
something to do with the SPO, as one came to call it, or with that albatross I had hung round my neck,
the civil defence system. Oddly enough, it was the civil defence system that came up quickly, though
its efficacy remained to be tested. This was owing to the fact that I was the additional DC, and was
myself getting offices set up, telephone lines put in, the Civil Defence ‘depot’ organized, and the
control room, which I located in the office of the frightened SDO. Since volunteers to be Civil
Defence wardens were not very many, I made a number ‘volunteer’—again, being additional D.C.
helped. I informed the Home Department that two fire engines were hopelessly inadequate, and,
inevitably, received no response. But I did manage to reorganize the small, shabby sub-divisional
hospital to provide for the treatment of the wounded, should the system need to be activated.
The preparation of the urban development plan was a much more complex and slower process.
Leo, who was located in Calcutta, but came to Siliguri very frequently, wanted studies to be made on
traffic ‘desire lines’ as he called them, which involved measuring the flow of traffic on main and
local roads in different directions and different times. Eventually he felt that a whole-time town
planner was needed, and a young American was chosen. But he had to have a place to live, and
Siliguri, which consisted, as I said, mainly of wooden shacks, had little to offer to an American.
Consequently a team of ‘housekeeping’ staff from the Ford Foundation came in and in a week had
located a pleasant apartment in a quiet area on the Sevoke Road, that led into the forests around the
foothills and onwards to Kalimpong and the then independent country of Sikkim. What followed may
not have been shock and awe, but startling and awe-inspiring it certainly was. The power supply to
the apartment was augmented considerably; air conditioners—machines one had seen in the offices of
some of the more exalted in Writers’ Buildings—were brought in and put into every room.
Refrigerators, freezers (which I had never seen before) were put into a completely renovated kitchen,
furniture brought from Calcutta, and a brand new Land Rover. I realized then that Americans never
lived in a country; they transformed a bit of that country into America, and went to work in that
country as we would visit a game sanctuary.
Leo was not cast in that mould, though; he would come to Siliguri and spend an entire day in a
cycle rickshaw going from one para (locality) to another, talking to roadside vendors and people
having cups of tea, and would come back to the office—which was not yet a part of America—with
papers and notes that he proceeded to put away or work on.
One Friday in December, after he and I had been working on alternate locations for the Central
Business District—which meant he was working on it and I was watching, open-mouthed—I asked
him if he would come up to Darjeeling and spend the night there, rather than in the not-too-
comfortable Zila Parishad guest house he stayed in. He gladly agreed, and we went up into the intense
cold and fog of Darjeeling in winter. I had a lovely house, Killarney Lodge, as additional DC, an old
but well-kept bungalow with bay windows, through which the gentle sunlight streamed in during the
day.
We arrived, though, late in the evening, when it was dark and cold, with an icy wind blowing. In
the drawing room I tried lighting a fire, but it wouldn’t draw, and smoke filled the room. Eyes
streaming I tried to apologize to Leo, but he merely said, ‘Let me do it,’ and knelt before the
fireplace. I’m not sure what he did with the logs—which I had thought were damp and therefore
would not light—but he got the fire going, and we had a blaze that soon warmed the room, as Leo
opened the windows and let the smoke out.
As we sat before the fire, Leo said, rather sadly, ‘The English have never learned to make
fireplaces. All these do,’—he pointed at the fire—‘is warm the crows.’
‘But the room is warm enough,’ I told him.
 Leo laughed. ‘You haven’t seen real cold, my friend. In my country—I mean, in Finland—it gets
really cold, so we have had to make fireplaces that give us as much warmth as possible.’
I asked him what he meant and he pointed to the wall into which the fireplace had been placed.
‘We make that wall of stone,’ he said, ‘and in it the flue goes to one side and to the other and so on
till it reaches the roof. All that comes out from the chimney has very little warmth, very little.
Whereas inside, my friend, the whole wall is warm, the stone gives heat to the whole room for a long
time.’
‘So the crows get no warmth at all,’ I said.
Leo looked at me for a while, I remember, then took the pipe from his mouth and laughed out loud.
‘No, the crows get little warmth,’ he said, ‘but consider—when you light this fire, who do you want
to heat, hey? And don’t worry about the crows. They know how to take care of themselves.’
I soon got my first real experience of urban planning from Leo. A few weeks later I was called by
M.G. Kutty, one of the finest IAS officers in the state who had at a young age decided that town
planning was the field he was going to specialize in. He was then a Deputy Secretary in the Town and
Country Planning Department of the Government (the T&CP Department as it was called), but
everyone knew who ran it. Kutty did. He told me very shortly that I had been fooling about with the
Development Plan for Siliguri and it had to be finished right away.
‘I can’t, Kutty,’ I told him.
‘Why not?’ he demanded peremptorily.
I told him. The sleek young town planner sent by the Ford Foundation, the one for whom that
luxurious (to me, anyway) apartment in Siliguri had been set up by a fleet of housekeeping staff from
Calcutta, had taken up a number of complex and, what seemed to me to be, unnecessary studies. He
told me firmly, this young planner, that till he had those studies in hand there could be no
Development Plan. Leo was in Siliguri and I told him of my predicament.
‘Come with me,’ he said, and took me to the large, very untidy room he used. He cleared a desk,
set down a large outline map of Siliguri and its surrounding areas on it and, pipe clenched between
his teeth, he picked up some marker pens and drew bold lines on the map in different colours.
‘There you are,’ he told me.
‘What’s this supposed to be?’ I asked him.
‘Not supposed to be, my friend,’ Leo said in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘It is your Development Plan.’
As I stared at him he explained as to a small child, ‘You see, this is the Central Business District,
here are the residential areas, these are markets and these are schools and educational institutions,
here you see the transportation centre, with bypasses from the national highways leading to it …’
‘What about the studies? The analyses of traffic movements, densities of population and …’
Leo said, ‘Ah yes. Those studies. Where do they finally end up, my friend? In your head, or they
just sit there in those files and reports. And if they are in your head, then this is your Development
Plan.’
And so it was. That sketch became, in a more distinguished printed version, embellished with
statistics and a very convincing report drafted largely by Kutty, with me putting in the odd sentence,
the Interim Development Plan for Siliguri.
 The Plan was presented to the Minister, to the Cabinet and accepted for implementation. The SPO
was ordered to prepare detailed development plans and cost estimates. But as all this got under way
there were other developments in the state, changes of a very major kind, one of which was the
decision to limit the activities of the Ford Foundation. The sleek young planner disappeared, his
elegant apartment was given up, many other people from the SPO office went back to the offices they
had come from—the SDO’s office, the offices of various executive engineers and so on—and the
SPO shrank to a small rather marginalized office busy doing very little. Oh yes, I, too, moved on, as I
will relate in good time. But the Interim Development Plan remained, a document that I could never
look at without a slight, sly amount of merriment. Perhaps that was how they ordered things in high
places, I thought.
As I said, events of a momentous kind were occurring, and change was everywhere. Relations with
Pakistan came to flash point, and then exploded into war in 1965. This meant the full activation of the
civil defence system in Siliguri, to which wretched town I moved from Darjeeling. There was tension
as we tried out our very basic systems on one or two occasions and then there was nothing to do but
wait.
Then, two weeks into the war, the Pakistan Air Force attacked Bagdogra. I had come to the Zila
Parishad guest house, a wooden structure on stilts that was my temporary home, when I saw a flash of
silver up against the misty blue of the mountains across from Bagdogra. It was clearly a plane turning
steeply, and I thought it was another Indian Air Force plane landing. But as it sank below my line of
vision there were dull explosions and a huge cloud of black smoke rose from the direction of the
airfield.
The air-raid sirens were wailing when I jumped into my jeep and raced towards Bagdogra, and as
soon as I got there A.P. Mukherjee, Superintendent of Police of Darjeeling district, also arrived. The
gates to the airfield were shut, and sentries made it clear no one was to enter. The SP spoke to the
commanding officer of the air base who told him it was a sneak attack by two Pakistan Air Force
Sabre jets, and they had hit a Vampire fighter of the IAF which was about to take off, and also a
transport aircraft parked nearby. The number of casualties was not high but tragically significant; the
new commanding officer of the base had just arrived and was taking off with one of the pilots on his
first reconnaissance of the area, and, as the Vampire fighter in which he was preparing to take off
turned on to the runway it was struck by rockets from a PAF Sabre coming in from behind it, and
exploded. Both the commanding officer and the pilot were killed. Besides, an airman who was
cleaning the transport aircraft parked nearby was also killed as that aircraft, too, caught fire as bits of
the burning Vampire fell on it.
Both Sabre jets of the PAF seemed to have got away, though the IAF claimed that anti-aircraft fire
had hit one of them as they saw dark smoke trailing behind one as both cleared the border to the PAF
base in Rangpur.
Meanwhile the SP and I raced back to Siliguri, now our major area of concern. There was sure to
have been panic and hysteria, and we were not sure if the PAF planes would try a second attack,
perhaps to cut communications to the north-east. But to my surprise there was very little panic; there
was some apprehension, true, and we were surrounded as soon as we got down at the Civil Defence
control room by staff and the citizenry wanting to know what happened. We told them, and said the
IAF were keeping a very close watch and no second attack from the PAF would be possible. That
pacified them, and they left, a little fearful, but setting about their daily business fairly soon. Perhaps
it was because Siliguri was used to calamities; the Mahananda had been known to rise and inundate
half the town inside two hours, as mountain streams cascading down steep valleys to the plains below
often do. They had had landslides block the routes to Darjeeling and Kalimpong for days. The air raid
was another calamity and they took it in with the stoicism they had developed over the years.
One isn’t sure whether the IAF attacked Rangpur thereafter, but the PAF never came back again,
and, in any case, a few days later hostilities ended. The civil defence system was asked to stand
down, and I was able, after many weeks, to go back to the cool and tranquil mountains, to Killarney
Lodge.
But not for long. The Chief Secretary called me up a few days later and asked me if I’d like to go to
Delhi, to be Special Assistant to the new Information and Broadcasting Minister, Mrs Indira Gandhi. I
didn’t think about the options for too long. Darjeeling was beautiful, true, and the work light—except
for the two additional charges I mentioned—but I was excited at being able to work in the
Government of India and agreed. I left, however, with some regret.
Though my work as Additional DC in Darjeeling was light, even dull, what I treasure about my
brief stay there was the friendship and the affection that I got from the DC, Monomoy Bhattacharyya.
He was some six years my senior, had studied in St. Stephen’s College, and never ever made me feel
that I was his subordinate. In fact, we soon became good friends, spending long, cheerful evenings
together, and visiting areas in that lovely district. Our conversation was often ribald, and we traded
gossip but never anything malicious or hurtful.
He helped get me the lovely Killarney Lodge as the Additional DC’s residence, and went out of his
way to do it. He gave me charge of departments of the Collectorate that were traditionally always
with the DC, and having been not only a Settlement Officer but Director, Land Records and Surveys,
the head of the land settlement authority in the state, he knew the revenue setup of the district far better
than I did, even though it was my direct responsibility. Often I marched into his room with papers
relating to a tea lease which had me all confused, and he would explain the issues to me with a clarity
I used to envy. My move to Delhi was, therefore, tinged with a little sadness, that I would no longer
have the cheerful good-humoured friendship that we shared, even though we would, I was certain,
meet occasionally, as we, in fact, did. But that is another story.
 4

Delhi: The First Deputation

‘She says you’re much too young,’ A.N. Jha said to me. ‘But I told her that you had a wise head on
those young shoulders.’ He laughed uproariously. He was now the Secretary, Ministry of Information
and Broadcasting, having been posted out of the National Academy of Administration soon after we
left, and had served as Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh before coming to Delhi and to this post. In
fact, it was he who had persuaded Mrs Indira Gandhi to take me on as her Special Assistant.
I had come hesitantly to his room, summoned to see him before I went to see the Minister.
‘Remember, be absolutely straight with her. Don’t beat about the bush, or think of diplomatic
niceties. Go on, then, present yourself.’
I went to the Minister’s room to find it full of officers. I sat down at the back, trying to look
unobtrusive. Clearly I wasn’t. The Minister spotted me at once.
‘When did you come?’ she asked.
‘I … yesterday, ma’am,’ I said.
‘Have they given you a place to stay?’ she asked.
Two officers—joint secretaries, I later discovered—promptly said, almost in unison, ‘Yes, yes,
ma’am, we have already asked for a flat for him.’
‘Have they given you a flat yet?’ she asked, as if they hadn’t spoken.
‘I … er, I …,’ I said, wondering how to tell her I was staying with my in-laws and didn’t need a
flat.
‘We are arranging it, madam,’ came the eager contrapuntal response from the two joint secretaries.
‘Let me know if you want anything,’ she said kindly and turned to the business being discussed.
After the meeting she asked me to stay behind. ‘I would like you first to get to know the units of the
Ministry,’ she said. ‘That’s essential. Start with the Films Division. You’ll get a good idea of the kind
of work the Ministry does through it.’
So off I went to Bombay, where the Films Division was located, for a ten-day sojourn that was one
of the happiest I have had in the thirty-odd years I spent in the service. Bombay was still a gracious,
bustling city, the streets were clean and well-kept, the traffic considerable but not the nightmare it is
today. I spent the days in the tree-shaded spacious complex of the Films Division, where I met Jean
Bhownagary, a gifted documentary film-maker whose work helped, I was to realize, give the Films
Division a new vitality. I spent the evenings with Ravi Dayal, one of the two very dear friends I had
from my days in St. Stephen’s. Ravi had come back to India, having taken a degree in history from
Oxford where he went after completing his post-graduate studies in Delhi, and joined the Oxford
University Press. His lovely, airy flat in Marine Lines through which the breeze blew gently in the
evenings was on the first floor of an old Bombay bungalow set in a sizeable compound, and in the
evenings the friends who gathered there were among the most stimulating, intelligent and interesting
persons I had met—writers, scholars, poets, theatre people, others who made films and yet others
whose occupations I never discovered but who were fun to be with nonetheless. Ravi moved among
them, a gentle and innately tranquil person, whose gentleness concealed a steely refusal to
compromise with the mediocre or the second-rate, be it writing or art or music.
I revelled in these evenings, but chiefly because I was able to spend time with Ravi, and we
became undergraduates again, except that we were perhaps a little wiser in the ways of the world,
certainly more confident. We went to concerts and plays, or just walked along Marine Drive, or
drove to Worli and Bandra, talking the hours away. Every evening, when I came back from the Films
Division to my great-uncle’s apartment on Warden Road, I would wait for that familiar, piercing
whistle, and there on the pavement Ravi would be, waving imperiously to me to come down.
About a week or so into this idyll came the news of the death of the Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur
Shastri, and, within days, Mrs Indira Gandhi was installed as Prime Minister. I had no idea whether
the new Minister of Information and Broadcasting would require my services, and decided to hurry
back to Delhi. I told Ravi I was leaving and he agreed I should. Typically, he said, ‘You don’t know,
the new guy might kick you out, and then you just come back here.’ It was the end of the idyll, and
though we were light-hearted about my fate neither of us was to know that it would never be repeated.
Ravi was partly right—the new Minister, Raj Bahadur, was civil enough, but made it clear he had
no need for an IAS officer on his personal staff. But though Mrs Gandhi had decided I was not
someone she needed in the Prime Minister’s Secretariat (as it was called then) she had asked the new
Minister to see that I was given a regular assignment in the Ministry. And thus my acquaintance with
the bureaucracy in Delhi began.
I was designated Under Secretary (Censorship) which meant I had to look after work relating to the
Central Board of Film Censors, and to the Films Division and the film industry in general. I was put
in a room that I had all to myself, which would normally have been a boon in the very overcrowded
North Block where the Ministry was located then. But it was no boon; it was, from April to
September, no different from a furnace, being on the third floor, a floor where the rooms were like
garrets, with low roofs and small windows. The heat enveloped me and everything in the room—my
desk, which was glass-topped like most desks in the Secretariat, was too hot to touch, and the walls
radiated heat as if they were built-in radiators. In one corner I had a ghara, an earthen pot that
contained drinking water, and the water in it was the only thing in the room that was cool. I had been
shown the room by a disdainful office peon, who informed me that even though he was detailed to
work with me that only meant he would bring in and take away files from my table. As a concession,
which he was at pains to make clear, he would fill my ghara with water every morning.
I had been given the services of a typist by the generous Ministry whom I shared with two other
Under Secretaries; this meant I never got to see the gentleman at all. But I soon got used to writing
notes in hand, and ensuring that they were legible enough to read.
In the heat of the summer months I was left severely alone. I got my quota of files in the morning, or
till it became too hot for the peon to come to my room, and as the searing afternoons gave way to the
onset of an oppressively hot evening, he came in to take the files away. My isolation was so complete
that I often wondered whether, if I just left the office and went away, I would be missed; I concluded I
would not be, not till a file on my table was needed.
Through the heat and isolation, though, I began, slowly, to learn the procedures, and the jargon. I
was able to decipher the encrypted orders in the margin—‘Put up pl’, ‘At once’, ‘Pl examine’, ‘With
pps’—and the jargon used in notes: ‘It has been pointed out at X on p12 ante that a reference to FA is
to be made in such cases as per orders from JS(V).’ and ‘It may be seen that such requests have been
made earlier vide flags X, Y and Z, and these were sent in the first instance to the CBFC for their
views in terms of Section 6 read with the proviso to Section 10(b) of the Act. It is not understood
why the practice has not been followed in this case.’ Pretty soon I was quite adept at using jargon,
and encrypted orders to section officers, and, in the blazing heat of summer, amused myself with
occasionally writing notes that I was satisfied would confuse the Deputy Secretary to whom I sent
them and make him either keep the files on his table or mark them to some other officer. (A favourite
ploy: when in doubt, one marked a file on to someone who was at times not concerned at all, with the
note ‘DS(X) may pl see first and offer comments.’)
But the most memorable, and not very pleasant, aspect of working in Delhi was something that I
was only slightly conscious of in the State Government; the close and warm bonds that existed
between IAS officers there simply did not exist in the cold corridors of Delhi. In Darjeeling,
Monomoy Bhattacharyya was the Deputy Commissioner and I was his number two, but he never ever
made me feel I was anything other than a close friend. We spent practically every evening together,
toured together, and shared many happy moments. With the Commissioner of the division—the
irrepressible Ivan Surita who had been posted as Commissioner, Jalpaiguri Division, but located
himself in Siliguri, which he called the ‘cockpit of North Bengal’—even though relations were a little
more formal, there was much warmth and conviviality, and he made work look like a great picnic we
were all having. In fact, I don’t recall his doing any of the dull but necessary inspections
commissioners were supposed to make; he left that to his subordinates and was usually off to Bhutan
or Sikkim, when he wasn’t roistering in Darjeeling. He was a personal friend of the Chogyal, or King,
of Sikkim, and of the Prime Minister of Bhutan, who actually wielded total authority in that remote
mountain kingdom. We saw little of him, but that little was memorable—we usually met him in the
Planters’ Club, where he treated us to pink gins and elegant lunches, and brushed aside any work-
related issues that Monomoy or I tried to bring up.
After all that, the icy and very hierarchical atmosphere in Delhi was something that I found
distasteful and depressing. Someone once had a dinner to which I was invited, why I don’t know and
it doesn’t matter. I went there, expecting to meet some other IAS officers, and I did. One of them
spoke to me with cold indifference for some time, as I eagerly told him that I had just come from West
Bengal.
‘West Bengal,’ he said in a bored tone. ‘A useless state.’
‘Which state are you from?’ I asked. Our references were, it must be understood, to our ‘cadres’,
not to the communities we belonged to.
‘UP,’ he said and then added, ‘I’m Deputy Secretary Commerce. And which Ministry are you in?’
‘Information and Broadcasting,’ I replied. ‘I’m an Under Secretary and Special …’
 He cut me short. ‘An Under Secretary,’ he said, contemptuously, and turned on his heel and walked
away.
I was not just depressed but beginning to feel quite resentful when I met another Under Secretary,
T.P. Issar, an IAS officer from the Karnataka cadre. He came up to me, introduced himself, and said,
‘Well, you’ve found out haven’t you?’
‘Found out what?’ I asked him.
‘That Under Secretaries are the dogsbodies of the Government,’ he said with a rueful grin.
I heartily agreed, and we both got on very well, two young officers taking refuge from the grand
and oppressive ‘seniors’ who seemed to be everywhere.
There were brighter moments. The brilliant documentary film-maker S. Sukhdev used to come in,
and he didn’t seem to mind the heat. He would lounge about and tell me lurid stories of the film
world. We would talk about the utility of making documentaries, who saw them, if they made any
difference, and a host of other subjects. He became the centre of a bit of a crisis once, which meant
much noting on files and letters drafted, but in the end nothing came of it. It had to do with a film that
he had been commissioned to make by the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC), an
earnest but, at the time, almost moribund body which occasionally prepared a report or a paper on the
promotion of khadi and other subjects. In a rare display of energy they had asked for a documentary to
be made on the excellent khadi being prepared by the prisoners in Banaras Central Jail, and the Films
Division had commissioned Sukhdev to make it.
Sukhdev visited the jail and, as he told me later, he was overwhelmed by the experience. What
came out of this and his other visits to the jail resulted in a brilliant documentary After the Eclipse,
which depicted the life of a prisoner, his isolation from his family, the unending torment of not
knowing what was happening to them, the hostile environment in the jail, the growth of resignation,
and a degree of fortitude, the will to survive. One of the means of this development was his
involvement with the making of khadi with other prisoners. Khadi, then, came in incidentally, though
it did come in. But what was central was the prisoner, not khadi.
When the KVIC people saw it they were appalled, and then furious. The head—some minor
political creature—saw the Minister and delivered a ringing speech on the way the Ministry had
wasted the KVIC’s precious funds, and eventually the matter trickled down to me, and to the Films
Division. Sukhdev was totally unrepentant, and came and told me so. I told him the Minister was
distressed, the Deputy Secretary was distressed and the Joint Secretary was distressed, and the
Secretary was distressed; what was I to say, I asked him.
I remember he smiled beatifically, the beatitude the result of large quantities of beer, I had no
doubt, and said, ‘Write whatever you like. You are a part of the sarkar—write just what you like.’
And he left.
I did write in his defence, but an Under Secretary’s note was not really worth much then, and dark
decisions were being taken on action against the hapless controller of the Films Division, on
blacklisting Sukhdev and so on, till the film began to be acclaimed as one of the finest documentaries
ever made till then. Suddenly all talk of action stopped. Tragically, Sukhdev died a few years later; I
had left the Ministry by then and heard of his death some time after he had died. It was not just tragic
—it seemed such a terrible waste of great talent.
Meanwhile A.N. Jha left the Ministry to become Chief Commissioner of Delhi; he was the last to
hold that post, and the first to hold the post of Lieutenant Governor, to which the Chief
Commissioner’s post was transformed. One of his first acts as Lieutenant Governor was to have me
transferred as Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor, a post I promptly accepted, leaving behind the
cobweb of procedures and hierarchies that made up the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. I
was to return to that Ministry again, but I naturally knew nothing about that at the time.
I was Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor for a little over a year, or thereabouts, but in that time
was able to set up something of what I thought the organization of a Raj Bhavan—or Raj Niwas, as it
was called being the residence of a Lieutenant Governor—should be. The structure was there, of
course; the Chief Commissioner of Delhi was only slightly below a Lieutenant Governor in terms of
consequence, a term which translated actually into personal staff and trappings. But that little change,
the final visible emblems of elevation, I set about inducting with gusto.
Working directly with A.N. Jha was a wonderful experience. He had lost none of his enormous
fund of good humour, but was quick and shrewd when it came to work. As Lieutenant Governor he
was Chairman of the Delhi Development Authority, and was also directly in charge of law and order
in Delhi. Placed as I was, then, I caught glimpses of the larger picture, something young officers
rarely get, of DDA policies and projects, and on one occasion of how a major violent incident was
handled, or as I saw, mishandled.
The incident was an anti-cow-slaughter demonstration organized by the Jan Sangh, which was
supported by a motley crowd of Hindu groups and hot-heads. The demonstrators were supposed to go
their noisy way along Parliament Street and then be dispersed along the roads leading away from it.
But the plan went terribly wrong; the police waited—on the orders of the Deputy Commissioner,
Bishan Tandon, they claimed—to disperse the crowd, and these came to them too late, when the
crowds, having grown increasingly aggressive and violent, were at a point beyond Patel Chowk. That
meant two things: they would then have to be dispersed, as they would have come too close to
Parliament House, and it also meant that there were no side roads along which the crowd could be
diverted.
The police then tried their standard procedures: a baton charge by the mounted police which did
not work, unhorsed many of the policemen and infuriated the mob. Then followed a lathi-charge,
again of not much use, as the bulk of the crowd kept pressing forward while those in front suffered
terrible injuries as they had nowhere to flee. Then the police force opened fire.
There was chaos. Those in front turned back and fought to get away while the hordes behind kept
coming forward; eventually those in front, with bullets flying among them felling large numbers,
managed to drive incensed groups back along the road to Patel Chowk where they streamed down
Ashoka Road attacking cars, buses and buildings, setting fire to whatever came in their way. The AIR
headquarters was attacked, but the permanent guard posted there had closed the doors and were able
to keep off the marauders; nevertheless some climbed over the walls and then the guards opened fire
and more died.
Eventually the police were able to disperse the crowd, but a very large number of the
demonstrators had died and hundreds more had been injured. Along Parliament Street and Ashoka
Road cars and buses burned, buildings had their windows shattered and facades damaged.
In Raj Bhavan an unusually grim Lieutenant Governor was not able to get in touch with either the
Deputy Commissioner or the Inspector General of Police (there was no Commissioner of Police in
those days). Eventually a dishevelled Joint IG and the DC arrived with very disturbing news—of a
huge number of casualties, and a situation still tense and barely in control. I still remember one
exchange vividly:
‘How many rounds did you fire?’ the Lieutenant Governor asked.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ the Joint IG said. ‘We fired till the rifles were empty.’
The Lieutenant Governor spoke to the Home Minister of the day, advising him to make a statement
but the Minister flatly refused to do so, on the silly grounds that he was in Parliament and was not
aware of what had happened. Jha was quiet for a minute and then told me to speak to AIR and tell
them he would make a statement on AIR Delhi.
The IG, who had arrived by then, advised him against going out, as the streets were still full of
furious violent mobs.
‘I’ll be the best judge of that,’ Jha snapped and got into his car.
His statement was a brief, clear one. He told listeners he was deeply sorry for what had happened,
and then took full and personal responsibility for the police action. He said that they acted under his
orders—which was not true, as I knew, since he had not been able to reach any of the officers at the
spot, in spite of frantic calls on telephones and on the police wireless network. But this was Jha sahib
at his best. He then reiterated, firmly and calmly, that, should the violence continue the police would
not hesitate to act again and requested everyone to disperse peacefully.
Whether because of this or not—I suspect because of the message being conveyed by those who
had heard it to others by word of mouth—peace returned, the mobs dispersed, and, under Jha’s
orders, several of the chief instigators were arrested.
There was a general outcry against the Lieutenant Governor in the press, but in the Lok Sabha a
nervous yet firm Prime Minister made a statement deeply regretting the incident and praising the
manner in which the Lieutenant Governor handled the violence. She pointedly left out any reference to
the Home Minister, who was responsible to the House for law and order in the then Union Territory
of Delhi. That took the wind out of almost everyone’s sails, and A.N. Jha continued his stint as the
first Lieutenant Governor of Delhi.
Sometime later the DC, Bishan Tandon, asked Jha sahib if he could utilize my services on a part-
time basis as Additional District Magistrate (Headquarters). Jha sahib asked me if I could manage it,
and I said I could, partly because I wanted to do a little more than put up files and make brief internal
notes on their contents, which was what I was doing as Secretary to the Lieutenant Governor. The
days when the secretary to the Lieutenant Governor became a power behind the throne had not yet
come, nor would they ever, as long as Jha sahib was the Lieutenant Governor. The only whiff I got of
what a Secretary who has aspirations to be a courtier could do was when a senior officer brought me
a file of postings proposed by the Home Department, and said to me, lowering his voice, ‘Point out to
LG sahib that these—he identified them with his finger—are Brahmins, and the others are Kayasthas.’
 ‘Why are you telling me this?’ I asked him. ‘I’m a Kayastha, you know.’
He stared at me. ‘But you’re just a Bengali,’ he said.
Needless to say, I said nothing to Jha sahib, and the postings he finally made had nothing to do with
caste at all. I sent the file back with a certain amount of childish glee.
Anyway, I started working for a few hours a day as ADM (Headquarters) and soon found the work
was nothing like the district work I was used to; it was all files and notings and of a nasty grubby kind
I began to dislike intensely. The only bright side to it was the company I had, occasionally, of my
batchmate Suresh Vaish, who was ADM (South), and who had an endless number of stories of the
seamier side of the administration which he recounted with a drollness that kept me in good spirits
through the day. And there was the kindness—indeed, affection—of the DC Bishan Tandon. He had
my wife and me over to his house frequently, and we were treated like a part of his family. In the
office, though, he was a stern taskmaster; one of his methods of keeping strict control over us was to
insist that ‘spare copies’ of all letters written by us should be collected in what he called the ‘day
file’ and sent to him. Then, on some occasions, we would receive the dreaded summons ‘huzoor apko
yaad kar rahein hain’, which was, very approximately, a polite way of saying that the boss wants to
see you. When we presented ourselves Bishan Tandon would hold up one of the spare copies and say,
with a deceptive smile, ‘Your letter. It’s a reply to a reference made two weeks ago.’
If we fumbled and tried to explain away the delay, the smile would change to an admonitory
whiplash. ‘Make sure you answer your letters promptly. I don’t want to see this sort of delay again.
Mind it!’
Early the next year, before I had completed even a year, I heard from distant Calcutta that my
batchmates were being made district magistrates. Now being a DM was something we had been
groomed to become right from the time we joined the National Academy of Administration, and I was
distraught. I went to Jha sahib and told him.
‘It will mean a big loss to me,’ he said. ’But you must go back. This is important to you—you must
take charge of a district.’
And I packed my bags, said goodbye to the joys of Delhi life—mainly the theatre work I had begun
with the fledgling group set up by Joy Michael called Yatrik—and returned to Calcutta. It was with a
considerable amount of regret, I must be frank. Living in Delhi was then, to me, living in two worlds,
the world of my work as an IAS officer, and the world shaped by my youth in St. Stephen’s College
where I spent many happy hours acting in a number of plays, all of which came together in the theatre
work I had begun with Joy Michael in Yatrik, the theatre group she and a number of other theatre
people had got together and formed.
Yatrik was going to present Chekov’s The Seagull, and Joy cast me in it as Konstantin, the young
man who aspires to be a poet and dramatist. The play brought together some old friends—Kusum
Haidar and Nirmala Matthen, with whom I had acted before, when I was in St. Stephen’s and they
were in Miranda House. We had been in Love’s Labour’s Lost, my last play in college, and had had a
hilarious time on stage and off it; innocent, juvenile merriment that all of us remembered with
fondness. Kusum was married to my other very dear friend, Salman Haidar—he and Ravi Dayal had
been almost a part of my being in college, perhaps because we shared so much, not the least of which
was affection and good-humoured banter at which I was quite hopeless, compared to Salman and
Ravi. Salman was an exceptionally brilliant student, and after getting a first division in English from
Delhi University went on to Cambridge, and then took the IAS examination with me; not surprisingly
he came second in the All India list—I was a humble fifth—but chose the Indian Foreign Service.
At that time he was in Delhi, and their infant daughter Naveena was a little younger than my own
daughter Sagarika. I mention this because of an incident that only Salman could have caused. Kusum
was rehearsing, in fact, playing the main part of Nina in The Seagull, and she had given the infant
Naveena over to the care of the father, whose affection for his child manifested itself in his
threatening her in a low voice, ‘Will you shut up? If you don’t stop crying I’ll stuff your foot in your
mouth.’ He then proceeded to act on his threat, while I watched, utterly fascinated. It didn’t deter the
infant Naveena a bit, though, who continued bawling lustily.
One of the other girls in the play, Vinanti Sarkar, happened to be passing and as girls tend to do
came over and cooed, ‘What a cute baby! A real darling!’ and more to the same effect. Salman said to
her in a very friendly tone, by which I knew that he intended something very unfriendly, ‘Oh really?
You think she’s cute, do you? Would you like to hold her?’
‘Can I?’ said the delighted Vinanti, and Salman promptly handed the baby over.
I was called on stage just then and after the rehearsal when I came backstage I found a distraught
Vinanti, still holding the now sleeping Naveena.
‘Have you seen Salman?’ she asked anxiously.
‘No, I was on stage,’ I said. ‘He was right here.’
‘Yes,’ Vinanti said. ‘He gave me the baby, then got into his car and left. And,’—her voice beame
slightly hysterical—‘he hasn’t come back!’
He didn’t, not for another hour or so. When he did come back, he was in a very good, even
expansive mood, and graciously took back the sleeping child from Vinanti, who was speechless with
indignation.
But this was the young Salman, who could not resist a jape that would leave the victim fuming
impotently. He was the finest and most gentle of fathers, affectionate always, stern when sternness
was called for. And a steadfastly dear, understanding friend, with whom, as with Ravi, I have spent
many hours of spirited, animated conversation. His fine intellect stimulated me to think and reflect on
subjects in a way I could not have without that spur, and we dissected Indian society and solved
national problems with much energy and merriment.
I had first acted with his wife Kusum in what I still look back on as the best performance I ever
gave, as Hamlet in Hamlet, which was presented by the Shakespeare Society of St. Stephen’s
College, and directed by a most sympathetic and gifted young director, then a lecturer in college,
Rajan Chetsingh. Rajan was to go on to become another very dear friend, whose affection and close
friendship did not fade even though we met only rarely after I left college, and he went back to
London, which is now his home. Kusum also acted with me—or I with her—in Love’s Labour’s Lost,
The Seagull, and years later in Uncle Vanya and 9 Jakhoo Hill.
Nirmala Matthen was another old acting colleague—we had been in Love’s Labour’s Lost together
before we played mother and son in The Seagull, (something Nirmala was very indignant about as
she was a good deal younger than me).We had become very good friends and this was another factor
that made acting in the play such a joy.
And there were others: Jai Chandiram, who was to become a colleague in Doordarshan many years
later, and a weird Englishman who was teaching in St. Stephen’s who, after the cast party when the
play closed took a lift back with me and, being thoroughly inebriated, proceeded to break a whole
packet of eggs on the floor of my car. I had to drive back grimly inhaling what smelt like an
undercooked omelette.
I think what I chiefly valued in my involvement with theatre was that I met a number of people from
different professions and social groups. They were not only friends from my college days, but
teachers, television professionals (a strange, rare breed then), radio producers and presenters,
journalists and college students, and we were all part of a group of enthusiasts, whom theatre drew
together. Joy had an incredible ability of drawing people to the group and of keeping most of them
with it, involved in some way or the other. Some of us would be helping with sets, or with costumes
or with the box office, it didn’t really matter. This was a world so totally isolated from the world of
my working days that I never ceased to be astonished at the difference. Like everyone else, I never let
the two worlds affect each other; the day was devoted totally and completely to my work as Secretary
to the Lt. Governor and ADM (Headquarters); the evenings, some part of the nights and the weekends
to theatre.
That this gave me a different outlook I have not the slightest doubt. Theatre never let me sink into
the morass of bureaucracy, where the world consisted of meeting colleagues and endless, wearying
talk of postings and transfers and who knew whom and everything else that constituted that stale, fetid
world. It kept my feet on the ground, and kept me in touch with good people who didn’t give a damn if
one was a Deputy Secretary, Joint Secretary or the chief assistant to the assistant chief of boiler
inspection. We were, all of us, theatre people. People. Period.
They were happy, even carefree times, and when I left Delhi I had a premonition that I was leaving
those times behind for good; those times would never come back. But the memories remain, a bright
glow amidst the darker recollections of files and notes and grimy offices, and of the oppressive
hierarchies that one had to move in.
 5

Deputy Commissioner, District Magistrate, and Collector

The order read: ‘The Governor is pleased to appoint Shri B. Ghose, IAS, to be Deputy
Commissioner, District Magistrate and Collector of the district of Cooch Behar, and to have charge of
the district.’
To have charge of the district—the words I had seen in many posting orders when I was Under
Secretary in the Home Department of the State Government, and had never given them much thought.
But when it was part of the order sending me to Cooch Behar, they made me think about them over
and over again. ‘To have charge’ seemed to mean that the responsibility for whatever happened in
that district would be mine. I was answerable to the Government for the fortunes of that tract of land
—I, and I alone. It sobered me, I must confess, when I reached the small town, its streets neatly laid
out in straight lines by some wise Maharaja in centuries gone by.
This, then, was what all my training in Mussoorie, in Burdwan, all my settlement training in the
fields of Bandel and Kalimpong, and all my initial postings in Barrackpore and Darjeeling culminated
in, logically: charge of a district; a job I had been trained to understand and, hopefully, to do. I had
done just seven years in the IAS, and this was 1967, when the first wave of turbulence hit West
Bengal, when the Congress was, for the first time since Independence, thrown out and a rather hastily
cobbled together collection of parties calling themselves the United Front had come to power. That
made the wilder elements do some very odd things, like continue agitations as if they were still in the
opposition, and then to invent that terrible method of tormenting middle-level officials called the
gherao.
To me it meant going to a district for which I was responsible to the Government. Initially I had no
idea what that would entail, not in specific terms; I had held charge of Darjeeling district
occasionally, for a few days each time, when the DC was away on leave, but that was not the real
thing. Here, as the notification seemed to say, was my first test.
It was not going to be easy, I soon found out. The state was in a restless, violent mood and there
was widespread anger because of persistent food shortages and the inept handling of that by the
former Congress Government under P.C. Sen. Now the new United Front Government was in power,
a crowd of left parties of which not a few were little more than rabble-rousers, and they had no
intention of assuming more responsible attitudes now that they were part of the Government. The
more responsible parties among them, the CPI(M), CPI and others—chose to try to placate them or
look the other way.
Consequently, something akin to mob rule prevailed—the kind that I imagined must have been what
people faced in France after their revolution. The police were under strict instructions not to interfere
with what were called ‘democratic movements’—this included mobs storming Government offices,
and the offices of industrial concerns for which the state was then well known all over India. It meant
that terrifying form of torment I had mentioned earlier called the gherao, which meant that one poor
individual, a Manager or a Block Development Officer, or someone similar, was surrounded by a
mob and kept that way for hours, and in a few cases for days. In the lesser forms these gheraos were
in the office rooms of the individuals concerned, but it meant they were not permitted to leave the
room even to go to the toilet—the wretched victims were obliged to urinate and defecate in their
rooms in full view of the gloating mob. Nor were they allowed any food or drink, even though the
climate in the state was in most months hot and humid. The ostensible demand was usually ridiculous
or totally, deliberately, impractical: ‘Issue one kilo of rice to everyone instantly,’ knowing full well
there was no rice to issue, or ‘Grant additional pay to all workers with immediate effect’ when that
would result in the industry closing down in a few months.
The truly brutal form of this torment was the gherao of a person out in the open, in the summer
months, under the blazing sun, moving him when the sun moved, so that he remained in the searing
sunlight continuously, and keeping him there for five hours and more. The Labour Minister, a
singularly short-sighted demagogue called Subodh Banerjee, gave this form of torture legitimacy by
forbidding the police from interfering. He said it was workers expressing their ‘indignation’ at the
‘injustice’ they had to face, conveniently forgetting that the victims were minor officials who could
not take any kind of decision on any of the demands being made.
It was, one can now see, the forerunner of the hostage-taking that terrorist groups like the ULFA
and others have resorted to. Keeping a person gheraoed and keeping him hostage were no different,
but the new United Front was probably incapable of seeing this, and continued to fumble with their
law and order policy. The Chief Minister, Ajoy Kumar Mukherjee, was a mild, completely
ineffective man, who tried feebly to justify all this by talking of ‘people’s aspirations’ but his appeals
to stop went unheeded. In fact, the contempt that the other constituents in the United Front felt for him
was best demonstrated in their gheraoing him, even if it was for a few minutes, in the Assembly
buildings.
I was to be responsible for Cooch Behar district in this very troubled time. It was no time for
firmness and a strict imposition of order; it was a time for gentle persuasion, for the use of one’s wits,
and of remaining calm under grave provocation. My initial meetings with the parties that constituted
the United Front passed off peacefully enough, but only because I was determined to give them no
excuse to make any kind of trouble. I used all my charm, good humour and persuasive skills in doing
so, and gave grateful thanks for the theatrical skills I had developed.
But there were endless processions, demonstrations, and gatherings of mobs outside my office,
which made normal working virtually impossible. What was worse was that the staff of the
Collectorate, like all other Government staff throughout the state, had been organized by the CPI(M)
into a militant union known as the Coordination Committee; it was this committee that called the
shots, and decided who would be posted where and so on.
Not long after I had become DC the Land Revenue Minister, Hare Krishna Konar, one of the
stalwarts of the CPI(M), a known hard-liner much feared in the party, decided to visit the district.
When he arrived the entire staff assembled outside the Collectorate and gave him the usual clenched
fist salute, and slogans like ‘Comrade Hare Krishna Konar Lal Salaam’ were shouted with gusto. The
Minister ignored this and came straight inside to my room, where the senior officers of different
departments had gathered. He asked them to leave, saying he wanted to speak to me alone.
When they had left, he asked me, ‘How are the staff behaving?’
I took a deep breath and told him that there was no discipline, and therefore no work was possible.
I told him that all over the district the story was the same, if not worse.
‘Mr Deputy Commissioner,’ the Minister said softly. ‘There is no food. We have to manage people
as best we can, and distribute what little we have. The Centre is withholding supplies through the
FCI. The situation is very bad just now.’
‘If there was even a little discipline, sir,’ I told him, ‘we can procure at least a little from local
markets and distribute that. But I need the staff to work to get that done.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, local procurement may tide us over till supplies arrive. Let me talk to the staff.’
He went out to the staff who were still assembled, still shouting slogans, expecting their comrade
and leader to come out and give them a rousing speech about the arrival of the revolution.
What they got was something entirely different. ‘You have shouted your slogans,’ he said harshly,
‘and held your demonstrations. All this has been possible because we faced police lathis and spent
time in jails. But now this will not do. I need you to work. If you think you can get by with slogan
shouting you’re mistaken. I’m warning you now—either work with discipline, or I shall have to
punish you.’ One thing became very clear. He changed once he had responsibility—one of the few
who did; Jyoti Basu was one of the others. They wanted the state to get down to work, and move
away from the populist postures they themselves had advocated when agitating for change.
There was a stunned silence. Some feeble slogan shouting petered away and the staff shuffled off to
their desks. Hare Krishna Konar was not one to leave it there. He went round the Collectorate with
me, stopping at different departments to ask me, ‘Do these people work or do they only shout
slogans?’
‘They do work, sir,’ I told him, playing along with him. I realized what he was about.
‘Those people,’ he suddenly said, pointing across the hall, ‘what about them?’
‘They are regular, sir,’ I responded.
‘I hope they are, for their sake,’ the Minister said.
He later called a meeting of the Coordination Committee members, which I naturally did not attend.
But he called me in, at the end of the meeting and told me, ‘I have told them, Mr Deputy
Commissioner, that I expect work from them, not slogans. They must set an example. I am confident
they will. But you must keep in touch with me also.’
After he left I found the Collectorate actually began to function, and the staff looked at me as I went
past with what seemed a little apprehension. I knew they were wondering what I had told the Minister
about them, and I did nothing to enlighten them. But I knew I was sitting in a powder keg; the food
stocks were running dangerously low, and the local procurement was not as much as I had hoped it
would be.
Cooch Behar has five subdivisions, though each was only a tenth of the size of Barrackpore
subdivision. I visited each, and then the blocks in these subdivisions, to find out what the food
situation was like. Everywhere I went it was grim; but the new crop was growing, the farmers said,
and it seemed a good crop. The rains were good, too, and with a little luck they would have a good
harvest that year. It was a question of lasting out a few months. I wondered how I would manage.
I returned to Cooch Behar town early one morning from one of my visits and the powder keg
exploded. An agitated SDO Sadar (i.e., headquarters) rang me to say that the mood in the town was
ugly and they were demanding that the Government food godowns (stores) be attacked.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked him.
‘Apparently they went to the markets this morning,’ he said, ‘and there was no rice on sale. Not
even a kilo.’
‘Open all the godowns,’ I told him, ‘and take out all the rice and wheat there for sale through the
fair-price shops. Do it now.’
‘We’ll have nothing left,’ he said fearfully.
‘That’s a risk I have to take,’ I told him. ‘Just do as I say.’
It was too late. About half an hour later the Additional SP rang me to say a huge mob had gathered
outside my office demanding my presence.
‘I would not advise it, sir,’ he said. ‘Just stay in your residence.’
‘I don’t have a choice,’ I told him. ‘Just stay within call, and keep a strong force with you.’
I left immediately for my office. As I neared it I could see a sea of faces, angry, shouting, sweaty,
and fists waving in the air. As soon as I stopped a sound like the sea breaking on a rocky shore
reached me—the sound of thousands of people shouting ‘maar shala ke’ (kill the swine)—and I was
literally surrounded by a huge wave of people the like of which I’d never seen before and never ever
saw again. The sound was so loud that I couldn’t be heard, even if I tried to say something. Then I
found that a number of men had joined hands to form a cordon round me and were doggedly holding
the mob back, even though they were being beaten and pushed and kicked. The local CPI(M) leader,
Shiben Choudhury, wriggled through this cordon and screamed in my ear, ‘Give in to whatever
demands they are making! Otherwise they will kill you!’
‘I can’t give them anything except what I have!’ I shouted back at him.
‘They want house to house searches! Agree to it!’ Choudhury screamed back over the shouting.
‘Agree, DC sahib, or you will be dead!’ I think he was genuinely frightened; I could see that from his
body language and the way he spoke. He barely had any control over the mob. He had wanted some
agitation but not what it turned into.
I began to edge towards the Collectorate building, hardly a few feet away, helped by the cordon,
which, I discovered, were of Collectorate staff; I needed the tall flight of steps that led up to the
ground-floor offices. Having got there I inched up the steps till I was on the topmost step and visible
to the whole crowd.
Saying a fervent prayer to the god of theatre, I used all the power of my lungs to shout, ‘Listen to
me! QUIET!!’
There was a momentary lessening, and, like a good actor, I took advantage of it. ‘We ALL want to
find out where the rice and wheat are! Who are hoarding it! So we will SEARCH FOR IT!!’
A roar followed but this was not hostile; not supportive, but not hostile.
 ‘Let us go out in groups!’ I bellowed. ‘My magistrates will lead each group! Let us start AT
ONCE!! But ONLY with magistrates!’
Another roar followed, this time supportive, and the crowd began streaming out.
‘Sir, we haven’t detailed any magistrates,’ the Senior Deputy Collector, the administrative head of
the office said, ‘There will be chaos!’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘There will be. Perhaps it’s needed, now.’
Since I got to the Collectorate I had been looking for the Additional SP and his force, and they
were conspicuous by their absence. I finally located them at a discreet distance from the scene.
‘And what were you doing there?’ I asked the Additional SP angrily. ‘Waiting for the mob to kill
me?’
‘Well, sir, we’re not supposed to …,’ the poor young man began.
‘Never mind all that now,’ I snapped, ‘Just get details sent out to locate whatever groups are out
searching houses and see that there’s no looting or violence.’ He turned quickly and went out.
I had reckoned that the initial chaos would set the town against the chief troublemakers, making it
easier to take action, and it worked. My office was flooded with calls from indignant, angry and
frightened citizens demanding that these self-styled vigilantes be stopped from entering and searching
houses, especially kitchens.
I then told the Additional SP to begin arresting the ringleaders. ‘Arrest them, sir?’ he asked, ‘But
Government orders are not to interfere …’
‘Just arrest them!’ I told him, and he did. As word got round of the arrests, all the ‘searchers’ fled.
Peace returned late in the afternoon. By that time the fair-price shops had begun selling the rice and
wheat I had kept as reserve stocks, and the panic among people ebbed.
That was when the personal reaction set in. I found I was shaking like a leaf, and had to sit down; I
had never come so close to being killed, and it seemed such an alien thing, then, dying. If I had
escaped death it was only by keeping my wits about me, and because of the unwavering loyalty of
some of the staff. I called them in and thanked them, told them they had kept me alive.
‘We could not stand there and see our DC killed,’ was what they said, and filed out.
Later that day when I had recovered my composure a little more I called in some of those whom I
knew would help resolve the crisis, among them Shiben Choudhury. It turned out that the village haats
(markets) and the paikars (wholesalers) operating there were Forward Bloc loyalists, while the
CPI(M) controlled the markets in the town. The Forward Bloc wanted to ‘fix’ the CPI(M), as they
used to control the city markets as well, but had been ousted by the CPI(M), and had asked the
paikars not to sell any rice to the retailers in the town. That was what led to the panic and the ensuing
chaos.
I called the paikars, not the Forward Bloc leaders, in the next day and told them that they had better
sell rice as usual.
‘You don’t want trouble, do you, now? Police trouble?’ I asked them innocently. ‘There are so
many thefts going on, I find it all very worrying.’
The paikars got the hint and from then on rice appeared on sale at the village haats.
A few days later Kamal Guha, the Forward Bloc leader, a large man with a reputation as a strong-
arm thug, barged into my room.
‘You threatened the paikars, DC?’ he demanded peremptorily.
‘No, I don’t threaten anyone, Kamal Babu,’ I replied. ‘I merely shared with them my worries about
maintaining law and order in the district.’
‘Don’t try any tricks with me, DC,’ he said, banging the table.
‘And you don’t try any with me,’ I replied, and added, ‘Now leave, I have other work to do.’
He stormed out with his henchmen.
A few days later the General Secretary of the district unit of the CPI(M), Robin Dey Sarkar, came
to see me, a small, almost shrivelled man with very shrewd eyes. We talked of matters concerning the
district and then he said, ‘You had a run-in with Kamal Guha, I hear.’
‘Yes,’ I said, not wanting to discuss it.
‘Careful, DC sahib,’ Dey Sarkar said softly. ‘You’ve made an enemy there. But’—he suddenly
smiled—‘we’re all part of the United Front, you know. You can count on me.’
The demonstrations and slogan shouting continued almost every day, groups demanding I meet them
and then making the most impossible demands, with me temporizing, placating and treading through a
minefield between reassurance and an expression of the limitations of an embattled Government,
strapped for cash and food. Being a Deputy Commissioner was to be very lonely, as there was no one
with whom one could really share one’s problems. And the problems were many, and pressing.
Within a few months, however, the United Front Government collapsed, and President’s Rule was
imposed on the state. This meant that the Governor was the sole ruler, and at that time the Governor
was the very astute and clever Dharma Vira, a former ICS officer who had held some of the highest
positions in the administration. With this change, the law and order noticeably improved; the police
were now freed from the crippling orders of the demagogue Subodh Banerjee which had been tacitly
endorsed by the then Deputy Chief Minister Jyoti Basu. Under President’s Rule disorderly
demonstrations, which would often turn violent, were quelled firmly.
At last I was able to look at work I should have been doing months ago, but had been kept from
doing by repeated political disturbances by the constituent units of the United Front. Chief among all
of this was the propagation of the revolutionary new varieties of rice—high-yielding varieties with
names like IR8 and others. These varieties yielded some five times more rice than the traditional
varieties, but farmers were sceptical.
The District Agricultural Officer was a dynamic, handsome young man who was determined to get
the new varieties accepted, and he asked for my help, which I readily promised. He had sown these
new varieties in the demonstration plots in different block farms and in the district agricultural farm,
to which we took groups of farmers. But the scepticism persisted. To a layperson like me what the
farmers said sometimes seemed rational: the new plants were too short, they pointed out, and would
be completely covered by water in the torrential monsoon rains of Cooch Behar, making them rot;
besides, the rice grains that came from these plants were fat and stubby, unlike the slimmer, longer
grains of the native plants. The new grains had no flavour, they said, no fragrance, and their
coarseness would make them unpopular, and it was not worth growing these new varieties.
‘But look at the amount you will be getting from each plant,’ I pointed out, while the DAO
explained to them that they had only to select well-drained plots for these plants not to be inundated in
the rains. They smiled cynically, shrugged and went back to their fields.
The DAO was despondent, and felt the campaign would not work. I thought we should try another
tactic—go to them, rather than bring them to the government farms. We did, trudging from village to
village, carrying one bag of traditional rice and five bags of the new varieties. We offered the seeds
for the new varieties in that proportion; some agreed, as if they were indulging a child, while others
took them with a degree of wariness. But the tactic, wearying though it was, worked.
This was, quite simply, because of the system. They were astonished that the DC sahib had actually
come to their homes, and many took the seeds out of politeness. Perhaps a number then threw them
away, but if even a handful did not, and planted them, I was sure they would see the difference.
Then there was, to bolster the consequence of rank, the presence of expertise: the District
Agricultural Officer. The DAO repeatedly warned them to ensure the new varieties were planted on
well-drained ground, and he told them that even if the rains were scanty these new plants would
withstand the lack of water, gathering it from the ground as their roots went deeper. His manner, and
his complete familiarity with the whole process of sowing rice and harvesting it gained him the
respect of the farmers; he would roll up his sleeves, and his trousers, and wade into the water-filled
fields with them, sowing and transplanting as skilfully as them. That, more than anything else, helped
to bring some of the farmers—not all—around.
As the heat and humidity waned, and the sunlight took on that soft golden quality that heralds the
onset of winter, we knew our time of trial was approaching—the harvest. If the HYV rice came into
the haats in large quantities—and if they sold well, we knew we would have broken through. We
could then look to a time when there would actually be enough rice grown in the district to meet the
needs of the people.
The DAO kept me informed every week about arrivals at the haats and, as the winter set in, and the
harvested rice began to arrive, it became clear that, while some HYV rice did appear, it was only a
small proportion of the harvest. It was not going to make much of a difference to rice availability in
the next year.
But we persisted. Cooch Behar used to grow, traditionally, one rice crop a year; in a few areas
there was some double cropping, the second crop sown well before the rains, called the aus crop, but
it was not over a very large area. It was mainly the kharif crop that mattered. I asked the DAO if we
could try a third crop, which farmers in southern Bengal grew, the rabi crop. He said it had not been
done, but he could try to persuade some.
‘But will it work?’ I asked him. ‘Will the rice plants grow in winter, when there’s not much rain?’
‘It should,’ he said, with his infectious grin. ‘The ground is very moist with the monsoon rain, and
HYV rice takes its nourishment from the soil directly. It’s worth trying.’
Again, we set out with seeds and this time met with amusement and open disbelief. Rice doesn’t
grow in the winter, babu, they told me. Not even your new magic rice will grow. But we persuaded
and cajoled, and some reluctantly agreed to try it, more to please us than anything else.
As the winter crop ripened, it was time to prepare for the aus crop, a traditional crop in some parts
of that district. The farmers had by and large come to expect us in the larger villages, so we tried
smaller ones although it meant much greater work in terms of travel and time. Cooch Behar doesn’t
have villages as are commonly understood—a cluster of huts surrounded by fields. In this district
farmers lived within their holdings, so what was a village on the map was a scattered lot of huts over
a large area. There was a little market and a local temple or mosque at one place, but very few
farmers stayed in that little cluster. Thus we tramped over fields from house to house, trying to
persuade farmers to use the new seeds for the aus crop as well.
The rabi crop came into the markets, and once again the quantities of HYV rice were scanty, too
scanty to make a difference. As the summer heat grew, and we weathered the occasional
thunderstorms usual at that time of the year, the aus crop came in. The story remained the same. It
seemed the farmers of Cooch Behar were not going to take to the HYV rice after all.
The rains were unusually heavy that year, and the DAO and I put in one final effort to persuade
farmers to use the HYV seeds on a larger scale. Our visits were met with politeness, and even
deference, I thought, though I noticed a little curiosity in between the concealed disbelief. But perhaps
I had imagined it.
As the monsoon season neared its end a terrible tragedy hit Cooch Behar district, and on a more
horrifying scale, the neighbouring district of Jalpaiguri. Both districts are drained by some six major
rivers—from west to east, they are the Teesta, the Jaldhaka, the Mansai, the Torsa, the Raidak and the
Sankosh. These are, like many rivers coming down from the high reaches of the Himalayas, torrents
that move rapidly and often with turbulence till they reach the plains. Unlike the plains elsewhere in
the country, the plains of the Dooars rapidly become flat, with no broken or undulating land;
consequently the rivers, which descend with considerable force, carrying a great deal of mud and
stones with them, suddenly slow down, and as they do, the very large amounts of mud and silt they
carry are deposited on the riverbeds, rapidly becoming big sandbanks that make the rivers change
course and force their way into new courses, destroying once fertile lands as they look for, and find, a
course down across the plains.
This, by itself, is a bad enough problem, as erosion by the rivers is a major and almost continuous
calamity; I have stood on the banks of the Torsa and actually had to retreat as large chunks of land,
including houses and other structures, fell into the river in front of my eyes. In the rains the situation
becomes worse, as the rivers can rise with a suddenness and ferocity that is positively frightening,
and inundate vast stretches of land.
This is what happened at the end of the monsoon season. The rain had been heavy and continuous
for almost ten days, and then stopped. It was a full-moon night, and I was told that the river level—the
one next to the town of Cooch Behar, the Torsa—was rising very fast. Late that night I went out along
the national highway to look, accompanied by the Superintendent of Police. At one point some miles
to the north of the town there is a fairly high bridge across the railway line that goes east to Assam,
and as we reached the top of the bridge we heard a very unfamiliar sound—the rippling of water,
flowing pretty fast, all around us.
In the moonlight we saw an awesome, and most alarming, sight. As far as we could see to the north,
the east and the west there were no fields, no houses—just a huge sheet of water, like an inland sea. It
could not have been the Torsa, which flowed to the west, and flowed southwards. There was just too
much water. Other rivers had clearly also flooded.
We returned to Cooch Behar town and, in the police control room we realised the enormity of what
had happened. All seven major rivers had flooded simultaneously, and joined across the district,
literally making it a giant lake or sea. Communications by telephone were down, our only link was
through the police wireless network. I got messages from all the SDOs—their headquarter towns
were inundated and they were themselves completely marooned. All roads were under water, people
were sheltering on embankments and some school buildings situated on high ground.
Once again, there was nothing in one’s conditioning or training that provided convenient responses.
One had to rely on one’s wits—and luck, lots of luck. I managed, in haste, to send a garbled message
that we needed help to the head of the air force base at Hashimara, Group Captain Katre, one of the
most intelligent and far-sighted officers I had ever met, in any service. He sent a reply which gently
advised that I indicate just what kind of help I needed, when and where. I got this message in the
evening, and thought over the kind of assistance we needed with Nirmal Saha, the Additional Deputy
Commissioner, a wise, quiet man. Food, of course, and it had to be food that didn’t need to be
cooked, so bread in large quantities, and some other stuff we could lay our hands on—biscuits and so
on, and we couldn’t, as Saha pointed out, avoid some foodgrains, so atta in sacks, and then some dry
clothing. Saha made up the lists late into the night.
Early the next morning it became clear that Group Captain Katre hadn’t waited for a less hysterical
and more rational message from me. The air was filled with the drone and the whipping sound of
rotors, and a helicopter come in and landed on the little airfield we had just next to my house. The
young pilot came in and asked me to let him know exactly what had to be done, and radio-ed our
requirements back. I gave them some locations, but before that I asked to be taken over the district
first. I got on the phone—which, thanks to the miracle of microwaves, was working—and spoke to the
Home Secretary. He said that as I flew over the district, would I also take a look at the neighbouring
district, Jalpaiguri, from where he was getting no response at all.
The aerial survey confirmed the horror of what I had presumed had happened. The whole district,
it seemed, was a vast sea, with little islands here and there. Even the subdivisional towns were
inundated. We flew over Jalpaiguri town, and realized why there had been no response from the
Deputy Commissioner, or the police. It was completely submerged. There were people on the roofs
of houses barely above the level of the water who waved frantically to us. I thought at first, rather
foolishly, that they were saying hello till I noticed they were motioning with their hands for water and
food.
Jalpaiguri town is on the right bank of the giant and entirely unpredictable river Teesta, and
flowing through it is a small river, the Karala. Because of the Teesta’s size and occasional ferocity, a
massive embankment had been constructed between the river and the town which cut across the mouth
of the river Karala; that little stream had been diverted to empty into the Teesta some five kilometres
downstream. During that period of torrential rain that hardly stopped for ten days, a huge natural dam
built up on the Teesta in the mountains just above the graceful suspension bridge some one hundred
feet above it which connected Kalimpong to Darjeeling. That dam eventually broke, and a towering
wall of water came down the river; a farmer who lived high above the river said later it sounded like
a thousand express trains. The water swept over the suspension bridge, broke it like a toy and surged
down to the plains. There it became an angry, seething wave that spread over its banks, filled the
little Karala, and then roared into Jalpaiguri town from the north, above the embankment. Tragically,
the embankment then became an obstacle to the ferocious river and trapped water up to its very top.
The bulk of the river veered away and continued its terrible passage south along its once placid
course; but Jalpaiguri was literally drowned in a vast lake within the embankment meant to protect it.
I reported all that I saw to the Home Secretary and the account of the relief of Jalpaiguri is another
story. I returned to Cooch Behar and to the affliction of that district. I divided the work between Saha
and myself thus: I was going to go to all the worst affected parts and establish some kind of
communication lines for the supply of relief, and Saha was going to compute this and requisition the
supplies from wherever we could get it. Although road communication was disrupted, making the
large-scale movement of supplies impossible, I had a huge resource in Group Captain Katre. His
helicopters flew in from virtually the next day, four of them, and took supplies to the worst-affected
areas, areas that we could not reach by road. Day after day they came, cheerful young men, from very
early in the morning, and flew sortie after sortie with supplies, and sometimes essential personnel
like doctors and engineers who assessed the damage and repairs needed to roads and bridges. My
wife made large plates of sandwiches and coffee every morning and took them to the airfield for these
young men, who fell on them with gusto.
The government was equally responsive. I was given virtually unlimited powers to draw out as
much money as I needed and buy all the supplies required. This meant we were not only able to get
food, but thatch and mats for huts, as many thousands had lost their homes. I came to an arrangement
with the Divisional Forest Officer, Subhash Dey, who was also a good friend, and he got me thatch at
very low prices from the reserved forests. I paid the men from the affected villages the rates that they
would have got for daily work to rebuild their own houses, with this thatch and mats which we bought
from nearby markets in the unaffected areas of neighbouring Assam and the northern subdivision of
Jalpaiguri district, Alipurduar.
My run of luck continued to hold. As is usual in north Bengal, floods recede as rapidly as they
come, so water began to clear the fields and roads, making it possible to start repair work. I
continued visiting different areas of the district, as the waters receded. In some areas they left behind
vast areas of sand, which covered what used to be fertile paddy fields. I would set out on a bicycle—
never sure what kind of road I would encounter—with a basket attached to the handlebar in which I
had a bottle of water and a loaf of bread. A messenger who went with me also had the same spartan
refreshment in the basket of his bike. We cycled far into the afternoon every day and returned in the
evening, when I received a report from Saha on the arrival and deployment of supplies. He gave me
detailed accounts, and as usual had everything meticulously written up and accounted for. He even
had the measurements of a blanket outlined on a wall, and measured each one that came against it, to
make sure we weren’t short-changed by the suppliers.
One image of that terrible time will stay with me forever: a desolate stretch of sand, undulating and
uniformly white as far as the eye could see, beside the now placid river Raidak in Tufanganj
subdivision, and to one side, the top of a hut just visible above the sand. Next to it an old man sat
hunched up, looking vacantly into the ground.
There was one horrific incident in the course of the relief work we were doing. In Mekliganj, a
subdivisional town near Jalpaiguri, a crowd had gathered as word had gone out that the Governor
was coming. The local people, mainly tribals, had come to greet him, their foreheads plastered with
oil, in recognition of the special nature of the event; all of them had had their huts rebuilt, had
received relief in whatever kind they needed—seeds, food grains, clothing—and were just eager to
see the ‘Lat sahib’. They had gathered around the helipad, which had, as was required, a prominently
marked large ‘H’ in the centre.
A few minutes before the Governor was to arrive an Air Force Dakota flew low over the crowd,
turned sharply and came down even lower. To my horror, white bags of foodgrains began to tumble
out of its open door, straight into the crowd. Most of the people saw these bags falling out of the sky
and ran into the shelter of the trees nearby, but one or two bags hit the helipad directly and bounded
up with great force straight into a group that was running towards a clump of trees.
Pandemonium prevailed. Screams, angry shouts, crowds running in different directions and the
sight of the plane making yet another murderous run towards the field created havoc on a scale that
was uncontrollable. Fortunately, miraculously, the pilots pulled up and turned away but on the ground
the SP and I had a very difficult situation to control. We had to get the now incensed crowd pacified,
and at the same time prepare for the Governor’s arrival. We had only just been able to get the people
under some kind of control, pushing them back, having got a police jeep to take the injured to the
subdivisional hospital, when the drone of an approaching helicopter filled the air.
As it landed I ran madly to it even before the rotors had stopped and discovered to my infinite
relief that it was not the Governor but one that had come to scout out the area before the Governor
came.
‘Tell him he mustn’t come now,’ I shouted to the astonished pilot. ‘There’s been an incident here
and his coming would be dangerous.’
‘But we were told …,’ the pilot began. ‘Everything’s all right here, we were told …’
‘No, it isn’t,’ I shouted at him. ‘Thanks to your friends. Just go and make sure the Governor doesn’t
come.’
The pilot took off, not very satisfied.
The anger in the people erupted as they saw the helicopter leave. Again, it took a while to pacify
them, but at least this time I didn’t have the tension of the Governor’s impending visit hanging over
me. We got them quietened down, although it meant arresting a few hotheads, but I announced that a
magisterial inquiry would be ordered and those guilty punished.
I returned to Cooch Behar and made out a detailed report for the Chief Secretary and the Home
Secretary. I also told them I was going to hold a magisterial inquiry, which I had the power to do as
District Magistrate. Three people had been killed and two injured; those guilty would have to be
brought to book. Both of them agreed with my decision and told me to go ahead.
The news was all over the papers the next day, including the fact that I had ordered a magisterial
inquiry. I asked the Home Secretary to help me with the names of the pilots who had flown the Dakota
that day and he promised that they would be obtained from the Air Force and sent to me.
 Meanwhile autumn was gradually giving way to winter; the nights were becoming chilly, and we
still had many without proper clothing even though shelter was being provided in the shape of the
thatched huts they usually lived in. I received a call from the former Maharaja of Cooch Behar,
Jagaddipendra Narayan, who, as a young man of twenty-seven, had to decide whether Cooch Behar
would merge with India or with Pakistan. Not a very easy decision, though it might appear now to be
one. Over one third of the people of the state were Muslims, as were a very large number of the
gentry and those who held high office under the Maharaja. He was subjected to pressure from both
sides, but decided eventually to merge with India. Unlike many of the Maharajas of the time, he
refused thereafter to hold any office under the government, though he was offered a number—
ambassadorships and governorships—by an obviously grateful nation. He lived quietly, although his
English wife led a rather different life of much gaiety and riotous parties. When he spoke to me he
was recovering, slowly, from a head injury he had suffered in a polo match that had left his speech
and comprehension a little impaired. But he was well enough to know what he wanted, and clear
enough in his speech to tell me.
He wanted to help the people, he said, and asked me what they needed right then. Blankets, I told
him, as the winter was closing in, and we weren’t getting the numbers needed.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll arrange for 5,000 blankets right away.’
I thought I would use this to bring about some more order among the people. ‘You must distribute
them, sir,’ I told him.
‘No, Mr Ghose,’ he began.
But I insisted and finally he agreed.
The blankets duly arrived and I asked him to distribute them first where the air force accident had
occurred, in Mekliganj. Word spread like wildfire among the people that ‘Baba’ (father) would be
giving them blankets and a big crowd collected. Jagaddipendra Narayan arrived, and as we stepped
on to the small dais from where he was to give the blankets all hell broke loose. No one would
receive a blanket from him except by lying prostrate before him and touching his feet, and then trying
to collect the dust from his shoes. Others behind began to push, people started rolling over trying to
get the dust from ‘Baba’s’ feet, and lying flat before him trying to touch his feet. The police had to
form a cordon around him and push people back, but not having gauged the depth of the devotion they
had for their Baba there weren’t too many around, so the job was getting to be rather desperate.
I got the Maharaja into his car and asked him to leave. Then, using a local tinny mike which the
enterprising police officer there produced, I told them that Baba had blessed them all, and if they
waited in a line the Block Development Officer (BDO) would hand them over the blankets their Baba
had given them. I knew what would happen; the blankets would never ever be used, but kept away
like a precious relic. So much for crafty intentions, I thought ruefully.
I never asked the Maharaja to distribute any more blankets. He did not ask me about them either.
But I did make sure they were handed over to those who needed them the most. Something an old
Koch farmer said to me kept coming back.
‘When we need help we go to Baba and cry and tell him we are in need. And Baba gives us food
and clothing. And what happens now, sahib? We give a dorkhasto (application) to the BDO sahib.
And nothing happens.’
Later that month, I got a message from Hashimara air force base that the Chief of Air Staff was
coming to see me, and would the next morning be all right. I said I would be happy if he were to have
breakfast with me. Early the next day there was the familiar drone of helicopters and two landed at
the airfield. I met the air chief and brought him to my house. He was very pleasant, and when I
thanked him for the use of the helicopters in the early terrible days of the flood, he said it was their
duty. I did not need to thank them, he said.
‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I have come about that. Their duty.’
I said I appreciated what they had done but he stopped me.
‘Mr Deputy Commissioner, I have come to tell you of the duty my boys do, especially in times like
this. They work for long hours, day after day, without a break, and they do this not only because it is
their duty but because it is for their countrymen.’
I realized what he was going to say and kept quiet.
‘The boys flying out of Bagdogra had been dropping supplies in different parts of Jalpaiguri
district. That is what they had been asked to do, and they did it. They had been doing it day after day,
and were pushing themselves, even though they were dead tired. Two of them made a mistake. From
the air, one landing zone looks like another.’
‘Even one ringed with people?’ I asked.
‘I told you,’ the air chief said gently, ‘it was a mistake. They will be punished and the air force is
very strict about such mistakes. But,’ he looked at me with a steady gaze, ‘I appeal to you not to insist
on the magisterial inquiry. Leave them to us and to our court martial.’
I thought about it. He could have gone to the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister, to the Governor;
but he chose to come to me, a mere Deputy Commissioner.
‘Why did you come to me, sir?’ I asked him, ‘I am a very junior officer.’
‘You are the law,’ the air chief said. ‘I am appealing to you as the arbiter of the law. I am
appealing for mercy, and assuring you justice will be done.’
I thought of the response of Group Captain Katre, now sitting quietly next to his chief, and his
helicopter pilots, of the thousands they had helped with food, clothing and shelter. I was the District
Magistrate, and here it was for me to decide what course of action would meet the ends of justice.
The air chief had deliberately not chosen to have a summary order given to me; he was appealing to
my sense of justice.
I told him that the magisterial inquiry would be dropped.
He smiled and bent his head in acknowledgement. I accompanied him to his helicopter and stood
back as he turned to me and saluted smartly before getting in. The helicopters took off in a storm of
air and the roar of their turbines and I went back to the administration of the district.
The winter that followed was a quiet, even tranquil one. In spite of the floods we made sure there
was enough food in the markets, and more importantly, a sense of confidence seemed to come back to
the farmers, and to the townsfolk. This was the job that our National Academy in Mussoorie had
trained me for, this was what I spent my apprenticeship in Burdwan learning, and yet, every time,
what I had to fall back on was my wits and instincts. In a parliamentary democracy, and in a state
which was, then, the most volatile and politically active, I had to administer, literally to govern, often
alone. No one turned to me as ‘Baba’, and I gained no affection or reverence from the people. But the
system of which I was a part, of which I was the fulcrum, not only stood but was the enduring
structure that the people in the district looked to, to keep affairs stable, to carry on what little was
reaching them in terms of development.
I had in the meanwhile been rung up by the Chief Secretary, M.M. Basu, one of the last of the ICS
officers in the state. He spoke to me warmly of my work during the flood in the autumn, and then said
that the Union Home Minister, Y.B. Chavan, had spoken to the Governor asking for me personally to
conduct the 1971 census in the state; this was an enormous operation of the Central government in
which every single individual of the country was enumerated and certain basic details about each
person recorded. It was done every ten years and had been started over seventy years ago by the
British. The Chief Secretary asked me if I would be interested in doing the job. I was, I must admit, a
little indignant, as, having no idea of the enormity of the task, I thought this was equivalent to being
put on the shelf, and I told him I didn’t want the post.
‘Think carefully, Ghose,’ the Chief Secretary advised. ‘It’s a great opportunity of doing something
worthwhile. And what do we say to the Home Minister?’
‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘I’d rather not if you don’t mind. Surely you can post me somewhere else if you
want me out of here.’
‘Of course I don’t want you to leave Cooch Behar,’ the Chief Secretary snapped. ‘I was only
asking you because the Union Home Minister wants you. If you don’t want the census job, stay on in
Cooch Behar for as long as you like. In any case I can’t move you or any other district officer till the
elections are over.’
The peaceful winter passed soon enough, and then the impending state elections began to galvanize
the political parties into action, particularly the Forward Bloc, a constituent of the erstwhile United
Front, led by that aggressive tough Kamal Guha. He appeared to take particular pleasure in
confronting the district administration, and as the electioneering gathered momentum his henchmen
were involved in a number of unruly acts across the district, but mainly in Dinhata, the subdivisional
town which was his lair, so to speak.
The unfortunate SDO was at the receiving end of most of this, including a particularly violent
gherao—it went on and on, and finally the SP and I went there with a police force and dispersed
them. A few days later the door to my office room was flung open and an incensed Kamal Guha
stalked in.
‘DC sahib,’ he said in a deceptively gentle voice. ‘You made a mistake in attacking my peaceful
demonstration in Dinhata. I would like you to apologize to the people for it.’
‘It was not peaceful, Kamal babu,’ I told him equally gently. ‘They had forcibly confined the SDO,
who represents the law there, in his house, and had thrown stones and bricks, smashing windows and
breaking his furniture.’
‘Political action can have some unfortunate, unintended consequences,’ he replied, ‘but your police
action was brutal. You have to apologize.’
‘I will do nothing of the kind, Kamal babu,’ I told him as pleasantly as I could.
 ‘Then I will have to organize the people against you,’ he said, eyes glittering with rage, ‘and let
them voice their anger against you.’
‘If there is any violation of the law,’ I told him, ‘it will be suitably dealt with.’
‘We will see,’ he said, and got up to go.
‘Also, Kamal babu,’ I told him perhaps not very wisely, ‘next time you wish to see me please make
an appointment. Otherwise you will not be allowed in.’
He looked at me thoughtfully for some time. I had made an enemy, I knew, but my anger made me
dismiss that as irrelevant. Then he left.
I think he knew I would have taken action had he attempted any demonstration or gherao, because
he did nothing. But the town was covered, in the next few days with posters denouncing the fascist
ways of the ‘dugdhoposhyo DC’. The word translates roughly into someone who has barely been
weaned. A crude reference to my age, and perhaps to my looks then—I did look a little juvenile at the
time. The SP warned me to be careful, and told me that it would be politic to make up with Kamal
Guha. It may have been, but it seemed to be too late to do that, without appearing to be servile to a
politician who was known for his aggression and his unruly behaviour.
The preparations for the elections soon consumed almost all my time, and then, after the strident
campaigning, the voting and the counting, the verdict was clear. The United Front had won a huge
majority. In Cooch Behar it won all the seats, and, as the Front had given a large number to the
Forward Bloc, it emerged as the strongest party in the district. It organized huge ‘victory
demonstrations’ in all parts of the district, and then, a few days later, announced its immediate plan of
action. A concerted campaign against me, the fascist DC. There would be demonstrations and road
blocks, and then gheraos; I had to apologize in public for my ‘transgressions’.
I reported all this to the Home Secretary, S.B. Ray. He asked me what my assessment was. I told
him the agitation could be weathered, but the new victory in the elections had given the party a heady
sense of power, and that might make it difficult to deal with. When he rang me again, I told him that
any ‘apology’ by me in whatever manner would not really help, as it was only an excuse to assert
their supremacy, and any officer coming in my place would find it almost impossible to administer the
district.
The first demonstrations began; the next day the Chief Secretary called me.
‘Ghose, you have to take over as Superintendent of Census Operations,’ he told me.
‘But sir,’ I began. He cut me short.
‘Look,’ he said gently, ‘you can’t stay on there, you know that as well as I do. The golmal is going
to grow, and this time the issue is you. We can’t let that continue. It’s their government now. This
census post is still vacant. Hand over charge to your Additional DC and leave.’
So that was it. A summary exit. But he was right, I knew. I called up the Additional DC who
apologetically agreed to take charge. The orders arrived by police wireless that evening.
I called in the nazir, the one functionary in the Collectorate who did virtually all work that needed
organizing and arranging, and asked him to get someone to help me pack my things, and have them
sent on to Calcutta. A day of packing, of throwing things away, of stowing our battered furniture in
packing cases, and on the following morning, very early, we left Cooch Behar quietly. The vehicle
that was to take us to Siliguri from where we would take the train to Calcutta passed through the
town, and then went along the road where I had stood with the SP on a moonlit night and seen the
district turned into a sea, whispering all around as water does when flowing fast over flat land.
It all seemed so long ago.
 6

The Network: Counting People and the Centre of Power

This is a good place to pause and step back, to take a look at the service, as an identifiable group of
people, the way they worked, and the way they ruled the state. Yes, ruled the state. I use the word
deliberately, for that was what they did in those days. The system so carefully transplanted by Sardar
Patel was a system of imperial pro-consuls in part, and it continued to be that. True, it was subject to
stresses that were growing more and more intense; political groups were becoming increasingly
truculent, confrontationist. But the system still held, odd though it might seem.
There were the elected chairmen of what were called Zila Parishads, or district councils; and
under law and under the rules that the government had framed, they had powers to undertake
development work. But it was limited in those years; and the overall responsibility was still that of
the district officer. You never saw long lines of people waiting to see the Chairman every day; but
whenever the district officer was in headquarters, or when he was in some part of the district, there
were always people waiting to see him, petitions in hand, wanting some kind of relief, some justice
for a perceived wrong, some help.
The governments of the day, the political leaders, knew this and chose to leave things that way, at
least then. One of the main reasons was that they knew that the district officers, the men in the IAS,
were not political. It was only in later years that some officers saw the wisdom of aligning with the
ruling party both for protection and advancement. The knowledge that they could trust the district
officer to get things done meant that he did in fact, rule; this began to mean, as I discovered for
myself, that apart from great amounts of energy, it needed craft, diplomacy, persuasion and only
occasionally the sternness of the law. But it called for these qualities and for something greater than
all these—what I can only call an earnest, transparent sincerity, born not out of years of encountering
the intrigues and turbulence of events, but out of the ideals that one brought from one’s formative
years. A good part of it came, I think, from the atmosphere in which one grew up in one’s family, and
another from the conditioning that was an almost unconscious part of one’s time in school and
college; sadly, not much really came from the training one received in the Academy.
I found this true, as far as I was concerned, and my discussions with my colleagues confirmed this.
All this did not last; perhaps we were witnesses to what was beginning to wither and die, but only in
one sense. It mutated into something else, as I was to find out when I returned to the districts as
Commissioner. But that is for later; in that time, when I left my first and last assignment as Deputy
Commissioner, District Magistrate and Collector, the traits I have mentioned were clearly there.
And what of the service? It was a recognizable entity, at least by those of us who belonged to it,
though it had, it has to be admitted, two groups or identifiable sets of people within it. One consisted
of those recruited by the Union Public Service Commission through the all-India examination, trained
in the National Academy of Administration and sent to different states—and roughly half of those sent
were from states other than the one to which they were sent. These were what were called the
‘regular recruits’, officially as well as unofficially, which I always found rather odd; did it mean that
the others were irregular recruits? The others were the officers promoted from the state civil
services, and were a ragtag lot of persons with little to bind them together except perhaps a
simmering resentment of the regular recruits.
What was the real difference? Not education, certainly. Some promoted IAS officers were not only
just as well educated but a number were erudite scholars, authorities in subjects like philosophy,
literature or mathematics. I think it was that factor that I mentioned earlier—a sense of innocence, of
transparency, of something that was a mix of these and a sharp sense of reality. It was certainly a
rather juvenile lack of cynicism, but also the almost unquestioned confidence that one belonged to a
special group, one was not isolated. Promoted officers, on the other hand, had no such moorings, no
shared assumptions or attitudes. Also, they were much older; when I took over as Deputy
Commissioner of Cooch Behar I was twenty-nine years old.
But one can go on speculating. The fact was that this group, the ‘regular recruits’, were in great
demand, not only as district officers but for different posts in the Secretariat. The public posturing of
political leaders were one thing; what they actually did was something else.
One other factor identified this group; a kind of bond, a propensity to help one another. This was an
invaluable help to me in my new assignment as Superintendent of Census Operations, a post that was
re-designated Director of Census Operations soon after I joined, possibly because someone did not
want to be mistaken for a clerical appendage to the system.
At first I considered the job a boring sinecure, a place where the government put someone who is
considered inconvenient for whatever reason. But as I began to realize what it entailed, the sheer
enormity of the task filled me with awe and apprehension, and a kind of excitement as well—a
challenge to my ability to get it done. It involved counting people, finding out basics about each of
them—sex, age, educational level, occupation, mother tongue and some other details. The point was
one had to count over forty million people, the population of the entire state.
The way that we were going to do this was to ask the primary school teachers in every district to
act as enumerators. They would be given a small honorarium for doing this work, and would be
trained to fill in the forms—one for each person—and then, on one given day, 1 February 1971,
starting at a specified time, they would spread out simultaneously and enumerate all the people in
their given area, finishing their work that day irrespective of the lateness of the hour. This was
necessary to ensure that people who were travelling were not counted twice; the area each
enumerator covered was not very big, so it was unlikely that they would do that if the work was done
simultaneously.
But thousands and thousands of primary school teachers had to be identified, and then trained, and
then given the forms which would then be collected, packed into separate packets and sent to Calcutta
where they would be manually counted by an army of young men and women in two or three large
counting halls. They would not just count, but fill in the details in different forms in different sheets
that would then be collated and over a period of time, we would be able to generate the information
that would form the basis of all planning and development projects and schemes in the country.
And who would organize the work? The district officers, of course. Only they could move through
their districts and order the primary school teachers to do this work. So my first task was to talk to the
district officers. As I travelled through the length and breadth of the state from one dusty, shabby
district town to another, I began to realize the value of the network—the bond that the IAS constituted.
Most of the district officers were either a year or two senior or junior to me; but in every district I
was received with warmth and great goodwill, and a ready agreement to do whatever was required of
them for this huge task. In the evenings I was invariably invited by the District Magistrate or Deputy
Commissioner to dinner at his house, where we spent some cheerful hours exchanging notes over
simple fare, occasionally preceded by a few generous and convivial drinks.
Those were rather dangerous times; the movement which came to be called Naxalism had spread,
not in all districts but in a number, and travelling by road at night, which was what I had to do to save
time, was not always safe. But the district officers always ensured I had some protection with me; in
one case, in the district of Birbhum where the Naxalites were particularly strong and had killed a
number of local officers, the DM insisted that a police officer sit with me and the driver in the jeep I
was using, with me sandwiched between the two, and with the police officer holding a drawn
revolver. He said I was not to argue, as that might just save my life. Nothing of course happened, but
that was the kind of concern that they showed. The network again.
Let me say quite frankly that had it not been for these young IAS district magistrates and deputy
commissioners the census of the state could not have been carried out, and I dare say this is just as
true of all the other states in the country. It was their unquestioned authority that made it possible, and
the sort of unspoken bond that they shared with me, one of the same breed. I have no doubt that bright
young people who went out to do a similar gigantic task who were, let’s say, academics or
statisticians, would have never have been able to do it, and would then have prepared excellent
reports on what went wrong.
The network included the subdivisional officers, not all of them IAS officers, but nonetheless very
much a part of the system of authority of which the DM or DC was the centre. They helped organize
the teachers, to hold the training camps (which meant they had to be trained first, which was what my
two deputies and I did over some very exacting months) and then get their block development officers
to collect and distribute the forms well in time, and then to get them all back, and package them in
good order.
It was not, of course, all a bed of roses; we had some strong associations of primary school
teachers, chiefly led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the CPI(M), and they were
aggressive and demanding. The government of the day was of the second United Front of Leftist
parties, a little—but only a little—more orderly than the first. The Chief Minister was Jyoti Basu, the
CPI(M) leader, who was to all appearances dour and uncompromising, but was very astute and
sensitive to people’s reactions and responses. The menace of Naxalism was something he had to
tackle, and it proved to be difficult, as the Naxals brought violence to the city, to Calcutta; first a
traffic constable was killed in broad daylight, then another. Calcutta began to experience a kind of
apprehension that bordered on terror.
 It got to a point when passengers coming to Calcutta airport in the evenings would not leave in their
taxis or cars till all of them were ready to go, and then a convoy would head fearfully towards the city
along the completely deserted Eastern Metropolitan bypass, a new road then. It was understood that if
one car stopped, all the others would stop as well. Only when the convoy got to Park Circus did cars
go their different ways.
This being the kind of tension in Calcutta, one can well imagine what it was in the district towns
and in the smaller townships and villages. And our work was in those regions, and of course in
Calcutta as well. It was a formidable task, but one that the DMs and DCs and their officers got down
to with determination and, where necessary, with some firmness, and the work was done.
Some district officers did tell me, ruefully, that in one or two areas they couldn’t vouch for the
veracity of the count, as conditions were really very disturbed in those pockets; Naxals were on the
prowl, and terrified school teachers may have, in those areas, returned earlier than they should have.
But fortunately these were few, and the numbers involved not very many. We agreed we’d do a
furtive recount in these places just to check the figures; not very correct in terms of data collection,
I’m sure, but it was the best we could do.
The work of collating the enormous amount of information collected proceeded as the year went on
in my office, far removed from the momentous events that were taking place in the state and in the
country. In the state, then under President’s Rule again, the menace of Naxalism was tackled by the
Governor, A.L. Dias, and by the Union Minister for Education, who was also Minister for West
Bengal Affairs, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, a brilliant barrister who had once been a minister in Dr B.C.
Roy’s government, then dramatically resigned from it and from the Congress Party. He later rejoined
the party when Indira Gandhi was building it up; they were personal friends, which helped.
They were assisted by the emergence of the Chatra Parishad, the youth wing of the Congress Party,
which countered the political offensive of the Naxalites. From what one read in the papers there were
skirmishes between the two and a number of Naxalites were killed. Slowly the Chatra Parishad,
headed by two young men, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi and Subrata Mukherjee, grew in strength, and the
fear generated by the Naxal groups faded.
The year 1971 also saw, in its last month, the creation of a new country in the subcontinent,
planned and executed with surgical precision by Indira Gandhi. Units of the Indian Army swept into
what was then East Pakistan, outthinking the huge army that Pakistan had stationed there and, after
defeating it in a number of intensely fought encounters, forced it to surrender, and thus effectively
dismembered Pakistan. Fighting alongside them was the Mukti Bahini, the freedom fighters of what
became Bangladesh, and it was a heady moment when, in the capital of the new country, Dhaka, their
national flag was raised and their new national anthem rang out—like our own, it too was a song
whose words and music came from the peerless Rabindranath Tagore. He must surely be the only
poet who has given two countries their national anthems.
The next year brought Indira Gandhi back to power with a strength that she never had till then; her
power was supreme—she had created a new country and done it in spite of the warlike noises made
by the United States, and at home there were huge crowds that saw her as the embodiment of Durga,
their protector and deliverer. It was a sentiment that she craftily exploited to the full. On the strength
of her immense popularity and power a Congress government was voted into office in West Bengal,
headed by Siddhartha Shankar Ray as Chief Minister.
I was getting a bit bored with the routine of the census work then, consisting as it did of overseeing
the compilation of large amounts of demographic statistics. So when I was asked by Siddhartha Roy
to join his personal secretariat I accepted the offer with alacrity. Within a year of my joining I had
become Secretary to the Chief Minister, with a compact secretariat to oversee, handling all the papers
and letters that came to the Chief Minister.
Files from different ministers I studied myself, and placed them before the Chief Minister with
brief explanatory notes if the issue was complicated or not easily seen in the myriad notes and letters
in the file.
This is when I began to see how a state worked, right from the nerve centre, so to speak. I was also
Joint Secretary to the cabinet, and sat in on all the cabinet meetings, helping the Chief Secretary
record the decisions taken and then getting them approved by the Chief Minister. I found that the Chief
Minister began to trust me with virtually every paper that came to him; he made it a point, however, to
ensure that I was never involved in or privy to the political work he did.
That was one of the firm principles that Siddhartha Ray laid down concerning the manner in which
his secretariat was to function. Another was that we were not to send him files from other ministers
with ‘shadow files’ of our own, in which we would give our opinion on whatever proposal was
being placed before him. Explanatory notes, meant to make reading a file simpler—something like a
clear summary of the issue—were different, and often those were what we worked on. And while one
of us would be present at all formal meetings in his room, no one was permitted in when he met
ministers individually, or the Chief Secretary.
This meant in specific terms that no one in the secretariat was at liberty to comment on a proposal
or policy sent up for the Chief Minister’s approval. All one could do—and did—was to summarize
the contents of the proposal or policy to save the Chief Minister time. In other words, the Chief
Minister’s secretariat did not become a sort of super-secretariat, the repository of power that it could
have been. I found this a huge relief, because, while I was not the éminence grise that some others
holding similar positions in other states had or were to become, I was able to see how government
functioned, how policy was formulated, and above all, how the civil service and the political
executive related to, and worked with, each other.
This was, now that I look back on those times, significant for more than just that reason. It was also
the first time that I was able to see how a different set of IAS officers—all considerably senior to me
—functioned. Between them and me there was no camaraderie as there was with the district officers;
there was goodwill, to be sure, but also a little distance. I took that for granted, and so did they; the
IAS was nothing if not strictly hierarchical.
And yet I did discover that there was a bond between all of them—a much looser, more nebulous
bond perhaps, but one that was evident in their day-to-day dealings with one another. A Secretary
would drop in to the Finance Secretary’s room and sort out some tangle with him that would
otherwise have taken weeks, if not months of notes and counter-notes in files. Sometimes differences
could not be resolved between two secretaries, so the two met in the Chief Secretary’s room and he
helped work out a resolution acceptable to both or all, if there was more than one player involved.
How did I come to know this? Simply because the Chief Secretary often called me in to these
meetings, so that I could see how issues were resolved, he said. I rather think he did it because he
hoped I’d tell the Chief Minister what a fine job the Chief Secretary was doing, but I was very
conscious of Siddhartha Ray’s firm instructions that his secretariat never interfere with the processes
of governance, so I never did. The poor Chief Secretary never knew if I did or not, and diligently
summoned me to many of these meetings. It did him no good, but I got a wonderful opportunity of
seeing senior IAS officers at work.
I think the beginnings of the changes in attitudes that have now come to be commonplace, and much
more pronounced today, were noticeable then. ‘My Minister will not agree’ or ‘I will have to get
Minister’s [sic] approval’ were responses that came in a number of times, though some officers also
had responses like ‘I’ll get this past the Minister’ or ‘I’ll get the minister to sign this’. Of course,
much depended on the Minister and the Secretary; but the first signs that the IAS as a service was
beginning to transform into a service that advised and consented from one that persuaded ministers to
a particular point of view were showing—at least in West Bengal, and at least to me.
It would be foolish to assume that someone who was, in a district, still the de facto ruler could then
come to a post in the secretariat and suddenly become the ‘compleat adviser’. There must have been
some adjustment problems, some friction and some unpleasant moments. Colleagues often spoke of
ministers being irritable or arrogant, of how they, the civil servants, told them off, and all of that
seemed to be part of the process of a system beginning to fall into place.
Often there were ministers who were quite at sea with bureaucratic procedures, or were
obfuscated by wily civil servants into a state where they thankfully accepted the ‘advice’ given to
them while it was really the decision the civil servant wanted. And often it was just the reverse; the
minister was fully aware of the system and the issues before him and told the civil servant just what
he wanted done, and made sure it was done. It seems to have been a very disorganized transition that
depended a great deal on the individual players, civil servants and ministers, but that it was a period
of transition was clear even then to someone who was not really directly part of the actual system.
The infamous emergency proclaimed by Indira Gandhi in 1975 followed, and then the elections of
1977, which swept the Congress away and brought in the Left Front in West Bengal and the Janata
Party government in the Centre. When the results of the poll indicated clearly that the Left Front was
coming to power in West Bengal, the Chief Secretary hastily moved me from my post as Secretary to
the Chief Minister to the post of Special Secretary in the Department of Commerce and Industries, on
the official grounds that I had become eligible for the super-time scale of pay, that is I was eligible to
hold a post equivalent to Commissioner of a Division. He said it was for my own good; perhaps it
was, though I suspect he just wanted me out of the way. But it was just as well.
The new Minister for Commerce and Industries was from the Forward Bloc (but not, mercifully,
Kamal Guha) and civil enough to me on the rare occasions that he met me. Otherwise I was left to
myself, and given a virtual free hand with the work allotted to me by the kindly Secretary, Roma
Mazumdar, who also protected me from political persecution, which the Minister was being urged by
his party to start against me for being ‘Congress-minded’, whatever that meant. In fact, she went out of
her way to see that I was left alone; one major reason for that was that she was Monomoy
Bhattacharyya’s sister-in-law and batchmate. But it was also the bonding of the service, the closing of
ranks, as it were, something that many of us felt very conscious of in those first turbulent days when
the Left Front stormed into Writers’ Buildings.
A year later I was asked if I would like to go on deputation to the Government of India as Joint
Secretary; it was very likely that the new government wanted me out of the way, and this was their
standard method then of getting rid of unwanted officers. I accepted with alacrity, and packed my
household into crates once again, this time for my second shift to Delhi. I was as keen to go as the
state was to have me leave—there was, therefore, much good cheer at the few goodbyes I exchanged
with colleagues and the suddenly friendly Minister, who thought, rightly, he was seeing the last of me.
 7

The Pucca Civil Servant

There was one major difference that became almost immediately apparent when I joined the
Department of Social Welfare, then a part of the Ministry of Education, as Joint Secretary. I was
working with a number of IAS officers, to be sure; my Secretary, Saran Singh, was one, and so were
the other joint secretaries. But they were from different states, from different ‘cadres’ of the IAS, and
were either senior to me or junior (actually they were all senior, as I was a very junior Joint
Secretary) and the bonding that I have been referring to was, to that extent, a little less strong; in fact,
with some of them it didn’t exist at all.
The way the system worked was this: there were bundles of papers called files, in which every
scrap of paper relating to a particular subject was kept. Perhaps they should have been called, more
properly, records, but they were not. Now every time a letter or some other form of communication
arrived relating to a subject in a particular file, it was ‘marked down’ by the officer who got it—it
could have been the Secretary, Joint Secretary, Deputy Secretary, or Under Secretary—to what was
called ‘the office’ or more commonly (since we as a race have always been rather foxed by the
definite and indefinite articles in the English language) ‘office’.
‘Office’ meant, finally, a lower-division clerk in a section, who then recorded a note in the thick
wad of papers collectively called (again, without the definite or indefinite article) ‘note sheet’. This
note reproduced, sometimes verbatim, what the paper contained, with a suggestion on what was to be
done with it. These suggestions were rarely suggestions for any major action; it was usually to refer it
to some other section, or seek a clarification from somebody or something similar.
The file then went to the upper-division clerk, and from him to the section officer, and at each stage
suggestions would be made, usually concurring with the initial suggestion by just signing the file. That
implied consent.
Thus the file journeyed upwards, unless it was sent ‘down’ again at some level with a query of
some kind. But eventually it did arrive at a Joint Secretary’s desk.
A Joint Secretary, as my secretary—the secretary of my department, that is—kindly explained to
me, could send a file directly to the Minister for final orders, and it would, on its return journey come
to the secretary—who could disagree with the Joint Secretary’s proposal or advice and sent it back to
the Minister, or send it back to the Joint Secretary, initialling it—mark you, initialling it, not signing
it, because no one could sign the file after the Minister had—and then the file would carry on back to
someone, whoever the Joint Secretary decided would do, for the issue of a response.
What this elaborate procedure, called ‘processing’ in government parlance, achieved was that the
dreary work of reading the paper, linking it to previous papers and communications on the subject,
presenting as concisely as possible the issue presently to be decided, was all done for the Joint
Secretary on the basis of the first note from the lower-division clerk, which often was refined at the
various other levels before it came to the Joint Secretary.
The British put this system in place because it then made it possible for the Joint Secretary to send
up several files on different subjects to the Minister for a decision, or even decide some issues at his
own level, if the rules of business had given him the powers to do so. By the evening he would have
handled a number of such files and then leave, satisfied, for the club for a game of tennis or bridge
followed, no doubt, by a couple of drinks before he headed home.
All this made it very pleasant to be a Joint Secretary, except that issues took a long time to decide.
Files travelled at their own pace, and it was only many years down the line that there were some
changes made to the system—things like ‘level-jumping’, that is, a file need not go to all levels but
just two or three before it was presented to the Minister, and the system of desk officers, who were
placed somewhere between section officers and Under Secretaries and were supposed not only to
maintain their own files but also take decisions on their own on some minor routine matters, thus
speeding up things to an extent.
And there was the growth within the system, a kind of internal tumour that created its own
problems, as tumours tend to do. Meetings. They were called to expedite decisions, and almost
always never did. But they did succeed in delaying normal work, as files would pile up on tables as
officers were sometimes in meetings for hours together.
IAS officers soon became adept at handling the system, and of making it work for them. If an
officer who had worked in the Ministry of Petroleum was shifted to the Ministry of Agriculture it
would take him a relatively short time to get his subordinate officers to brief him about the subjects he
was handling, do some basic reading, and then emerge as a fully functional bureaucrat who was able
to use the jargon specific to that ministry with ease and become a part of the system, smoothly,
effortlessly. (I mention this only to illustrate the ease with which IAS officers moved from one post to
another; in actual fact if an officer was shifted from Petroleum to Agriculture he would take it as a
terrible disaster and humiliation, and spend his time lobbying to get back to Petroleum.
The reason for his wanting to do so is easily explained. The more ambitious officers—those who
did not consider whatever work they were given as work that needed to be done but wanted it to be
work that gave them power and the ability to meet persons of consequence, to be seen at places which
were places they felt they should be seen, and where they considered themselves as being of some
consequence—were, I’m convinced, defined by their positions; without them they were nothing. This
kind of officer had an essential lack of self-esteem that required them to adorn themselves with the
robes of office. And the more splendid the robes, the more splendid they felt they were.
But for the normal, or more correctly, the journeyman civil servant, perhaps it was the acquired
ability to decide something, often under stress, that made officers who had reached the rank of joint
secretaries particularly suitable for these jobs. Decisions taken as district magistrates and divisional
commissioners, amidst ear-splitting slogans screamed by frenzied people, perhaps throwing stones,
setting fire to houses, buses and cars … the first decision to stay as calm as possible and as rational
as possible, then act carefully to bring ugly situations under control. Other, many other decisions had
also to be made—as heads of different organisations, directorates and other agencies, amidst uglier
circumstances like veiled (and often not so veiled) threats from those close to the ruling party or
parties, or amidst the even more dangerous pressure of appeals from colleagues. None of them were
easy, but they had to be taken.
Translate this to decisions put in the form of proposals or suggestions made in the ubiquitous files
on different issues; the difference lay in the fact that in the file one needed to use the persuasion of
language, and that often led to persuasion in meetings where language and—let’s face it—charisma
counted to get a decision clothed as a proposal across. Should a request for the setting up of
something like a private airport be cleared? Should the air force acquire Sukhoi fighters or the F-16s?
Persuasion and suggestions were often just the means to get a decision taken a decision that one felt
was right.
I am of course creating what Le Carré called a ‘legend’, but only in part. There were murky aspects
to all this, aspects that were sometimes disgusting, and contemptible. Sometimes IAS officers in these
and higher positions behaved in ways that would put the worst politician to shame. One such officer
played his cards well enough to manage to convince the then Prime Minister and other senior
ministers he was the right choice for the post of Cabinet Secretary, and then from there went on to
become a Governor. It was just after he had been sworn in that some details of his less than savoury
dealings came to light—lavish parties given in his palatial Lutyens zone bungalow where the bills
were picked up by various ‘contractors’, bills running into lakhs, and others that he apparently paid
but from where was anybody’s guess—no ordinary civil servant could produce 70,000 or 80,000
rupees to pay for a dinner bill. But there were those who did not descend to these depths; these were
the honourable ones, the ones of whom one, typically, hears so little. And it is by their work, finally,
that the IAS must be judged. Good work does get done; the right decisions do get taken. The business
of government does proceed along rational and necessary lines.
My years as a Joint Secretary were special, as they were to all those who have been joint
secretaries, because my work was in part the merely bureaucratic—‘put up’, ‘with pps’—and in part
the formulation of policy that occasionally went through as one had framed it, occasionally modified
at higher levels, but the base stayed the proposal spelt out in one’s original policy formulation. I spent
a few years in the Department of Social Welfare and then about three years in the ministry of defence.
To say that the two were dissimilar would be to put it very mildly indeed. And, oddly, I found more
intrigue existed in the tiny Department of Social Welfare than in the giant, powerful Ministry of
Defence! Was it because the people in the former were lesser people? Much as it seemed to me then,
I don’t think so. It was more likely because the officers in the defence ministry had little time for it.
They had too much to do, and what they had to do was usually formidable in its implications and size.
In the Department of Social Welfare one of the branches I had to look after was called
‘Handicapped Welfare’. The phrase is unfashionable now, having been replaced by more politically
correct words like ‘differently abled’ but to me, then, as now, the word is a more direct and simple
way of describing just what it was with which the branch was concerned. It did not, as some of the
shriller activists have claimed, display the patronizing attitude that people have towards those not as
fortunate, nor do I think that it does so now.
Using the system and procedures I have described I soon got to learn the basics of the work in
hand, and I learned most of it from one of the most remarkable persons I have ever met. He was a
Deputy Secretary in the department called Lal Advani. He was not a member of the IAS, had come in
from outside, if I remember correctly, as what was called a subject matter specialist, and then was
absorbed by the system.
Lal Advani was blind. He had lost his sight when he was thirteen or thereabouts after a spell of
severe illness. But he went on to finish his schooling and then obtained a good degree from a
university. When I first met him, in the department, I didn’t realize he was blind. He would come into
my room with his files, unaided, and then discuss them with me one by one; we would decide on what
course of action would be taken with the different issues that the files contained, and he would then
gather them up and leave. Neither in our discussions nor in the references he made, while talking, to
various matters, was it evident that he could not see.
It was literally some months later that I began to wonder about his sight, because I noticed he rarely
looked down at his files or read a paper in them—he merely referred to the paper or letter and
handed me the file to see for myself. But then he walked in so confidently, and walked out with the
same confidence so I put away the thought. It was he who told me, one day when we were talking
about the establishment of what was to be called the National Institute for the Visually Handicapped
in Dehra Dun, that he was blind.
‘You must make allowance for the occasional outbursts of ill temper that the blind sometimes
show,’ he told me once, after we had both been talking to a blind representative of a voluntary
agency, the Blind Relief Association. ‘We are usually rational, but at times our handicap does make
us express our anguish and exasperation in terms of anger.’
‘What do you mean, “we”?’ I asked him.
‘Well,’ he said and smiled, ‘I am blind. Didn’t you know?’
I was stunned. ‘No,’ I said finally. ‘Believe me, I didn’t.’
He then told me how he came to lose his sight.
‘But you get about with such ease, your files …’
‘I thought you would ask,’ he replied. ‘I have a PA whom I trust and who is very helpful. He writes
all the notes and then takes my hand to where I have to sign.’
‘And your walking about, to my room, elsewhere?’
He smiled again. ‘You don’t notice, but just outside the door my peon waits for me. I have counted
the steps it takes to get to your table, just reach out with my hand a little once I get there, feel the chair
and sit down.’
I was not only dumbfounded but felt, oddly, ashamed of myself.
In the months that followed I learned a great deal from Lal Advani. Perhaps the most important and
abiding thing was what resolution and determination meant. He took me into the world of the blind,
without any rancour or self-pity. He told me how, when a person loses his sight, he goes through a
period of ‘mourning’: that was the time when the person quite often lost the will to live, and endured
misery of a kind that ‘it is impossible to describe or talk about’. Counselling and sympathetic support
helps, but only partially. Ultimately it is the person himself who has to come to terms that he will
never see again.
 ‘But how do you manage?’ I asked him. ‘What about paying for things, don’t you get cheated?’
‘Well,’ Advani said in a matter-of-fact manner. ‘Yes, sometimes. But I never carry too much
money. I know the difference in size between a ten-rupee note and a five-rupee note, and between the
coins. Sometimes I get the wrong amount back as change.’
He smiled. ‘But you’ll be surprised how rarely that happens.’
Once, when he and I had gone for a meeting to Bangalore he laughed out loud, amused at my plight.
This was when we had just got to the rest house we were staying in and there was a power failure. I
couldn’t see a thing, and called for a candle or lantern.
‘You see what we face all the time,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Now, just sit down on the nearest chair
and wait. Someone will come to help.’
His own handicap made him that much more sensitive to the other disabilities—and he taught me
about them as well, and removed the usual misconceptions that I, like many others, had.
‘You should not talk of the “deaf and dumb”,’ he told me, ‘Someone who is deaf usually has all the
organs for normal speech. It is just that he cannot hear the sounds and therefore does not make them.
We learn, basically, through imitation, from the time we’re infants. Deaf children cannot hear their
parents and so never speak. Not unless they are given speech therapy.’
‘Deafness,’ he once told me, ‘is the most terrible of all handicaps. It isolates the person from the
world, while giving them the illusion that they are part of it. They may write, but their speech is
usually distorted, because they can never hear what they sound like. It can also be dangerous. How
often we warn others of a risk—be careful, that wire’s exposed and you’ll get an electric shock, or
don’t cross the road, there’s a car coming, and things like that. But if the deaf person isn’t looking at
you he will not be able to hear such warnings, not even the horn of an oncoming car or bus.’
He told me of the many things a blind person has to learn. One of them was, he said, keeping his
facial expression composed. Blind persons may grimace, or smile widely for no reason, because they
cannot see themselves. He has to learn that, even though he lives in Stygian darkness, others don’t and
he must compose his face so that others do not find him strange.
I left the Department of Social Welfare after about three years, of which I spent about six months as
a UN consultant at ESCAP in Bangkok and a year after that as a Visiting Fellow of Queen Elizabeth
House, Oxford. The one memory that I took with me, the most valuable, was of Lal Advani, and his
indomitable spirit and courage.
I think I took one other thing, which was the capacity to subdue the almost irresistible assumption
of an IAS officer that he can ‘pick up’ any subject and soon be expert enough to tell the real experts
how to set about their business. Lal Advani taught me to accept that one can learn and be guided by
others who know more and will always know more about a subject or an issue because they have
spent their lives doing little else. The virtue lay in giving such people’s ideas support, and taking
them through the procedural labyrinths of the government.
One other factor needs mention. In the districts, in particular, there was some amount of
socializing; officers dropped in for a drink, sometimes there were dinners, and often the District
Magistrate and Superintendent of police would go on joint tours of inspection, and spend a good deal
of time together. This increased the bonding which I’ve mentioned, and it helped if one was not
averse to a drink. In the state capital the socializing was less, but there was some; now and then
groups of officers would get together usually in one another’s houses for a modest meal and a few
drinks. Ranjit Gupta, the tall, handsome Chief Secretary, would regularly have relaxed cocktail
parties at his elegant home, where his utterly charming wife, Mira, held court, with young officers
gathered round her like moths to a flame. Except that she didn’t singe them, leave alone burn them up;
that she did to the wives she didn’t like, but in such a charming way that the poor wretch never
realized what was happening. Ivan Surita had more boisterous parties in Siliguri and Darjeeling,
where, with the district officers, he also had some tea planters, the majority of whom were English.
This was something that simply did not exist in Delhi. It made one’s relationship with fellow
officers that much more formal and distant; there was goodwill enough, and the awareness of the link
the service provided, but it ceased after office hours. One reason was the fact that, by the time I got
there, officers could not afford to entertain; most had, by then, families with small children, and the
modest salaries we got made it difficult to consider spending anything on entertainment. It would only
have exposed one’s frugal household, an embarrassment that one preferred to avoid. Batchmates did,
once in a while, have small dinners or Sunday lunches, but there were other invitees among whom
one felt rather lost; in some cases one found, I have to admit, the host’s friends eminently avoidable
for a variety of reasons.
One realized, sadly, that we had grown away from each other; the immediacy of shared
experiences in Mussoorie were in the past, and in the intervening years each one had developed his
or her own set of other friends and acquaintances, and not all of them, as I say, were people one was
very keen to meet. This weakened the bonds between us, undoubtedly; the bonds of those who
belonged to the same ‘cadre’—that is, to the same state government—were a little stronger than those
of batchmates in Mussoorie.
I mention this because it played a very vital role in the relations that developed, including intrigues
and lobbying, within the service, something that vitiated it over time and made one keep even further
away from those whom one once considered friends.
I was soon to find this out. My stint with ESCAP and then the wonderful year I spent as Visiting
Fellow in Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, came, inevitably, to an end. I returned to Delhi, and to a
rather unpleasant situation. Before I had gone from the Department of Social Welfare I had been
assured by my Secretary, the ever cheerful and benign Saran Singh, that there would always be a
position for me in the department on my return. One of the joint secretaries’ tenure in Delhi would end
around the time of my return and I would therefore find a vacant slot quite conveniently.
Consequently, soon after I got back to Delhi I went to the department to report for duty. I was greeted
with some unease and advised to see the Secretary. Saran Singh was no longer there and I did not
know the new Secretary, A.S. Gill, who was far less cordial than Singh; there was none of the
‘bonding’ that I have been holding forth about earlier on.
‘Yes,’ he said without much enthusiasm, ‘I was told you would be returning. There is a position,
but it is in the division that deals exclusively with matters relating to women. Is that acceptable?’
I told him, hesitantly, that I had no experience of that division or of the issues it looked after. He cut
in, with what seemed to me rather surprising eagerness.
 ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘I thought you wouldn’t like it. Well, that is it, then. Please go to the
establishment officer about your posting.’
He indicated that the meeting was over, and I could leave.
I was out of his room, and without a post.
I went to the establishment officer, who processes the posting of IAS officers. He was a breezy
young man, S.P. Bagla, an IAS officer of the Punjab cadre. He was not uncivil, but brisk to the point
of being almost rude, though he tempered his briskness with a cheerful demeanour.
‘There is just one post at the moment,’ he said. ‘It’s in the secretariat of the Asian Games and
you’ll have to work under S.S. Gill. Go and see him, and if he says it’s okay I’ll process your case.’
He waved me out of his room. With a smile, of course.
Having no other alternative I trudged across to the office of the Asian Games secretariat. The Asian
Games were to be held in 1982, a year on, and when I got to the office it was like stepping into
something out of Dante’s Inferno. There were people everywhere, shouting, some were running to or
from some room, there were what seemed to be endless lines of people bringing in air conditioners
into the place, and carpets, and a host of other expensive items. I was ushered into the Secretary’s
room. I had never seen S.S. Gill before but it was rumoured he was close to Rajiv Gandhi, the son of
the Prime Minister.
‘You’ll have to work bloody hard,’ he said curtly. ‘I don’t want lazy buggers here.’
Something about the place sent alarm bells ringing inside me. I told him I would have no problems
with working hard, but I didn’t think this was the place for me.
‘Then go and tell the establishment officer,’ he said abruptly and went back to his papers.
‘You’re a fool,’ Bagla said cheerfully when I saw him. ‘Because Gill’s an influential man and you
would have got good postings if you’d got in with him. But now you’ve been choosy, and that means I
can’t help. You simply have to wait.’
‘But what do I do?’ I asked.
‘Go on leave, of course,’ Bagla said, the cheerfulness waning a little, ‘Put in a leave application
and wait for a posting.’
And that was what I did. I went on leave, even though I didn’t particularly want to, and spent my
time walking in Lodi Gardens. I discovered that Ved Marwah, an IPS officer who had also been to St.
Stephen’s College, as I had, and who had for a while been in the West Bengal cadre of the IPS, was
also walking around in the gardens. We had met when I was SDO Barrackpore and he was Additional
Superintendent of Police, 24 Parganas, that is the same district, and our common bonds made us
friends, which we’ve been ever since.
‘What are you doing?’ Ved asked me. ‘Why the dejected wandering about?’
I told him. He laughed uproariously and said, ‘Welcome to the club. I’m without a posting too!’
From then on walking in Lodi Gardens became a rather pleasant way of passing my time; Ved was,
and is, wonderful company, and regaled me with stories of his times in West Bengal. He had been
Secretary of the National Police Commission, which had completed its work and given the
government its report. In its turn the government kept Ved on leave, on the grounds that there was no
post for him. So, he said, he was resuming his acquaintance with Lodi Gardens. My gloominess
caused him endless amusement.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You’re probably doing the government a favour. You may have taken some
decision somewhere and landed the government and yourself in a hell of a mess!’
One really good turn he did me was to make me a member of the India International Centre, which
was next to Lodi Gardens. He said it was an interesting place, and I might like to use their library, as
he did. Becoming a member was easy in those days, and I became one as Ved had advised me to.
A few days later I met a senior IAS officer of the West Bengal cadre, K.P.A. Menon, then Defence
Secretary, at some event, a get-together of the West Bengal cadre officers, if I remember correctly.
He asked me what I was doing and I told him—nothing.
‘But that Bagla fellow said no one was available to fill the vacancy I have for a Joint Secretary,’
he said rather angrily, ‘See me tomorrow morning in my office.’
When I went there, he picked up the phone and spoke to Bagla. ‘I want Bhaskar Ghose in my
ministry,’ he said. ‘Send me his file.’ He told me to come back in about ten days.
‘We’ll have you here by then,’ he said.
You see what I mean by bonding. Not lobbying, not networking. Menon thought nothing of asking
for me because we belonged to the same fraternity, the same service.
Rather bizarrely, I did get my orders posting me to the defence ministry, but by then Menon was no
longer Defence Secretary. P.K. Kaul had been appointed in his place. I saw him and he was very
matter of fact.
‘I don’t know you,’ he said, ‘but you were selected by my predecessor and the orders have been
issued, so you can join.’
I did.
The Ministry of Defence was far, far removed from the Department of Social Welfare, as I have
said; not only in what it handled, but the way it did so. This was where I saw for the first time IAS
officers having to handle the formidable armed forces—the army, navy and air force. Now these three
services were not directorates to whom one handed down orders and instructions. Relations with
them were formal, and guided by clear principles and conventions. If these provided for a decision
being made by the ministry, they followed it scrupulously. If they provided for a decision being made
by the services at whatever level, they would not let it be compromised, no matter who was involved.
I was assigned the responsibilities of a division of the ministry no one particularly wanted (which
was probably why I was given it), and it was a rather mixed bag—I had to handle matters concerning
the land and the administration of the huge estates the Army had, not by administering them—Heaven
forbid!—but by ‘processing’ files relating to acquisition of land or of obtaining governmental
clearance as provided for under rules and regulations or laws like the Cantonments Act.
Cantonments were governed, literally governed, by the service under which it came. For once I
was not part of the ruling elite, so to speak, but of the bureaucratic machinery that the elite needed to
manage the Army’s vast estates. Many of the army officers responsible for the management of
cantonments and some in Army Headquarters, were managers in the true zamindari style; one peppery
little Quartermaster General, or QMG in army parlance, a Lieutenant General, and one of the most
formidable in the army hierarchy, told me very bluntly, ‘Listen, you know what our policy is about
land? We will take what we can, and we will not part with a square inch, not unless it is literally
taken away from us. Understand?’
I didn’t, but his manner made it clear that it would be prudent for me to agree, which I did.
But one had to admit, and it will be something all of us would readily agree with, that the army
maintained its cantonments with a degree of cleanliness and order that ought to have made adjoining
municipalities ashamed of themselves. (They weren’t, because they were run by venal politicians
elected on various platforms.) Trees were planted and looked after; roads were smooth, if rather
narrow; the buildings were painted or whitewashed regularly; gardens carefully tended; and, within
their own resources, water and power were distributed with little or no theft. One could say that they
were more careful to see that the buildings used or occupied by service personnel were better served
than the civilian areas; that was a weakness that the service did not, regrettably, feel was unjustified.
On occasion they would even deny that such a distinction existed.
Ivan Surita, who had been in the army and won the Military Cross, had warned me: ‘When the army
wants land to be acquired watch out for what they call training areas—most of it’s usually for their
golf course.’ The peppery QMG would have none of this, of course. ‘Training areas are essential for
the army,’ he barked. ‘No question of sparing any of it, or of reducing it.’ If pressed he may have
confronted me with the fact that golf was a kind of training.
The Defence Secretary came up with a proposal that, given the extreme congestion of some cities
like Lucknow, Allahabad, Bareilly, and Meerut, the army might consider moving out from the
cantonments that were situated right in the centre of these cities. His reasoning was that the price of
the land occupied by these cantonments would be so great that it would provide for spacious, modern
cantonments outside the cities and leave enough for additional facilities to be added later on. The old
cantonments could be developed as the lungs of the existing cities, and also provide some land for
residential and commercial purposes.
I put this to the QMG rather hesitantly. I knew his dislike of parting with land. He looked at me
balefully for a long time, then said, ‘So you think we are unfit to stay in cities, is that it?’
I hastened to assure him I thought nothing of the kind but he cut me short.
‘You bloody babus think only you can stay in the cities, but we faujis are animals, and need to be
kept far away from what you think are civilized areas, hah?’
The economics of the proposal went out of the window.
‘Not one inch,’ he said, his voice shaking with rage. ‘Not one inch will we give of what we have.’
I told the Defence Secretary of his reaction and was asked to let the matter be. He said, in a matter-
of-fact tone, ‘If they don’t see a good thing when they get it, let things be what they are. But they’ll not
get any additional land easily from any state, I fear.’
The QMG got his comeuppance in a rather unusual way. Since 1857 the army had virtually total
control of the Red Fort in Delhi, the magnificent palace built by Shah Jehan as a part of the great city
of Shahjehanabad, which is now called Old Delhi or the Walled City. The Archaeological Survey of
India (ASI) had been asking the army for years to vacate the fort, which was a protected monument,
and one of the most prized monuments being looked after by the ASI. Their requests had been either
turned down or just ignored.
 Finally a note came down from the Prime Minister’s Office wanting to know why the army was not
vacating the Red Fort. To this a long, carefully drafted note was prepared under the direct
supervision of the formidable QMG, which explained the strategic necessity for the army to maintain
a presence inside the city because if there was trouble there it would be difficult to move forces in,
given the narrow medieval roads and streets. It was argued, persuasively, that it was precisely for
this reason that the army had been in the fort for over one hundred and forty years, and that the fact
that the army was there acted as a kind of symbol of stability among the local people, apart from
giving many a sense of security.
We sent the note on, adding little to it. After a month or so a note came from the Prime Minister’s
Office which reproduced a note recorded by the Prime Minister herself. This note said, in effect that
while she appreciated the sterling role of the army in helping to maintain stability not only in Delhi
but all over the country, she was unable to accept the argument that its presence in the Red Fort either
added to, or took away from, that role. The Prime Minister wished it to be noted that in the present
age the approaches to the old city of Delhi were wide enough to make the movement of all manner of
security forces into it and out of it easy and fast.
On the other hand, the Prime Minister said, the fort was a historic monument, a symbol of our
freedom struggle and it was only right that it was maintained as such by the ASI. She therefore
rejected all the arguments the army had put forward to staying on in the fort and required them to
vacate it as soon as it was practicable. She did mention, however, that the army had spent a
considerable amount of money on the fort and would need to be recompensed in terms of the funds,
and for the space they were to give up, with land elsewhere.
I took the note myself to the QMG and watched while he read it. For a moment I thought he was
going to have an apoplectic fit; he remained speechless for a long while, much to my enjoyment. Then
he put down the note abruptly.
‘Very well,’ he said slowly. ‘The PM’s orders will be carried out.’ To quote P.G. Wodehouse, he
had the look of a frustrated tiger whose personal physician had recommended a strict vegetarian diet.
I left, with a feeling of great satisfaction, I regret to say.
In point of fact, the army did not leave immediately, nor in a year nor in two. They left about twenty
years later, after endless meetings and discussions. I had long left the ministry but heard about the
final departure from erstwhile colleagues in the ASI, but later. All that the army now has is a small
house-keeping contingent that is needed for the flag-hoisting by the Prime Minister on Independence
Day.
Not that this aspect of the bureaucratic work I was doing did not have its dramatic moments. The
late, greatly missed, Shyam Chainani, an indefatigable crusader for the preservation of heritage
buildings in Mumbai and elsewhere told me to go over and take a look at what was happening in Pune
Cantonment. That was the more sprawling part of Pune, and land there was in very great demand.
Builders would pay virtually any price for it, and I’m speaking of the 1980s; the demand had set in as
far back as then. Shyam told me these builders were building with no setback at all from the roads,
which the cantonment regulations required them to have. No setback even for a pavement, leave alone
the mandatory setback that increased as the height of the building did.
 I went down to Pune Cantonment and saw for myself what the situation was. It was horrifying, to
say the least, and the cantonment executive officer had no explanation to give. He stammered, flailed
about for some words and fell silent. It was obvious he was on the take. I went straight to the station
commander, a Brigadier, who was Chairman of the Cantonment Board, and told him of this. He was
first astonished and then livid. I advised him to cancel all permissions the Board had given and set up
a group of army officers who could ensure that the mandatory requirements for the construction of
buildings were strictly followed.
Back in Delhi I sent for the Director General, Lands and Cantonments, and told him to put the
cantonment executive officer under suspension and start an enquiry against him. He did, but with some
initial feeble protests. The enquiry was in progress till I was moved from that division to the division
looking after the navy; I later learned, not with any surprise, that not only the cantonment executive
officer but the DG himself was involved in the murky affair. Both were punished; if I remember
rightly, the DG was dismissed from service.
Apart from the dealings I had with the lands and buildings of the army I also had to handle papers
that came to the ministry from the Judge Adjutant General’s branch. These were in the main
disciplinary cases; under the Army Act certain category of cases had to have the government’s
approval before a decision by a court martial was implemented, particularly if there was any liability
under any criminal law of the land. The JAG, as he was called, was a very pleasant officer, but
beneath the pleasantness was a determination that was not easy to alter. Again, I did not have any
decision-making role here; but occasionally I did venture to point out what appeared to me to be
inconsistencies, or flaws in the arguments recorded in the files, and in most cases these were
pleasantly rejected by the JAG, leaving me with no alternative but to place the file before the
Minister or the Secretary.
While the JAG was a legal expert, as there were a number of cases where army personnel went to
civil courts with grievances, he was also an army officer, and very conscious of the crucial
importance of discipline—not just discipline in its workaday meaning but discipline as the very core
of the working of the army; as he once explained to me, battles are essentially about discipline, and
are often lost because it is compromised. On the other hand, battles are almost always won because
of the iron discipline of the fighting unit.
One knew the truth of this—we had, after all, been through a spell of training as probationers with
the army in the inhospitable terrain of the northern mountains of Kashmir—but in the Ministry of
Defence, some twenty years later, it manifested itself in a bizarre way. The JAG sent me a case where
a jawan who had been arrested on some charge subsequently died while trying to escape. Had he
been physically prevented from escaping, with, to modify an American phrase, extreme prejudice?
No, not at all was the reply. He simply died while trying to run away.
I found that a little difficult to comprehend and went to the JAG. He was, as usual, very pleasant,
but also very persuasive. He explained that the man suddenly broke free from the two jawans
escorting him to the barracks, then ran at full speed straight into a pond, came out of it and, because of
the water in his eyes, doubtless, slammed into a concrete post and fell down. He got up almost
instantly, tore downhill, tripped and fell into a ditch. By the time he got out of the ditch the two
escorts caught up with him and, while taking him to the barracks noticed he was losing consciousness,
so took him to the hospital instead, where he died.
‘Very unfortunate,’ the JAG said, ‘but it was all his own doing.’
He looked at me, impassively. He knew that I knew, and I knew that he knew that I knew. He had
his papers neatly flagged, the statements from the escorts, endorsed by a superior officer and
everything else.
I was no lawyer, and had no alternative except politely to take my leave.
Many years later I happened to see a film called A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise and Jack
Nicholson in the cast. The film referred to a form of punishment given in the US Marines called Code
Red. Watching it, I recalled the persuasive tones of the JAG as he explained the erring jawan’s
apparent bid to run away, though where to he did not explain.
But the brief period I had to interact with the army, left me with an admiration and respect for the
men who served in the army that I have carried with me through the years.
There were a number of IAS officers in the ministry; leaving aside the Defence Secretary who
preferred to have little to do with other than a select few, whom he gathered round him like a sort of
coterie, there were the joint secretaries. There was K.P. Nambiar from the Tamil Nadu cadre, very
quiet and reserved, but a warm-hearted and sincere friend once one got to know him, an extremely
intelligent officer who was as uncompromising in his handling of the most vital of issues as he was
with army officers who tried to pull rank with him. Nambiar and I became good friends, and our
friendship continued after we went our different ways when we left the ministry. Nambiar went on to
become Defence Secretary and later Chief Secretary of Tamil Nadu, posts he held with distinction
and dignity. There was Kaushal Mathur, of the Union Territories cadre, whom I had known from the
time both of us were in St. Stephen’s College and then in the National Academy of Administration in
Mussoorie. He and I got on well, and, as one would expect were friends rather than colleagues.
That’s what being in St. Stephen’s does to you, I suppose. There was a familiarity and a goodwill that
has lasted right through our college days and whenever we met, and when our work brought us
together, as it did in the Ministry of Defence. There was Shailaja Chandra, a Director—briefly with
me when I was looking after matters concerning the Adjutant General’s branch of the army and later
going on to work in the division looking after the air force—and S.B. Mathur, another Director who
worked with me in that dreary area that had to do with the army’s zamindari: its cantonments and
lands.
I was conscious even then of a bond that held us together, something that had to do with trust and
some assumptions about ability that were always justified. Were these instilled in us because of the
National Academy? I think, looking back, that it was, even though there may be many who’ll think it
sacrilegious for me to say so. Shailaja was much younger than me, as was S.B. Mathur; Nambiar was
about a year or two younger. So what did we have in common? Only the Academy. The Academy,
which it is so fashionable now to berate and be amused by as antiquated and boring. Not just the fact
that we had similar backgrounds—such similarities did not always result in there being a distinctly
felt bond, the one that we shared. Can one spell this out? Perhaps not. It’s a kind of shared awareness
that none of us can or would really want to define; it had to do, for example, with the shared terror we
had of Nawal Singh and our mastering the technique of riding, Hari’s canteen in the Academy from
where we got our toiletries, and stuff like chocolates and sweets, and odd things like that. None of us
would ever deny that we were friends, perhaps not ‘best friends’ to use a disgusting term that is
unfortunately sometimes useful, but friends nonetheless.
It was a bond that would make it easier for us to work together whenever we needed to; in the
ministry where we met, and later in other capacities. A useful administrative attribute, perhaps not
one that needs to be made too much of. It was useful; in some cases such bonds did not last, or even
develop. In our case it did. The point is the preconditions for there being such a bond were laid out in
the Academy, and it didn’t matter when you were there. I have had similar close bonds with officers
who were in the Academy decades after I had left it, and we’ve become good friends, whom I would
trust as I wouldn’t trust others. But, as I say, such bonds do not always develop and can instead lead
to prejudice and antipathy. Perhaps I—or we—were fortunate.
There is one other aspect of the administrative system of which we were then part that needs
mention here; it’s not a pleasant one, one of the darkest, murkiest sides of the system, and precisely
for that reason needs to be set out. This was the system of routing every single financial issue through
what were called ‘financial advisers’. The fact is they were nothing of the kind, or if they had once
really been advisers, had ceased to be that. They were in actual fact controllers, and everyone,
including the Secretary, had either to accept the ‘advice’—really the decision—of the adviser or they
would ensure the file kept going on a never-ending journey, eventually, sometimes after years, ending
up in the finance ministry, whose every decision was sacred and inviolate, where the ‘opinion’ of the
adviser was invariably upheld.
To put it very simply, how the system worked was like this: a file with a proposal for some kind of
expenditure, which could be anything from buying an additional set of curtains for a room to a project
costing crores, was sent, after it had been approved by the appropriate officer, to the Financial
Adviser. In theory, he examined the proposal and either ‘advised’ against it, or pointed out flaws, or
even advised that it was necessary. If he cleared it then, of course, the necessary orders issued
forthwith; but if he disagreed or made an adverse comment of some kind, the file was returned and
placed before the officer concerned. This officer could take the case to the Secretary, who could, in
theory, overrule the Financial Adviser. But if he did, the Financial Adviser had the right to ask that
the file be placed before the Secretary, Department of Expenditure in the Ministry of Finance. This
was, of course, the extreme weapon, the brahmastra. Most financial advisers used the other weapon,
delay. It was sometimes more effective.
But the fact was that, far from being advisers, they actually called the shots. They did not have the
responsibility, because that was with the wretched Joint Secretary or somebody in the ministry who
actually signed the orders, but they had all the power. These financial advisers were usually from the
Audits and Accounts Service, which later split into two separate services, and in the defence ministry
there was a full-blown service called the Defence Accounts Service. All of the members of these
services had sat for the IAS examination, and were offered these services since they did not qualify
for the IAS itself.
Consequently some of them brought to their work, not surprisingly, a degree of resentment against
IAS officers, and thus any proposal, particularly from an IAS officer, was usually negated for one
reason or the other. This was true in every ministry. It was the sole reason why proposals took so
long to clear, grants took so long to be given that the financial year would be nearing its end by the
time the money for a project arrived. It is the one major reason why development in this country has
been as slow as it has been, why education and health facilities have taken decades to reach people,
why there is always a simmering resentment and anger against the government, whatever its political
complexion. The villain has been in the system, the one factor that rendered the best-thought-out
projects and schemes useless because they were delayed for years together: the system of financial
advisers.
I know this is an overstatement of a dark, negative attribute of the administrative system. There
have been very sincere financial advisers, who have sought to improve proposals by removing
defects and gaps. The fault is not with individual officers. It is of the system, a system that has been
perpetuated because its perpetuation has been in the hands of the financial advisers themselves. An
overstatement or not, I firmly believe that India would have advanced far more rapidly had it not been
dragged down by the administrative system whose centre was the vitiating system of financial
advisers, a system that stripped officers of the rank of Secretary, not to mention Additional and Joint
Secretary, of any vestige of real financial power, and, consequently of the ability to translate projects
and programmes into action with speed.
And it isn’t as if these financial advisers were paragons of virtue. They had, among their ranks,
officers as venal as any, quite a few of who have been charged with dishonesty in one form or the
other. You may say that many IAS officers have also been found to be corrupt; yes, they have, and one
is not trying to paint the service as a band of brave soldiers fighting the good fight. But I would
certainly say that it is far more dangerous when the person who has the ultimate power to take the
final decision or give the final clearance, which is what a Financial Adviser is, is dishonest.
And nowhere have I seen the formidable power of the financial adviser as I have in the Ministry of
Defence. Everything financial had to go to them; they took the final decision on whether extra
stationery was to be provided to a particular office, and on whether a particular fighter aircraft was
to be acquired.
Actually the Armed Forces were perhaps the only three organizations that understood the financial
advisers, and also the fact that it was they who took the final decisions, not the minions—meaning us
—in the ministry. And they used this knowledge with a skill that was remarkable. None of the Armed
Forces decided on what high-value equipment would be bought. They evaluated different makes and
models—say of artillery, as they did when the Bofors gun was acquired—and sent the papers to the
ministry listing the models that suited their requirements. They left the actual selection to the ministry,
knowing only too well, that meant the financial advisers.
I saw this happen when I succeeded Kaushal Mathur as Joint Secretary (Navy). An anti-submarine
helicopter was required and the choice was between two makes: the Super Puma, which was French,
and the Westland Sea King, which was British. The Navy made it very clear that both measured up to
their requirements. When I, being new to the job and therefore unaware of these nuances, asked in all
seriousness which one they really preferred, they smiled enigmatically, and said both suited their
requirements. This led to discussions with both vendors—discussions in which I played a sort of
ornamental role, as it was really between the vendors and the Additional Financial Adviser handling
the acquisition.
I discovered that the financial advisers had, for all files which we sent them, a separate, internal
file of their own, in which they would record their real opinions and comments. Once these were
finalized, the final comment would be recorded in the ministry’s file and returned. That comment was,
in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, non-negotiable. The Additional FA would hold these long
discussions with the representatives of the Super Puma and the Sea King helicopters—all in my room,
or a meeting room—and then he would smile and say he would keep what they had said in mind and
‘process’ the case. In other words he would then record his comments in that internal file, seek the
approval of his superior officer—called the Financial Adviser (Defence Services), FA(DS), in those
years—then record his ‘official’ reaction on the file and send it back.
These processes took months, sometimes years. Prices escalated, negotiations had to be re-opened,
but the financial advisers had to have it their way, even if, in the end, the aircraft or gun cost one and
a half times more than it did when negotiations first started. I remember a furious Defence Secretary
telling a Financial Adviser that he had never ever known of a Financial Adviser who had become a
secretary to the Government of India; certainly, the Financial Adviser he was speaking to never did.
It is a mystery why the system has not been done away with, given all the Administrative Reforms
Commissions, and reviews of administrative procedure that the government has done over the years.
Yes, one does need financial scrutiny. One does not need too much intelligence to figure that out. But
the assumption that those designated financial advisers can make intelligent, perceptive analyses of
proposals and an officer of equivalent, or lower, rank in the ministry cannot is to be foolish.
Nonetheless, it is not foolishness that keeps the system in place. It is simply the all-consuming desire
to keep power within the purview of the finance ministry, to make it what it now is, the super ministry
of everything, with none of the responsibilities. An eloquent demonstration of the truth of the concept
enunciated by the German sociologist Robert Michels—the iron law of oligarchy. The
responsibilities remain, as we see every day, with the other unfortunate ministries—of agriculture,
steel, petroleum and others.
We have had only one piece of real administrative reform in the country; that was when the then
Finance Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, made the licensing of a whole slew of industries unnecessary,
bringing in the new era of liberalism in the 1990s. He could do it because he was the Finance
Minister and had the steadfast backing of the Prime Minister. Nothing like that can be done by any
other body, be it the Administrative Reforms Commission, headed by a person of great rank, or
anyone else. An underling in the finance ministry will render the commission’s recommendations
useless in a manner more skilled than a trained surgeon.
But financial advisers notwithstanding, my tenure as Joint Secretary (Navy) was one of the most
pleasant that I have ever had. The navy is a fine service, more informal than the army, being younger
and smaller, and their relations with us in the ministry were relaxed and easy. A Vice Admiral would
think nothing of dropping in to my room, exchange pleasantries over a cup of tea and leave; a
Lieutenant General would rather take voluntary retirement than do that.
 The navy was involved with the movement of the Commonwealth Heads of State to their ‘retreat—
a private informal day or two—during the meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of Government
(CHOGM). The IAF aircraft which would bring them to Goa would land at the naval airport at
Dabolim and be taken either by helicopter or by land to the retreat which was at Fort Aguada, then the
only resort of its kind in Goa. Because Dabolim was a naval airbase, the navy pulled out all the stops
to make the transfer of the VVIPs as smooth as possible. Dabolim was also used by civilian aircraft,
as there was no other airport, and special security measures had to be taken to insulate the prime
ministers and presidents from any possible threat. It all passed off smoothly, and, as the last of the
VVIPs took off for Delhi, the naval commander of the base asked me if I would stay on for a day. He
said that one of the destroyers was going out to sea for anti-submarine exercises and I might like to
watch the exercise. I immediately agreed.
Early the next day I went aboard the INS Ranjit. She looked very impressive, slim and sleek, like a
greyhound, and I soon found out that she was indeed very like a greyhound. She gathered speed so fast
that within minutes the shoreline had disappeared, and yet I could feel nothing but a gentle, gentle
swaying as she sped to the point where the exercise was to take place. Breakfast was served in the
smartly appointed dining room, a delicious meal during which I was introduced to a kind of omelette
that I was told was special to the navy—it was done with a pinch of baking powder and was
incredibly light and fluffy. I was then taken down to the control centre of the ship, which looked more
like the inside of a spaceship—winking lights and radar screens and a soft beep, and a sharper
pinging sound came through the very hushed voices of the officers and men in the control centre.
The exercise was exciting to watch as Sea Hawk aircraft came whooshing down out from the sky
and the ship turned sharply to avoid a ‘torpedo’; the submarine finally surfaced, there were brief
greetings and the destroyer turned towards Goa. Unbelievably, we were back just as I thought we had
got underway!
There were other very pleasant times; flying out to Kerala to review progress on the acquisition of
land for the Naval Academy was one; I would take a commercial flight to Cochin and from there be
flown in an Islander—a small aircraft—to Thiruvananthapuram. This meant flying over almost all of
Kerala, at least the coastal areas, and the young pilot would sometimes take me down to tree-top
height giving me an unforgettable view of the towns and villages that line the main north–south
highway—the quiet courtyards of houses, canals and lagoons and palm trees clustered around old
mansions—I saw all those and then, in an exhilarating moment, the pilot would climb up into the
clouds and we would see the far horizon of the Arabian Sea, and ahead, the deep blue of the Indian
Ocean.
But my work was quintessentially that of a bureaucrat; examining issues and recording notes that
were clearly of little use in the ponderous churning of the giant machine that was the service whose
affairs I was looking after. Could that work have been done by officers from the services? Many in
the three services thought so, and I know that there were some discussions between the services at the
highest level and the Defence Secretary; eventually nothing much came of it all.
There is some merit in the idea, as I see it. Chiefly, it’s a negative one, in that it would end the
waste of perfectly good civil service officers in jobs where they merely process files, and the
decisions are taken by the financial advisers and the big boys in the Defence Services. Besides, the
officers brought into the ministry from the services would know their subjects extremely well, and
might even fox the financial advisers on some matters. But the big problem would be that they would
never be able to distance themselves from their service, and they would become, over time,
extensions of the services functioning in the ministry, which would not be a wise thing at all.
My days as Joint Secretary (Navy) eventually came to an end, as did my tenure in the Government
of India. I had been away from West Bengal for about six years, instead of the usual five, as the one
year I spent in Oxford did not count towards my tenure. I had been blooded as, and had indeed
become, a true babu; able to ‘process’ files, craft—there is no other word for it—notes to suit
different occasions and personalities and do all the things a bureaucrat needed to do.
I don’t think I ever lost the essentials I had gathered as an IAS officer from my early years
onwards, but it had been mellowed and overlaid by a degree of craft and the awareness that clever
persuasion, in writing and in discussions, is as much an attribute of an IAS officer as the other
attributes I have described so far. They are not qualities that other officers did not have; indeed, some
of them had much more of it, and used those skills to great advantage. To that extent we joined the
courtiers, so to speak, to a greater or lesser degree. I returned to West Bengal, then, a slightly
different person, ready for the ways of the secretariat as I had known it and yet familiar with the state
as I never was with any other part of the country.
 8

Commissioner of a Division

I was not inducted into the secretariat when I went back to West Bengal. This was not surprising, as
the wariness the Left Front ministers had of someone who had been Secretary to the Chief Minister
during the last Congress regime was still very strong; the Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, sent me to north
Bengal, as Commissioner of Jalpaiguri Division.
The British had divided each province—now state—into a number of districts each of which was
literally ruled by the District Magistrate or Collector. Some provinces used former designation and
others the latter. Bengal has a mixture of the two; the northern regions, then connected very tenuously
to the capital, Calcutta, were regions given over to officers who were given a commission to extend
to these regions such laws and regulations as he felt could be enforced and were necessary—if he did
not, he ruled, quite literally, by executive fiat. These officers came to be known as commissioners,
and the districts carved out of the regions which they ruled were grouped together and called
divisions more for convenience than anything else.
These commissioners appointed officers to administer—or rule, more correctly—the districts that
came within their divisions, and they were, quite naturally, called deputy commissioners. Over time,
as the laws and regulations were extended to all these regions, the Deputy Commissioner became also
the District Magistrate and the Collector, but continued to be called the Deputy Commissioner.
With independence the state governments looked increasingly to the district officers to get things
done, and they, in turn reported to the state governments on various matters; communications both by
road, rail and telephone and telegraph made this possible, and gradually this direct link made the
district officers more or less independent of the Commissioner, who became little more than an
inspecting authority under the archaic colonial laws that were still in force. He also heard the odd
revenue appeal from an order passed by a district officer as Collector.
By and large the DC—as he was known in the northern parts of the state—was the key figure as far
as the people were concerned; the Commissioner was a shadowy figure who had little direct contact
with them. West Bengal had three divisions—Burdwan Division, with the Commissioner’s
headquarters in Chinsura in Hooghly district for reasons I have explained earlier in this book,
consisting of the districts of Hooghly, Burdwan, Bankura, Birbhum, Midnapore and Purulia. The
second was Presidency Division, with its headquarters in Calcutta, consisting of the districts of
Nadia, Murshidabad, revenue jurisdiction such as it was over Calcutta, and the district of 24
Parganas (a strange name for a district, to be sure). One isn’t very sure just how it came to be so
named, but one story was that when Robert Clive had petitioned the Nawab of Murshidabad, Siraj-
ud-doula, for some land where he could establish a factory for the East India Company, the Nawab,
while agreeing to give him some land, chose to demonstrate his contempt for these white-skinned
traders by giving him a tract of land that was barely above the level of the Hooghly river at high tide,
infested with mosquitoes and consequently a place where malaria and dysentery were afflictions
practically everyone had to suffer. Clive had to accept it, such as it was, and it was here that the city
of Calcutta came up, and the surrounding areas were constituted into a ‘district’. And lastly,
Jalpaiguri Division, with its headquarters in Jalpaiguri, consisting of the districts of Jalpaiguri,
Cooch Behar, Darjeeling, West Dinajpur and Malda, that is all the area north of the Ganga which
bifurcated the state as it flowed from the east into what is now Bangladesh. This was the division to
which I was sent.
It was certainly the most interesting of the three divisions, and, unlike the others, the
Commissioner, Jalpaiguri Division, had direct links with the state government apart from the archaic
links on revenue matters. A number of departments looked to the Commissioner to oversee the work
being done by their units in the field, but the unique feature of this post was that the Commissioner
was a part of the secretariat, as he was also Secretary of the Department of Hill Affairs of which the
minister in charge was the Chief Minister himself. There was a small department located in
Darjeeling and as Secretary, Hill Affairs, I was expected to go there every month for some time. The
Chief Minister himself made it a point to visit once every two months or so; when he could not, I went
down to Calcutta with whatever papers needed his approval.
I took up this responsibility as soon as I could for another reason; it was the highest position an
IAS officer could hold in the field, and, having been an SDO, an Additional DC, and a DC, being
Commissioner was, to me, a kind of satisfaction—I had held all the field posts an IAS officer could
have done, in the administrative hierarchy. There were, of course, other posts which had come up, but
this was the administrative, the ruling hierarchy.
Was this, then, what an IAS officer was really fit for, and expected to be, a part of the system of
administration that the British had left behind, with, of course, some added responsibilities? As I
began my tenure I did ask myself that question, but not as a part of any serious introspection; it was
something that crossed my mind from time to time, and the answers or reactions I had then were never
very satisfactory.
I began my stint as Commissioner with a little run-in with Nirmal Bose, a minister in the Left Front
government. Bose was from the Forward Bloc, and most certainly had discussed my appointment with
his party colleague, Kamal Guha, my old adversary from Cooch Behar. He sent a letter to the Chief
Minister, saying that my appointment was ‘dangerous’ and that I was a Congress sympathizer, that
North Bengal was a sensitive region and it would be unwise to have an unreliable man there and so
on. I knew of this because I was called in to see the Chief Minister, who gave me the letter to read.
After I had read it, he said, in his sardonic but grimly amused manner, ‘Have you been to see him?’
I said I hadn’t.
‘That’s the reason for this,’ he said pointing to the letter. ‘Go and see him before you leave for
Jalpaiguri.’
I did, but was not sure of the reception I’d get.
But Jyoti Basu was, as I have said, an astute person and a shrewd reader of men; it was one of the
many gifts that made him the leader he was. I was received by Nirmal Bose with great cordiality,
with an effusiveness I found embarrassing. Tea was offered, and repeated assertions made of how
pleased he was that I was going to North Bengal, that there could not have been a better choice and so
on.
‘I will need a lot of advice,’ I told him cunningly. ‘I hope I can rely on you for that, sir.’
Bose’s effusiveness knew no bounds. ‘You have only to ask,’ he cried with happiness, and then
turning to one of his aides said, ‘Any time Ghose sahib phones me be sure to put him through.’
I left, after a little while, with relief, and a deeper respect for the Chief Minister.
It soon became clear that, even though the Commissioner had a lot of very routine and
inconsequential work, he was expected to do something that was not confined to papers—the years in
Delhi had made me almost instinctively measure a job by the amount of paperwork involved. He was
expected to assess and evaluate the work being done by the five deputy commissioners or district
magistrates whose districts formed Jalpaiguri Division; not merely in terms of writing their
assessment reports, but to watch their performance and, occasionally, discuss it with the Chief
Secretary.
I soon found out that the job I had done as Deputy Commissioner some fifteen years ago had
changed radically. It had become infinitely more complex, as the district officer now was the key
figure in all the major development work being done in his district, and as the Chief Executive
Officer of the Zila Parishad he had to combine the administrative skills of the traditional DC or DM
with that of a seasoned secretary in a ministry or department. The head of the Zila Parishad was an
elected political person, called the sabadhipati and the district officers used a variety of methods to
keep that worthy under control, so to speak, much as Sir Humphrey kept his minister in control in the
television series Yes Minister.
In this the young men who were district officers when I went to Jalpaiguri were absolutely superb.
Their methods varied, but they had, all of them, got their sabadhipatis well in hand. G. Balagopal,
DC, Jalpaiguri, who later moved to Darjeeling as DC, Sunil Mitra who was Additional DC in
Darjeeling when I joined and then came to Jalpaiguri as DC when Balagopal moved to Darjeeling,
K.S. Rajendran, District Magistrate, Malda who was succeeded by Bijoy Chatterjee, and Ardhendu
Sen, DM, West Dinajpur, were far more skilled at their work than I had been when I was DC. In fact,
that was a characteristic that I came to see very soon. These young officers adapted to the situations
they had to work in with a degree of intelligence and sagacity, without losing any of their enthusiasm
and energy in a manner that I found very remarkable, and they did this in a manner I could never have
done when I was a DC, and as old as they were then.
Perhaps it had to do with where I came from, my training and my experience that was more of a
ruler in the field, and theirs was very different. Their training certainly was; they had what was called
the ‘sandwiched’ training course which meant they did six months in the Academy, then spent a year
as probationers in different districts, and then went back to the Academy for another six months and
the final UPSC examinations that confirmed them in the IAS.
But when I spoke to them, which I did on occasion and casually—I had no notion I was going to
write this book then—and when I spoke to others, younger than them with whom I spoke specifically
to get their views on training for this book, I got a uniform response: the training was of little use, it
was archaic and outdated, it related to a state of affairs that had long gone.
Was it the training, or the nature of the youngsters who were joining the IAS? Basically, it had to
do with the rapidly changing times. These young officers were far more street smart; they knew what
was going on and didn’t live in a kind of dream world that I, and many like me, inhabited when we
were of the same age.
There was another aspect to this, a not too pleasant one, which I was told of by another colleague,
a few years junior to me and from another cadre. ‘How did you get to your first posting?’ he asked me
once.
‘Well, I took a train,’ I said.
‘And then?’
‘Then I took a cycle rickshaw to the Circuit House,’ I told him.
‘Exactly. That’s what I also did,’ he said. ‘That’s what most of us did, in those days. We went to
the Circuit House, and the chowkidar showed us the smallest, dingiest room, and told us with
condescension that that was meant for the probationers. I told him of my encounter which seemed to
be no different, and how I was rescued by S.M. Murshed.
‘Now all that’s stopped,’ my colleague said. ‘Now, when probationers arrive, there are cars
waiting for them at the station, and they’re taken to comfortable guest houses.’
‘By whom?’ I asked.
‘Oh, contractors, local businessmen, transporters, people like that.’
‘And these kids accept it?’ I asked.
‘You bet they do,’ he replied. ‘I know. It was reported to me in the districts where I was
Collector.’ These were also street-smart officers but I was fortunate not to have come across any of
them.
The young officers I was working with in Jalpaiguri Division were of an entirely different kind;
they would have seen off the contractors and transporters and their cars and guest houses and made
very sure that these contractors and favour-seekers never made the mistake of offering such services
again. I knew, because I saw them doing very similar things to such people in their districts. And they
had, notwithstanding, a tremendous zest for their work—for the administrative work, that had become
more complex since I had been a district officer, and the development work, which had grown
exponentially in the years I had not been in the field. In fact, I had to learn from them about the way
the District Rural Development Agencies (DRDA) functioned, and numerous other bodies that had
been set up with the district officer as their leaders.
They were perfectly aware of what happened in other states, and just how crooked some of their
batchmates in those states were, from the day they joined; and I think they knew, from their first days
in Mussoorie, that there were a number who had joined the service to make as much money as they
could by using, without any scruples, the powers and responsibilities given to them in different posts.
That they had to work sometimes alongside such officers, and cope with their brazen lobbying for
what they, these stained officers, considered ‘plum’ posts, served to develop in them a savvy no-
nonsense awareness of their working environment.
I spent a good deal of every month touring the districts, and, apart from the inspections of the
collectorates I was required to do, spent many days driving and walking into the interiors of the
districts to see for myself the kind of work that was being done. One very great difference virtually
jumped out and hit me in the face: the attitude to the development projects and schemes among the
local people.
In my time as district officer there was indifference, cynicism and, often, bitterness. Those were
still relatively early days, and the bureaucracy had not developed systems like the DRDA, nor had the
Zila Parishads been vested with any substantial powers; I had had to plead, cajole and tempt farmers
to accept the high-yielding varieties of paddy that had then just been developed. But fifteen year later
the scenario in the interiors of districts like Malda, or West Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and Cooch Behar
were entirely different—it was another world I was seeing. A world of enthusiasm, of expectation,
and one where the officers were not seen as Us and Them so much as agents who were bringing about
change.
Examples of this were numerous, but there is one that remains vivid. As was common in most
districts, the real problem was not so much rural unemployment as rural under-employment. Young
men did small, often trifling jobs for a short while every day or every other day or once a week and
were paid a meagre amount that hardly served to help them live even modestly. The fact was that
there were too many people wanting work, and too little land from which they could earn a decent
living. The emphasis was therefore shifting, at the time I was appointed Commissioner, to off-farm
employment; young men and women were being encouraged to take to such professions as chicken
farming, or the rearing of animals for milk and dairy products, or bee-keeping or the provision of
services such as repairs to machinery—tractors, ploughs, and so on.
The canny young Deputy Commissioner of Jalpaiguri, Sunil Mitra, latched on to the fact that the
large cantonment that had come up in Binnaguri, within Jalpaiguri district, would need a substantial
quantity of fresh produce every day, like eggs, milk, meat and so on. While some of these were
contracted out through the army’s own systems to wholesale suppliers, perishable and breakable
produce like eggs would, he concluded, be best supplied locally, provided their quality was good. He
then persuaded a young local from Binnaguri village to set up a chicken farm—a well-organized
modern farm with batteries for hens and special feed for them, regular visits from the local vet and all
the rest. He then persuaded the station commander to visit the farm and see for himself the conditions
under which eggs were being produced. It worked. The young entrepreneur was flooded with orders
for eggs and his farm grew in size and prosperity.
When I visited the farm I was met by this young chicken farmer, who had by then gone into the
supply of broiler chickens as well.
‘But I simply can’t cope with the demand,’ he said to me, smiling. ‘I have to expand the farm.’
‘Will that be a problem?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ he said confidently. ‘The bank manager sahib is very helpful because he knows how well I’m
doing. And with the DC sahib here, I have no worries at all.’
‘How much do you earn?’ I asked him.
‘Well,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘Let’s say I do fairly well. Very well, in fact.’
Clearly the evasive ways of a successful entrepreneur had come with his newfound prosperity.
 Sunil Mitra told me of even more such cases; entrepreneurs were supplying milk and other produce
to the air force base at Hashimara. I mention this to underscore the new role that the DCs had clearly
developed, almost naturally. They were no longer rulers, the dispensers of justice, the mai-baap of
the district. They were instead, facilitators who were effective because they had the power of the
state behind them.
This worked in different ways; in the district of West Dinajpur (now divided into two districts—
North and South Dinajpur) I walked for miles into the interior to a small village where an NGO
called the Tagore Society was working, building houses for the residents of the village. But that’s
putting it crudely; what they were doing was working with the people, putting to use techniques of
building that they had jointly worked out. It was not a matter of some people descending from the city
with bright ideas and showing the natives what was good for them; in fact it was anything but that.
The members of the NGO came to the village to learn as much as to work with the village people; and
what they used, they told me, was the accumulated wisdom of the local people in working out ideas to
cope with the local conditions—terrible heat in summer, sweltering damp in the rains, and winters
which were pleasantly warm during the days but houses tended to retain the night chill, and get little
of the sun.
The houses that were built, which the local people showed me, had sloping roofs that came down
over the edges of the outer walls, and the walls themselves had every other brick missing, seemingly.
Actually it was a means of letting air in, or out from inside, and at the same time the overhang of the
roof protected the walls from the sometimes savage rain that poured down in the monsoon season.
Several such houses had come up, and more were coming up, built jointly by the local people and
the members of the NGO. Again, this was something that was made possible by the District
Magistrate, Ardhendu Sen. He brought the NGO in, and the partnership was something in which he
clearly played a significant role.
I was reminded of the solitary NGO that worked in Cooch Behar when I was DC there; this was a
Swedish-funded NGO headed by Olav Hodne, a dedicated Norwegian, who had given up being a
missionary to work for the NGO, and Bengt Ageros, a young Swede with a wry sense of humour and
considerable imagination. Both became good friends, but I think the problem lay in the fact that they
were working from the outside, so to speak. They worked for the benefit of the local people, true; but
they did it as an outside agency, come to do good. They did not involve the local population, except
for the locals who had become Christian, and the locals, it seemed to me, exploited the foreign sahibs
to the hilt. Consequently, when Olav and Bengt left Cooch Behar, which they did not long after I did,
the NGO more or less collapsed.
That was the difference, not only in the way the Tagore Society worked, but in the way I worked as
DC and Ardhendu Sen as DM. He was more mature and canny, he understood what would work and
what would not. I, as DC, just let the Swedish NGO work, and did little to involve myself in what the
people of the area wanted. Good was being done, I felt, and left it at that. I was more the ruler,
trained to rule; Ardhendu Sen coupled that with wisdom and an acute sense of ground realities.
There were other aspects to working in the field; there were natural calamities to be handled, one
such being the terrifying erosion of its banks by the Ganga in Malda district. Whole chunks of land,
indeed, sometimes parts of a village with its houses, would fall into the swirling, menacing water of
the giant river, leaving behind people who were then utterly destitute, their land and home having,
literally, disappeared.
I did visit one of the worst-affected sites, but knew at once that my being there was not going to
help the DM, Bijoy Chatterjee. He would have to cope with me, his boss, and with the erosion and its
dreadful effects on the people. I therefore left, but told Bijoy that he had only to tell me what he
needed and I would make sure the state government gave it to him, whether it was money, tents or
food grains. I would act as his agent, in a manner of speaking.
And that was how it worked; he was, of course, in direct contact with the government, but
sometimes would send me radio messages—we called them radiograms then—over the police
network when material or funds were arriving too slowly. I would then get on the phone to the
secretaries of the departments or to the Chief Secretary, and use slightly colourful language to get
Bijoy what he needed. I think it helped, though whatever was done could never really compensate the
people for the terrible loss of land and homes.
However, my concerns came to a more intense focus in the district of Darjeeling, for the simple
reason that I was not only the Commissioner but also Secretary, Department of Hill Affairs, and had a
regular department in Darjeeling town. There was a budget, far too modest for my liking, but
something to go on, and a huge amount to be done. Mountainous regions desperately need roads to get
to health clinics and schools, and also to move produce from their fields—fruit, cereals, flowers—to
markets before they spoil. They also need water, and, unlike areas in the plains, natural ponds and
lakes are very few in the steep Himalayas. It means springs have to be harnessed and led to
reservoirs and ponds; and it also means that ways have to be found of recycling waste water and
solid wastes rather than let them tumble down the mountain slopes, contaminating water sources and
terraced fields lower down.
There were a host of other problems; the towns of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong needed
urban renewal projects, especially as they were inundated with tourists during the summer and autumn
tourist seasons, which meant terrible shortages of water and that other great need in the towns and in
villages, power. Added to this was the anxiety that resulted from the inexorable depletion of the
forest reserves of the district and that almost inevitable calamity that hit different areas of the district,
landslides. These could be minor, and cleared away in a few hours, or gigantic, when a whole
mountainside slid down carrying houses, villages, forests and roads with it, leaving a yawning gap
between the two sides, sometimes even a mile or more across.
I spent around a week to ten days a month in Darjeeling, of which a good deal of my time was spent
walking in the mountains to see what was being done on the projects that had been taken up. Initially
the years behind desks in Delhi made these walks—which meant steep climbs up and precipitous
descents—an ordeal, but with time I began to manage reasonably well. And these were the best ways
to observe progress or decide on a disputed project; go and look at it for oneself.
The town of Kalimpong had an acute shortage of water. So did the others, but in Kalimpong the
shortage was so great that the residents of the town and surrounding villages got hardly half an hour of
water a day, if that. Streams and springs had all been harnessed to fill the reservoirs located at the
two high spots in the town but their storage capacity was pitifully small compared to the demand.
That a mountain division of the army was located there did not help, to put it mildly.
Under the constant pressure from the Ministry of Defence, where I had been handling similar
problems only a year or two before, and from the local people, a project to take water from the river
Neora was worked out. This was a perennial river with a substantial flow, and came down from the
high ranges between Kalimpong and Bhutan. The trouble was that it then entered and passed through a
large stretch of forest which was the only forest left that was original, in that it had never been
touched, never replanted. Over the centuries the trees had grown to provide a rich, thick canopy that
shadowed the valley floor; the little sunlight that did penetrate the canopy was gentle and fitful. As
one would expect it meant that the area had developed an ecological world, a ‘biosphere’ entirely its
own, lichens and moss of startling varieties, some mottled with rich colours, and insects of a
bewildering variety that flew about the valley or scuttled among the rocks near the river. Except for
the sound of crickets, loud and shrill, and the soft gurgle of the Neora, there was complete silence in
the valley.
Ecologists were up in arms at the prospect of a water project being set up in this pristine forest. It
would mean a metalled road for bulldozers, diesel fumes from generators, cutting of trees and
transporting concrete and cutting stones to form a barrage and then laying a pipe right down the valley
to the foothills, almost, from where giant pumps would send the water up to the high ranges above
Kalimpong to enormous reservoirs that would be able to supply the town and its surrounding areas,
and the army units, with enough water. Additionally, mini-hydel sets near the barrage would be able
to generate some power that could supplement the small amount that was available to the region.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests refused to clear the project until experts certified that the
essential nature of the biosphere would not be disturbed, a very tall order. I persuaded the state
government to let me inspect the area and report on the actual conditions, after which they could
decide what the best course would be. They agreed, and I set forth to look at the Neora Valley. I was
accompanied by a forester who would be able to explain different features to me.
If I had known what this ‘inspection’ entailed I may have suggested some devious alternative; but
the die was cast once I was officially asked personally to inspect and report on the condition of the
valley. It meant a near-vertical climb down from around 7,000 feet to the valley floor, along a path
that was to all intents and purposes non-existent, since no one went down to the valley except the
occasional—very occasional—forest official. At some places I had to use both hands and feet to
scramble down past big boulders, and gradually the light dimmed as we got lower and lower, and the
way down grew slippery, with damp, fallen leaves everywhere.
I survived a couple of falls that were more comic than anything else, with my dignity bruised rather
than any part of my anatomy. Eventually I got to the valley floor, and, looking up, could see the sky
had darkened and thunder rumbled in the clouds. But it wasn’t what got my attention then. It was the
valley itself.
The Neora was a river so clear that every stone on its bed could be seen, and it was wide and
fairly fast. It splashed and gurgled along the valley floor, but there were no rapids or steep falls; its
way was even, as it descended to the plains. Butterflies and dragonflies flew around along the banks,
and over the water; the rocks and even the tree trunks were green with moss and lichen. As I
wandered across the valley floor I saw mushrooms and thick bushes whose leaves were large,
evidently to catch as much sunlight as they could. Trees rose almost from the banks up to great
heights, and their leaves, too, were thick, making the valley floor translucent, never brightly lit, except
very briefly, when the sun crossed the river itself.
I was entranced; I sat on a boulder near the river partly to rest my tired feet and aching calf
muscles, but also to survey the magic world of the valley. This was a place which enclosed me in its
solitude and splendour so completely that I could have stayed there till I had become a part of it, not a
visitor, an alien from a grosser world. I would have been part of the plangent, brilliant water, of the
insects that flew about, of the dense undergrowth and the giant, mossy trees.
The forester told me of the trees, of the bushes and plants, and of the insects. I remember that he
instinctively lowered his voice, although there was no one else there, except my personal security
guard who refused to stay behind. (Thank God he didn’t.) I remember little of what the forester said,
but I knew that if there was going to be a project there, it would have to be done with the utmost care:
no road, no bulldozers, nothing. Everything would have to be moved by men or ponies. And no hydel
stations at all; if they had to be built they would have to be built well outside the sanctuary.
Then the thunder rumbled again and the darkness grew oppressive. It was time to go, up, this time,
along the steep way we had come down to 7,000 feet, as soon as we could. But it was no easy task.
We had hardly gone up, slowly and painfully, for some fifteen minutes when the rain came down—
torrential, savage rain, filling the forest with a hissing roaring sound, blurring the slope we had to go
up, soaking us to the skin and beating down on us with a ferocity that was painful.
I stumbled and panted upwards, slipping occasionally, wondering if I would ever get up in this
lifetime. And, as if all this wasn’t enough, I had a visitation of my old friend, my chronic amoebic
dysentery; I barely managed to get behind a bush before it overcame me.
Emerging ashen-faced and miserable, I found my stoic, expressionless security guard waiting,
looking dutifully away, and as I stumbled on, I felt a firm yet gentle hand on my arm, guiding me
upwards. Every now and then I’d collapse on to a stone, letting the roar of the rain overwhelm me,
and my guard would be standing next to me, silently waiting for me to catch my breath before saying
gently, ‘It is time to go, sahib.’
I lost track of time as we crawled up the slope, at times on all fours. The rain enveloped us with
the haze of falling torrents and with its hissing, roaring sound. We plodded on upwards, holding on to
a branch here and a stone there as support, panting, breathless. One turn, and another near-vertical
way up between boulders awash with rain or bushes bending before the ferocity of the downpour.
Then another turn and up again, as if on a giant slippery ladder. Harsh ragged breathing—mine—and
aching steps on and on, upwards, upwards.
Finally, through the blur of the rain I could see the jeeps where we had left them. It took some
determination to take those last steps to them, and get in and, finally, sit. And then to the incredible
comfort of the Forest Rest House at Lava, of dry clothes and a blazing fire. Here there were more
people, all solicitous, offering warm drinks (which, keeping my friend the amoeba within me in mind
I refused); outside, the rain had abated, but angry, grey and black clouds still scudded overhead, and
mist rose from the valley of the Neora river.
My report had already formed in my head; if there had to be a facility to withdraw water, it would
have to be far lower down, away from the sanctuary; the valley had to be left as it was, as inviolate,
tranquil and quiet. There were too few of these places left, and I was not going to be party to the
destruction of one of them.
Not that all my visits to the interior regions of the district were as arduous; some were delightful
and also valuable, as I could see what was going on and talk to the local people about what needed to
be done. The DC was that imaginative and very active young officer, G. Balagopal, who had been
DC, Jalpaiguri, when I had first arrived, but who moved to Darjeeling shortly thereafter. Balagopal
made it a point of visiting every region, no matter how remote, and whenever I went up one of the
first things I did was sit down with him and listen to his account of the work being done, and what he
felt was necessary for the Department of Hill Affairs to take up urgently.
My right hand in the hill affairs department was Sunil Mitra, who was then Additional DC,
Darjeeling, and also Deputy Secretary in the department. Sunil not only knew Darjeeling but he had
picked up Gorkhali and spoke it fluently. This gave him a rare insight into the affairs, indeed the
thinking and attitudes of the people. His perception led us to pick on some key schemes whose
benefits would be considerable—roads, water supply schemes, school buildings, health centres and
the like.
He was only too keenly aware that the mountains desperately needed roads, and we put aside a
good amount of the budget for this purpose. Building roads in the mountains was not easy, even if they
were narrow; they had to be metalled, tough enough to withstand the regions’ torrential rain and its
alignment worked out carefully, avoiding areas that were unstable, and could lead to landslides that
would destroy the roads completely. But a number came up, slowly; once isolated regions were
linked to towns where basic amenities were available, or from where it was possible to get to larger
towns, to Darjeeling or Kalimpong or Kurseong and to the plains, if necessary. I went to see some of
these for myself; my little trip down to the Neora had given me a degree of misplaced confidence in
my ability to walk about in the mountains. That confidence was put to the test once again when I went
to see the progress made on a road connecting Kalpokhri, a small town on the way up to Sandakphu—
the highest point in Darjeeling district, and the foot of the great climb up to Kanchenjunga which was
in Sikkim—and a remote region called Palmajua. The road was at an altitude of over 9,000 feet for
most of its length, coming down to a little over 8,000 feet at Palmajua.
We started walking along the new road from Kalpokhri on what looked like a bright sunny day. But
in the mountains the weather could change very quickly, and it did as we went along through the
exquisitely lovely slope covered with ferns and tall trees with stretches of bright green grass in
clearings high above. Apart from Balagopal and Sunil Mitra, the subdivisional officer of Kurseong
also came with us, a young IAS officer, Tuktuk Kumar, who impressed me with her determination and
complete dedication to her work. Two other young ladies also came. One was Aban Madan, daughter
of Naswan and Nurges Madan who were long-time residents of Darjeeling and who owned one of the
most elegant hotels there, the Central Hotel; she had come because she loved the mountains and took a
day off from her job with the Darjeeling Tea Association to do this walk. The other was Ipsita Johri,
daughter of the Superintendent of Police, Jalpaiguri, Raj Johri, a good friend of Balagopal from his
Jalpaiguri days. Ipsita, or Mithu, as she was affectionately called, was all of nine years old. She
insisted on coming because her dear Uncle Bala was going and she had a strong will—rather than
face the racket she threatened she would make at home, her mother agreed to her coming with us,
reassured that Balagopal would be there to look after her.
I had assumed it would be a very pleasant, and beautiful walk, even though it would be tiring,
particularly for the child, if for no other reason than the fact that we were walking at a relatively high
altitude. My assumption turned out to be completely unwarranted, as black clouds came down over
the mountains, a cold wind blew, and soon icy rain came down in torrents. Within a few minutes all
of us—having very foolishly brought nothing like raincoats or other garments as protection—were
drenched, and this at a spot where there was no shelter at all. The mountain rose straight up, a rock
face into which the road had been arduously cut.
Worse was to follow. The rain abruptly turned to sleet and hail, and it was all we could do to
shield ourselves and the child from the fury of the hailstones. Within minutes the road turned white
with hail, which began to accumulate rapidly. We decided that instead of waiting in the hail it would
be better if we walked on, because we were wet and in the middle of the hailstorm anyway, and by
walking we would keep a little warmth even under our sodden clothes, and we would be moving
further towards our destination, Palmajua.
It seemed to be an endless walk, going on for hours; after a long time the hail stopped, but there
was enough on the road to make walking difficult. Our feet sank into the hailstones which made
progress slow—and hazardous, as there was every possibility of our losing our footing and going for
a tumble. The edge of the road was not very far away and beyond it was a steep fall down into dense
forest. Eventually the rain too lessened into a persistent, chilling drizzle, which brought us no cheer.
But we plodded on, having no other alternative. I rued having agreed to bring little Ipsita with us; she
had walked gamely for a while but it was a little too much for her and she stood on the road and wept.
Balagopal, who was tall and physically very fit, then picked her up and carried her on his back, like a
backpack. She wound her little arms round his neck and snuggled into his anorak, and stopped
weeping, even though the rain was bitterly cold.
Eventually, after a considerably long time, it lessened; but the cold only seemed to increase, and a
mist crept down and enveloped us in a chilly dankness, which made it difficult to see where we were
going. Hours later we stumbled around a corner and could see the hazy outlines of two jeeps. The
drivers came running out with razais, and we wrapped little Ipsita in one and huddled under the
others as best we could as the jeeps drove slowly through the mist, the drivers leaning out to be able
to see where we were going. Another painful hour or two passed, the jeeps groaning slowly through
the mist and occasional spells of rain, and finally we came to what seemed like a haven like no other.
It was a simple forest rest house—a long verandah, and two rooms leading off from a central living
room. But there was a fire going, and we were able to take off our wet clothes and wrap ourselves in
razais and blankets and sit round the fire, exhausted but greatly relieved. Ipsita had fallen asleep.
A solicitous forest officer, who had been waiting for us for over four hours, came up to me and
offered me a bottle containing a colourless liquid.
 ‘If I may suggest,’ he said hesitantly, ‘sir may like to drink this. It will help ease the cold.’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
He cleared his throat. ‘Gin,’ he said. ‘Just a small amount, sir.’
I took the bottle from him and drank straight from it, before passing it on to Balagopal.
‘I’m sorry, but that’s the end of your bottle,’ I told him cheerily. ‘What did you mean—a small
amount?’
He looked flabbergasted.
‘Don’t worry,’ I reassured him. ‘I’ll send you two bottles when we get to Darjeeling.’
But he was right. The gin warmed us, and, with the razais wrapped round our now dry clothes, we
journeyed by jeep up a long, dangerous forest track back to Darjeeling, the jeeps engaging their four-
wheel drive for the narrow, boulder-strewn twisting path between the trees that barely allowed the
jeeps to pass. Not that I cared; I slept most of the way back, and woke only when we reached
Darjeeling, after nightfall.
But there were other walks; peaceful, sunny treks across green valleys, up through forests and
down again, the air so clear that it seemed blue, like the mountains that were always there, all around.
Ferns and a riot of brightly coloured flowers filled some of the valleys we crossed and occasionally
we came across some young lads from a nearby village who would stare at us, then break into a storm
of giggles after we passed them.
One such walk remains for me one of the most exciting and also the most melancholy. The
perennial scarcity of water in Darjeeling had been a cause for increasing concern; in the tourist
season, particularly, it was dreadfully acute, with very small amounts available for the residents. The
problem was there were no springs that had not already been tapped; and the copious monsoon rain
did help keep the reservoirs full during the autumn and winter but then the levels fell sharply and the
summers were a torment with hardly a bucket of water for a family.
Sunil Mitra then told me of a source that he had heard of from local people and from forest
officers, on the top of the range below which the town of Kurseong lay. The area was densely
forested, and uninhabited; he felt that might be at least a partial solution. I decided we should go and
take a look for ourselves. An arduous climb up to the top of the range from the highest point where we
could go by jeep brought up into dense forest; tangled undergrowth and dark, shadowed stretches of
tall, moss-covered trees broken only occasionally by small clearings. We walked through this sylvan,
quiet region and after a short while heard a sound that gladdened my heart—the sound of gurgling,
splashing water.
The spring was fairly big, and the water copious. It would be, the engineers with us said, enough
for Kurseong town far below, and for Darjeeling. But for the latter the water would have to be taken
by a channel along the top of the ridge through the forest to the waterworks above Ghoom, just below
Tiger Hill. In fact, there was an old stone channel, laid possibly a century ago, but then a giant
landslide had ripped it out and the British concentrated on streams and springs nearer Darjeeling.
I looked at the water tumbling out of the mountain and splashing into a deep pool, and thought I saw
an end to Darjeeling’s terrible water shortage. I determined that, whatever the cost, we would build a
wide channel to take the water to Tiger Hill. I asked one of the engineers how much water he thought
we could get from this stream.
‘It’s a perennial stream, clearly snow-fed,’ he said, ‘and even after leaving enough for Kurseong’s
needs, we should get as much water as Darjeeling is getting now from all its present sources.’ Double
the amount of water!
We followed the channel back towards Darjeeling as far as we could, till the giant landslide of a
hundred years ago had destroyed it. But the area had stabilized now, a dense forest cover had come
up over the slip area and firmed up the soil. If we stuck to the very top of the ridge the channel might
never be endangered. I went back to Darjeeling with an elation I could scarcely conceal; it seemed to
amuse Sunil Mitra greatly, for some reason.
But it was not to be. Political unrest disrupted life in the mountains, which I will come to in a little
while. That unrest was enough to bring all development work to a standstill, including the truly
momentous scheme of bringing the new source of water to the town. Till I left the region no work was
done on it and I have no idea whether anything has since been done—a truly sad end to something that
could have been a turning point for Darjeeling town.
One mercy was that, barring some sporadic incidents of local trouble, the law and order situation
in the division remained peaceful. There was only one major incident, a fallout of the savage attack in
Delhi on Sikhs following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. There were two incidents of Sikh truck
drivers being pulled out of their trucks and killed, just outside Siliguri town, and I told all the district
officers to ensure that shoot-at-sight orders were given to the police if they came across any incident
of trouble outside gurdwaras or on the highways or anywhere else. They clearly did that, and there
were no incidents at all thereafter.
But there was, in fact, one rather difficult spinoff. There were large units of the army in my
division, mainly in Jalpaiguri district, and I was informed by the local army authorities that a few
jawans from units that had Sikh jawans had reported that some of them had deserted, and were in all
probability trying to get to Punjab. The police acted very swiftly, and with considerable restraint, and
were able to round up the deserters from New Jalpaiguri station within a few days. They were
handed over to the army, and what happened thereafter I have no idea.
Peaceful though it was, I had a slightly unpleasant run in with some police personnel which was
reflective of what was going on, on a much bigger scale, throughout the state. The Left Front’s chief
constituent, the CPI(M) decided that they would unionize the police, but since this was prohibited by
the Police Act they would organize them into a militant association under their control. I was told—
and I may be wrong about this—that the Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, was against the idea, but had to
defer to the decision of the party. An entity called the Non-Gazetted Police Karmachari Samiti
(NGPKS) was formed and most constables, and junior officers up to the rank of Sub-inspector
became members.
The office bearers were an arrogant, truculent lot, and many SPs and commandants of armed police
battalions had to face insults and flagrant disobedience from these persons, and, inevitably from the
bulk of the police forces. Like every officer in the field, I was aware of this, and even though we
found it violated the essential discipline of the police forces, a very dangerous development, there
was nothing one could do except carry on as best one could.
 My encounter with this offensive lot came when I was holding a semi-judicial inquiry into an
incident in Alipurduar, a subdivisional headquarter town of Jalpaiguri district, where a police unit
had opened fire on an angry group of the town’s residents and killed four people. After I had
examined a number of witnesses, I called the accused constables one by one for examination. They
were insolent, barely concealing their contempt, carelessly admitting they had shot at ‘criminal
elements’, and when I asked them whether the persons shot had indeed any police records they
shrugged and said the police station would have them.
After I had concluded hearing all the witnesses, I was told that the local office bearers of the
NGPKS wanted to see me. I called them in. They were police constables and one of them was an
Assistant Sub-Inspector, and their basic police discipline required them to come to attention when
they entered the Commissioner’s courtroom, and salute. They did nothing of the kind, but drew up
chairs and seated themselves.
‘You are conducting an inquiry where four of our comrades are being accused of killing criminals,’
they began.
‘I am conducting an inquiry under the Code of Criminal Procedure,’ I told them coldly, ‘into the
conduct of four constables and the circumstances in which they used force in an incident.’
‘Yes,’ one of them said, ‘but they were defending themselves. The men attacking them were
criminals.’
‘I have no desire to discuss this matter with you or anyone else,’ I told them. ‘If this is why you
have come you may now leave.’
‘You should keep in mind that our comrades were acting in self-defence,’ one of them said,
brazenly.
‘You will leave this minute,’ I told them harshly.
‘We will take this up with higher quarters,’ they said.
‘Take it up with whoever you like,’ I told them. ‘Leave.’
They did, swaggering out, talking loudly to themselves.
I gave my judgement on the matter two days later, and found the four constables guilty of using
excessive force against an unarmed group of residents of Alipurduar who were agitated, true, but had
not done anything that could be said to have made the constables feel their lives were in danger. I
recommended that they be prosecuted for committing murder and be dismissed from the police force.
They were already under arrest, and I ordered that they continue to be under arrest till a chargesheet
was filed and a magistrate passed suitable orders.
I sent the report to the Home Secretary, as I was required to do, and to the Director General of
Police. The four were, I believe, produced before a magistrate and sent to judicial custody. I don’t
know what happened thereafter. But the incident remained a bitter memory. The party in power, or the
coalition, the Left Front, was clearly bent on systematically destroying the very foundation of an
ordered state and society; historically the most stable societies have been those that have been well
ordered and where the rule of law prevailed. The Left Front obviously did not want that.
And what did the IAS officers in the state make of the almost mass unionizing of established organs
of governance? The answer is, sadly, nothing. But it was because there was nothing they could do. In
the districts, young officers like Balagopal and Sunil Mitra concentrated on the job in hand; but in the
secretariat, where the Coordination Committee—the union of clerks formed by the CPI(M)—virtually
ran the government, secretaries and joint secretaries distanced themselves, for the greater part, from
this, signing perfunctorily where they had to and letting files and proposals go through on the lines the
Coordination Committee and the ministers wanted.
Kalyani Chaudhuri, an IAS officer who served in the state for most of her tenure in the service, has
written a rather funny, sarcastic book on this most unfunny situation. ‘It took some time for Coco
[Kalyani’s hilarious ‘pet’ name for the Coordination Committee] leaders to evolve into power
centres, and become terrors for the middle level officer. Even when leaders tried personally to be
disciplined, they could invent no mechanism for weeding out those who clung to their skirts, did no
work and had to be left undisturbed due to their proclaimed affiliation and Coco’s need for sheer
numbers.’1
The most terrible decision they took was to unionize the police; it meant the erosion of discipline
in a force supposed to be disciplined and the enforcer of order, and to many police officers and
jawans becoming party members. If you wanted the police to act you had to get them to do so through
the ruling Left Front leadership at different levels.
Many years later, the whole country has been able to see just what law and order has come to mean
in West Bengal. The terrible incidents in Nandigram, in Midnapore district, where the media reported
that the police openly attacked villagers aided and abetted by CPI(M) party ‘workers’, killing a
number of people, and setting fire to huts and buildings, merely to be able to bring the area under
CPI(M) control, speak for themselves.
In the mountain regions of Darjeeling the political situation was beginning to turn ugly. A
previously obscure party, the Gorkha National Liberation Front, the GNLF, had begun to establish
itself as the largest and most aggressive party in the mountain regions very rapidly. Their leader was
a former army jawan, Subhas Ghising, and he and his lieutenants drew massive crowds wherever they
organized rallies. They used the most inflammatory rhetoric to unite the once-peaceful people in those
regions through hate and rage.
Their demand was that they be declared a separate state, and to force the Central and state
governments to listen to them they organized bandhs, a total shutdown of the mountain region of the
district, which meant the subdivisions of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong. They did this during
the tourist season, and everything came to a standstill. Thousands of tourists were stranded in
Darjeeling, with no means of getting down to Siliguri.
Only army vehicles from the cantonment of Lebong were allowed to move out to the corps
headquarters near Sukna in the foothills, and even they had to move with men walking in front of each
truck looking for booby traps. A very large number of the GNLF members were ex-armymen, and had
been trained to stop enemy vehicles. They did this not by using mines or explosives, but simple
devices like half a potato stuck with sharp nails placed in puddles of water on the road; hill roads are
never the even concrete or asphalt surfaces one sees in the plains and, especially since it rains
frequently in the mountains, there are puddles all over the roads. Concealing these spiked potatoes
was therefore easy, and very effective. They would puncture the tyres of all vehicles that went over
them, and since a vehicle carried just one spare tyre, they were totally immobilized when more than
one tyre was deflated.
The only way move was to have men walk in front of every truck or vehicle and physically remove
these spiked potatoes; and that meant that it took a truck over ten hours to come down the mountain
from Darjeeling to the plains. I was in Darjeeling during the first such bandh, and I appealed to the
corps commander to take tourists down, even if it meant ten hours on the road. He was very
sympathetic, but said that it would be inadvisable for the army to get involved in a local political
agitation, which is what this was. Eventually, however, he agreed on humanitarian grounds to take
these helpless people down, provided they left with the normal convoys; he did not want it to look
like an attempt to break the bandh.
In about a week or so a CRPF contingent came up to Darjeeling and were deployed along the main
road down to Siliguri, to keep it open for traffic. But there was a limit to what could be done in other
places; the road to Kalimpong was virtually closed down, as was the road from Kalimpong to
Siliguri. The latter was made passable after some time, again by keeping it under virtually constant
patrol.
The GNLF’s sudden popularity should really have caused no surprise. This was a separatist
movement—from West Bengal—that was waiting to happen. What was surprising was that it didn’t
happen sooner. Consider the situation on the ground. West Bengal is a state that is largely a part of the
giant Gangetic plain that sweeps down from the central part of the northern foothills of the Himalayas
all the way down to the sea. There are some rocky, hilly outcroppings in Purulia (which, in any case,
had been part of Bihar till the state boundaries were re-drawn in the 1950s) and forested, rocky land
in Birbhum and the western parts of Midnapore. But other than that it’s all flat agricultural land.
Darjeeling is all mountains, except for the subdivision of Siliguri, which has some flat lands with
tea gardens, but otherwise has only the foothills of the mountain areas of the district. The geographic
difference has led, naturally, to a difference in socio-economic profiles between this district and the
rest of West Bengal.
But the prime difference is the ethnic difference between the people. The inhabitants of the
mountain regions of the district are Gorkhas—generally referred to, much to their resentment, as
Nepalis—who are short-statured and deep-chested and whose features are Mongolian for the most
part. They speak a language more akin to Hindi and use the Devanagari script. The dhoti-clad
Bengalis on the other hand usually dread the cold mountains, visiting Darjeeling and the other towns
in the summer clad as if they were going to Antarctica.
The iconic Bengali in Darjeeling is clad in an overcoat which he will claim with pride belonged to
his grandfather, he will have a ‘maflar’, or muffler, the quaint word they insist on using for a woollen
scarf, and will wrap it round his neck and lower part of his face. He will then have on his head
something called a monkey cap, a woollen cap that can be rolled down to cover the neck, over the
‘maflar’, leaving only the eyes exposed. The lower part of his body will still be swathed in a thin
dhoti but beneath that our intrepid visitor will have on a pair of what we as youngsters called long
johns, light, woollen tights that came down as far as the ankle. Over this he would have an
enormously thick pair of socks and a pair of kabuli chappals. He will have bought a pair of gloves
and brought with him the house umbrella. One can imagine what this creature would look like to the
local Gorkhas, and the amusement—not always kind—that he afforded them.
He naturally spoke no Gorkhali, or Nepali, and commerce was carried on in a terrible form of
Hindustani, a language which is a Bengali’s Waterloo. The locals in Darjeeling or Kalimpong, in
their turn, spoke a pidgin Bengali that was used more because they found it funny than because it
helped in communication. Or perhaps it was a bit of both. At the first hint of the chill of autumn or the
onset of the monsoons and the Bengali fled to the safety and security of the plains.
But it wasn’t just diverting. It was a dangerous and ugly division that existed between the two and
still exists. In the plains, most Gorkhas found employment as watchmen or security guards, as many of
them would have served in the army; those young Gorkhas who went to Calcutta for higher education
were more often than not subject to crude, contemptuous name-calling and attempts at gross humour
that the Gorkhas found very offensive. ‘Bahadur’ was what most of them got called, and many were
the references to their slanted eyes, and their inability to speak Bengali.
This discrimination found place in employment with the state government as well. Young Gorkhas
from Darjeeling wanting to work for the state government had compulsorily to learn Bengali; Bengali
youths wanting to do the same thing were given a special allowance to learn Nepali. Virtually no
Gorkha officials were posted to the secretariat, Writers’ Buildings; and while a much larger number
of Bengali officials were posted to the state offices in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Kurseong, they
spent most of their time lobbying to get back to the plains. They could not stand the cold, they
complained; it never occurred to the authorities how dreadful the Bengal heat and humidity must be to
Gorkha officials in the plains.
The fact simply is that Darjeeling was a district made up of tracts the British had taken from the
kingdoms of Sikkim and Bhutan, and it was they who had, arbitrarily, joined it to the then province of
Bengal, one major reason being that it gave the tea companies—all British-owned at the time—direct
access to the port of Calcutta. It was a decision by the former colonial power; the region otherwise
never had any links with the Bengalis in the plains. To the east the kingdom of Cooch Behar had a
conflict going with the kingdom of Bhutan for control of the fertile foothills between the two
kingdoms; the Bhutanese desperately needed the land to grow rice which was their staple food, and
the Kochs wanted the land for the same reason, and, historically, that region was, in fact, part of the
kingdom of Cooch Behar from the time of the great ruler Naranarayan. The British ended the
centuries-old conflict by taking over the land and creating the district of Jalpaiguri with the town in
the heart of the disputed region, Alipurduar, as the subdivisional headquarters.
About the only Bengalis I found who revelled in staying in the mountains were in the forest service.
They knew the forests as well as the natives of the region, spoke fluent Gorkhali, and were as at home
in the cold as the locals were. Not for them the dhoti and ‘maflar’ or indeed the monkey cap; they
dressed in light woollen jumpers over sensibly warm shirts, durable trousers, and shoes which we
now call trainers and were then referred to as ‘hunters’.
Forest service officers were greatly respected by the locals, and the feeling was mutual—till the
forest department started what was called ‘social forestry’, cutting down large tracts of trees and
planting new ones. Not only did this destroy the biospheres, they loosened the soil when the slopes
exposed by the felling of trees received the torrential monsoon downpours. Landslides occurred,
sometimes of gigantic proportions, which the foresters sought to control by erecting revetment walls,
which worked only in some places.
The alienation between the two communities separated by language, terrain, and ethnicity grew and
the state government did absolutely nothing to lessen it. It was only a few years before I went as
Commissioner to north Bengal that the Department of Hill Affairs had been set up, and given a
separate budget and a regular departmental office in Darjeeling. And its work was restricted to social
development work—roads and culverts, school and health clinic buildings. It was the almost total
support of the people of the mountain regions of the district to the GNLF, leading to a succession of
bandhs that were complete in that literally nothing moved, that brought home to me the enormity of
what we were up against.
In the wet, dark month of June, as the monsoon rain blotted out the surroundings and all one could
hear was the hiss of the pouring rain, I sat in my study in the great house that was the Commissioner’s
residence in Jalpaiguri and thought deeply and anxiously about the problem. I went back to my years
as Additional Deputy Commissioner, Darjeeling, and as Secretary to the Chief Minister, when a small
branch of the Chief Minister’s secretariat was started by the Chief Minister in Darjeeling which I
visited frequently, to look at all the complaints that came pouring in from people in the mountain
region. It became apparent, as I reflected on those years, that we had taken so much for granted; we
had assumed that of course Darjeeling was a district of West Bengal, all that it needed was some
special attention. We had assumed that, and done very little.
We had not addressed some of the terrible problems that the local people faced. The grinding
poverty brought about by the fact that tea gardens did not employ workers, but paid them on a no-
work no-pay basis. So if the worker was sick, he earned nothing. And what was fixed as a daily wage
was a pittance compared to actual needs. The years had brought a sharp increase in the population
and unemployment was high. Many children could not afford to go to school, as they needed to do
whatever work they could to keep their families going. Disease, especially tuberculosis, was
rampant; and the tourist trade benefited only those few who were rich enough to own hotels and
lodges, or shops and restaurants. There were others, true—the pony owners, but there were too many
of them, and not very many customers. Besides, the Central government’s Foreigners (Restricted
Areas) Order effectively kept away foreign tourists, who had been a major part of the tourist inflow
to the district. That crippled the industry as nothing else did; foreign tourists spent much more lavishly
than locals, bought more souvenirs and trinkets and textiles and other goods, and kept the cash
registers of restaurants and hotels ringing.
But more importantly, what had we done to integrate the people of the mountain regions with the
rest of the state? Had any single project been taken up to make them feel this was their state as it was
that of the Bengalis? On the contrary, the state had gone to town to develop and nourish its Bengali
identity, as if that was the only identity it had. And if it was, indeed, their only identity, what were
they doing with a region like the mountain regions of Darjeeling? What authority did they have to keep
it part of a purely Bengali state? The problem was not only in the mountains; it was in the plains of
the state as well, where they virtually shut out the Gorkhas as rightful inhabitants of the state.
 What, then, was the answer? Was there an answer? It seemed to me that perhaps even at this stage
something could be done to soften the edges of the alienation but it would need a major commitment
from the state government to bring this about. The state would have to take steps to make Gorkhas feel
that they had a stake in the state, not just in the mountains. How would that translate into action?
It seemed to me that we needed to determine what it was that made a person feel he had a stake in
the state. Perhaps it was a number of things—like income, property, gainful employment. I thought of
the Marwari community in the state and how they identified with the state in essential—because they
had a stake in the enterprises they owned in the state, and they earned handsomely from these. None of
them ever ceased to be a Marwari; they were proud of their origins and their community. But they did
consider themselves a part of West Bengal as well, and were concerned if the state was disturbed or
falling behind economically.
Would it be possible to lay, for the dreadfully impoverished Gorkhas in Darjeeling district, the
foundations of some kind of different activities that would develop such a stake? I thought perhaps
there could be, provided, first, they were given access to education, and at the same time a vigorous
campaign launched among the Bengalis to rid them of their stereotyped image of the ‘Bahadur’ that
they comforted themselves with. They had to understand and accept that West Bengal was as much the
state of the Gorkhas as it was of the Bengalis. If Gorkhas were to begin to think of West Bengal as
theirs as much as a state of the Bengalis that was a must. Unless the sneering and contemptuous
ostracism stopped—good-natured banter was different, and it existed in any case among Bengalis
themselves—no integration would ever succeed.
Employment was a difficult objective to achieve; there was rampant unemployment throughout the
state at that time, and any attempt to push a community, however small, ahead of others would invite
active resentment. But something had to be done, I felt, and it seemed to me that existing efforts to
provide employment, however pitiful, were wrong in trying to provide employment in the mountain
regions alone. They had to be given employment opportunities in different parts of the state.
And what employment would that be? They were already being recruited by the state to the armed
police, and in what were then called Class IV posts though these were entirely in the mountains. They
needed to be taken in, I thought, in much larger numbers into the higher civil services and posted
throughout the state; and, much more importantly, they had to be found similar employment in private
concerns. Maybe a system to make this attractive to private employers could be devised. Whatever
the nuts and bolts would eventually be, it had, I felt, to be done.
There was another element that I had sensed among the young during my not infrequent interactions
with them. (I spoke little Nepali, but could follow what was being said and could, haltingly, make
myself understood, and there was always a fallback to my Hindustani, which was execrable but
fluent.) There was a conviction among the young that the mountain regions were the world—little
outside them mattered. They knew about it, but rather as one knows of foreign lands and places.
I thought back to our journey through the south of India as probationers, visiting towns and cities
that we had only heard of, going to magnificent temples and the ruins of great civilizations, and I
thought of how deeply it affected me, and all of us. It seemed to me that tours through the vast country
of ours, conducted by the state, would make the youngsters in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong, and
the other towns and villages in the mountains aware of the vastness of the country and the essential
unity underlying the differences in language, in social customs and intercourse, and in ethnicity, and
that, I thought, might put their awareness of their difference with the Bengalis into some kind of
perspective—the edge of resentment might, just might, be worn down slightly by these tours.
It also seemed worth looking at projects that made it possible for them to acquire flats or houses in
the suburbs of Calcutta. Perhaps near Salt Lake City, a whole enclave, so that they did not feel
isolated. Some would certainly sell their properties and look for a home in their beloved mountains,
but not all—for one simple reason. Land for houses was very, very difficult to find in the mountains,
and there were the perennial problems of power, water and access to medical help and basic
amenities. If the enclaves near Calcutta had all of these—to the extent that was possible—then not all
of them would think of leaving straightaway, after years of profitable work in the plains.
It seemed to me that some kind of blueprint of this sort could be worked out with the approval of
the GNLF and might form the basis for a long-term integration that would end the anger and sharp
sense of difference that existed at the time. In the gloom of the monsoon rain in Jalpaiguri I sat down
and wrote this all down in the form of a proposal, and sent it on to S.V. Krishnan, the Chief Secretary.
I told him that I was merely making some suggestions; if they were considered worth following up we
could then work on them and try to talk to the GNLF leaders, or those among them who would be
willing to consider some discussion, and flesh out a concrete course of action.
I told the Chief Secretary that I was sending him these suggestions for one basic reason: the
Gorkhaland that was being sought was totally impractical. It would be hopelessly dependent on the
plains, on West Bengal, for everything from food to medicine to the material and machinery needed to
make roads. Some of the more sober members of the movement would see this, and that would make
them less hostile to the idea of some discussion on what could help dissipate the anger and animosity
that at the time engulfed virtually all Gorkhas in the mountains. Again, this was not only my bright
idea; it was something I had learned by talking to calm, responsible Gorkhas who worked in different
positions in Siliguri and in other towns in the foothills. They agreed that the movement was more a
back-to-the-wall thing than anything else; it had caught the Gorkhas’ imagination because they saw no
alternative.
‘Do you know what they call you in the plains?’ Ghising asked in one of his rabble-rousing
speeches in the mountains. ‘Bahadur, that’s what they call you. You have no name to them. You’re just
Bahadur—the chowkidar.’
‘And why do they call you that?’ he went on, passionately, raising his voice even higher. ‘Because
that is just what you are. You are coolies, watchmen, just Bahadur. You deserve to be nothing more.’
‘But let us form Gorkhaland,’ he went on excitedly, ‘and you will be masters of your own land, you
will decide what you will be, and you can be all that you want.’
This was followed by deafening, delirious acclaim, and slogans of ‘Gorkhaland! Gorkhaland! Our
demand is for Gorkhaland!’
This was no local disturbance, I knew. It was much, much more than that, something that I was not
sure the state could handle by itself. But something had to be done, and that something had to be a way
of integrating the Gorkhas into the state, in whatever way the political leadership felt was possible.
 One thing troubled me from the beginning. I knew that the Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, would see the
point of integrating the Gorkhas into the state, though he might decide differently on how that would
be done. I had spent many quiet hours with him in Darjeeling, where he came often to meet people
and dispose of pending work in the hill affairs department, and we had talked very frankly about the
situation in the hills, and, indeed, sometimes, of the situation in the state. But his party, the CPI(M)
was something different; I was not sure how they would look on my suggestions. They might well
advise him that they could settle the entire matter politically, though I knew that the ‘cadres’ of the
party in the hills were vanishing rapidly, moving across to the GNLF. I had no other alternative to
doing what I had done, drafting what I thought would be some sort of way of bringing the Gorkhas
closer to the rest of the state.
In hindsight, I know I was being much too optimistic. Political power in other parts of the country
was beginning to mean power over groups—castes, communities, and tribes. At that time this was an
emerging trend, but one that was clearly discernible. In my defence I can only say that I knew that, but
depended on the fact that the ruling party in West Bengal did not believe in any of this; its ideology
was grounded in something else, and that would not run counter to the suggestions I had made. What I
had perhaps left out of the equation was the reaction of the central political leadership to this
separatist demand.
Over the phone the Chief Secretary told me he’d got my proposal and that it would have to be
looked at in detail before he could tell me what he thought of it. I could only hope he wouldn’t think
of it as a piece of nonsense. He was not a Bengali, nor was he a Gorkha; he was an honest-to-
goodness Tamilian Brahmin (a Tam-Bram, as I later learned was the politically correct appellation),
so he could have had no partisan notions about the problem; besides, if I was not mistaken, he had
been DC, Darjeeling many years ago and knew the area and the people.
As I waited, the news coming to me from reports sent by Balagopal grew more and more grim. The
movement was becoming increasingly violent. Arson was rampant, and the terrible tragedy was that
the targets were many lovely forest rest houses that I had stayed in when I had visited development
work in areas near them, the beautiful Leave Hostel in the heart of Darjeeling, and several other
landmarks in the region. Gangs were out at night, especially in Kalimpong, and the houses of some
Bengali residents, who had lived there for decades, were put to the torch. In the hill towns, beset as
they were by a great shortage of water, there was no way that fire services could function.
Additional battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force, the CRPF, were sent in, but they could
not do much more than guard some vital buildings and patrol the roads. Ghising either could not or
would not stop the violence; my guess is that he could not. He put on a brave face and declared that
the anger of the Gorkhas had to be seen by ‘the rest of the world’ but he was, I suspect, a little fearful
of what he had unleashed.
Amidst this growing tension came the news that I had been selected, by the Prime Minister himself,
to be the next Director General of Doordarshan, the national television network. I have recounted the
circumstances under which this happened in my book Doordarshan Days. I was to join as quickly as
I could, so the orders said. The Chief Secretary told me this on the phone, and sounded annoyed.
‘Really, it’s most trying,’ he said. ‘Just when this wretched agitation has begun to turn ugly you’ve
got to go. Who will I send in your place?’
I didn’t have the heart or the inclination to ask him whether he’d given any thought to my proposal.
He didn’t mention it either. I concluded that it had been shelved, as so many things are in government.
I had good reason to believe this, as, even in far-off Delhi, amidst the turmoil of my initiation into the
world of television, I did ask after events happening in Darjeeling. Nothing of what I had suggested
ever took off, though talks with Subhash Ghising eventually started, on a totally different footing.
Commissioners are usually more supervisors than executive officers, and I was no different. That
the districts I was asked to look after, the five that made up what was commonly called ‘North
Bengal’ remained peaceful, by and large, with the exception of Darjeeling towards the end of my
tenure, was owing to the administrative skill of the deputy commissioners and district magistrates.
(There are no deputy commissioners any more in the state; all district officers are uniformly called
district magistrates, which makes good administrative sense, even though it meant the passing of an
age, of a tradition that was so much a part of the emerging pattern of the way the districts were ruled.)
And what happened in Darjeeling was owing to factors completely beyond the mandate of the district
officer; as I have tried to explain, it was a legacy of neglect and discrimination over the years.
The orders sending me to Delhi as Director General of Doordarshan also meant that my work in the
districts, in the field as it’s called, was at an end. Unless there was some major upset of some kind I
would not come back to this or any other field posting. That did make me a little wistful, even
melancholy. I had not done anything in the districts that would be set in stone, but I had worked as
best I could, I tried to learn from the people about their problems and needs and had tried to keep
peace.
As Commissioner I was able to see what an excellent job the district officers were doing; they
were IAS officers like me but quite different from my lot. These were far more enterprising, more
imaginative and more skilled at adapting to situations. We were a little too set, I think, as district
magistrates—these youngsters were not. They knew more people, and were, in a word, more down to
earth. They had become my friends, apart from being colleagues at work, but now we would be going
our different ways and I knew that they would take these attributes with them. It would be what
would, in no small measure, keep the administration going.
The melancholy was also owing to a very personal, perhaps childish reason: in Darjeeling, as
Secretary Hill Affairs, I had a cosy, tiny flat tastefully furnished by Sunil Mitra. It was on top of the
building that housed the department and on a level with the main road that led to Raj Bhavan and
Chowrasta. When I first arrived there was no connection with the road, but I managed to get one put
in, so that I could literally walk off the road to my flat and not have to go down to the main entrance
and climb up three flights of stairs. Anyone who’s lived in the mountains will know exactly what I
mean.
The flat had two small bedrooms and two little bathrooms, a sunny dining area and a reasonably
sized slightly cold drawing room which I used infrequently. In winter I had heaters, which kept the
flat snug and warm, and in summer the bedrooms got the mellow sunshine that lit them up. No
fireplaces, though; the building was a wooden one.
In contrast, in Jalpaiguri I had a palatial double-storeyed house set in some five acres of land; a
grand dining room and an enormous kitchen on the ground floor (which, with some ingenuity, I
managed to convert from the derelict store-room it had become to a splendid room with a large,
polished table and elegant chairs); a very spacious and obviously once very impressive drawing
room which was, sadly, then being used by the police guard as their residence; and a spacious,
comfortable study where I worked in the afternoons.
A great sweep of stairs from the central hall led to the first floor, where there were two very large,
airy bedrooms and a vast room over the porch that was, I was told, a ballroom, with a wooden floor,
and huge windows. This room I redid with some care, firming up the rather rickety floor with a
regular brick-and-mortar floor over which the original wooden floor was laid, and getting in such
furniture as I could find from the store-rooms in the compound, and getting them cleaned up and
painted. I spent most of my spare time here, where it was cool and airy, and where I could read—or
watch the very limited black-and-white television programmes—in peace and quiet.
Outside there were trees that sighed and swayed in the wind, and great stretches of blue sky—and
in the foothills of the Himalayas it really is blue, a deep sapphire blue in which bright white clouds
swam placidly. The monsoon meant darkness, tightly fastened windows, crashing thunder and the
hissing crashing torrents of rain; at times the dark clouds were so low that it seemed to be the middle
of the night. But there were days when the rain stopped; and the sodden countryside drooped, with
mist rising from it in thin veils.
You would have thought such a great house would be a gloomy place for someone who was living
there alone, for the most part, as I was. I thought so too, when I first saw the house, the day after I had
arrived in Jalpaiguri and settled into the Circuit House. But oddly enough it was not. Far from it. It
was—and I cannot explain this—an actually friendly place, a place I felt relaxed in, and happy to
come back to. Was there the ghost of a genial Commissioner, who should have gone into the bourn
from where no traveller returns, but who drifted about the house, instead, ensuring his successors felt
at home? Whatever it was, I enjoyed staying in that big house, which my friend Salman Haidar, then
Ambassador to Bhutan called Tundla Junction (he said it looked exactly like that station, which all of
us who’ve journeyed to Delhi by train from the east know because of the series of arches over the
tracks next to the platform.) Of course it didn’t; it looked imposing and gracious.
I mention these because these memories remain with me, interwoven with the rest, and are no less
treasured. I could not resist sharing them here as they seem to me to embody an aspect of the lives we
led out in the field, in the districts of the state. I knew I was doing so for the last time when I left the
great house in Jalpaiguri, and headed for the distant airport in Bagdogra. It was like the end of a
major part of one’s service, the years in the villages and in the fields, in good times and bad times,
coping as best one could. Among them all were some very warm memories, some unpleasant ones,
and some that were droll. But they formed the mosaic of district life, as it was when I was young and
—as Commissioner—when I was not so young. It was where ideas formed, or changed. It certainly
was where I did a good deal of growing up, and had my nose rubbed into the reality of life outside
big cities.
And it was now closing. I climbed down the sweeping staircase of what had been my home for the
last time, and began my journey away from this to a new experience, a new situation. I would miss it,
as I still do; there was a tranquillity that enveloped the countryside which I knew I would never see
again. The car drove through this quietness, and eventually the blue mountains appeared beneath
which the airport lay.
 9

Generalist vs Specialist

Back in Delhi, I went the next day to the strange environs of the headquarters of the country’s
television network, Doordarshan, and stepped like Alice into a different world. I have said enough of
all that in my book Doordarshan Days and don’t intend to repeat it here.
But after I left Doordarshan—or, more correctly, was ordered to leave—I did spend a good deal of
time thinking of what many have written about before and since then. Just how right is it to have an
IAS officer head a professional television network?
Ruling a district is a complicated business, certainly, and the conditioning one gets in the National
Academy is certainly not as helpful as it could be. Many IAS officers, both retired and serving,
thought it was quite useless in fact, but I can’t agree. Leaving aside the classes on various subjects
which were boring in the extreme, there was something one took away from there, something which
helped in the districts.
Classes in most colleges are equally boring, but for some strange reason most people tend to go all
gooey-eyed when their college, the canteen, or coffee house, or some such location, is mentioned later
in their lives, and is covered over with treacly sentiment. And yes, it’s easy to say it’s because they
associate it with their youth; the probationers in the National Academy were and are not much older.
True, situations change very quickly in the districts, and all the stuff probationers are told in the cool
and quiet rooms of the National Academy look antediluvian when one is facing some nasty situation
in a subdivision or district. But I think there are some essentials that do remain—and these come from
the add-ons rather than the core training given. Riding, rock climbing, physical fitness regimes,
trekking, the stint with the army, all go into the often unconscious responses to situations.
In any event, several aspects of the training in the Academy relate to or refer to running a district;
very little of it refers to running a television network, or even to working in a ministry, for that matter.
This makes one blunder around for a while, and often pick up ideas and potted knowledge from
colleagues senior and junior that are horribly wrong, even comic. In any event, why not leave the
running of something like an airline or a hotel chain to those who are in the business?
I doubt if anyone in the government has really thought this through; there have been others who have
researched the subject but their views are, as is usual, never considered by those who make the
decisions. But there is, somewhere in the grey fog that passes for collective bureaucratic thinking, a
notion that somebody who’s faced difficult, even dangerous, situations can handle a complex
organization, eventually.
And it has worked on a number of occasions. S.R. Rao, an IAS officer, was put in charge of the
Municipal Corporation of Surat, which is where the outbreak of bubonic plague started some years
ago, and he succeeded in making Surat the second cleanest city in India, an assessment made by a
team sent out by INTACH in 1994 or 1995. Probir Sen, another IAS officer, was Chairman and
Managing Director of Indian Airlines and then of both that and Air India when they were two separate
corporations, and did an outstanding job in bringing order and smoothness of functioning to these
organizations. R.C. Bhargava took over and virtually built Maruti into the giant, prosperous carmaker
it now is, and he was followed by someone who took it to even greater heights, Jagdish Khattar. Both
were IAS officers, who had not spent their lives making cars but running districts and government
offices.
There is also the establishment of Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, which was at one time a major centre
for the visual and performing arts. This was the creation of another IAS officer, Ashok Vajpeyi, who
wryly attributes its creation mainly to accident, and casual decisions taken by various other officers.
But the fact is it was he who got a group of outstanding creative people together such as Charles
Correa, J. Swaminathan, B.V. Karanth and others and set up an institution which was unique; as
Vajpeyi says, he had to be careful not to make it into a replica of Rabindra Bhavan in Delhi which is
one building housing three separate cultural institutions each separate from the other. Bharat Bhavan,
he said, was going to be an integrated centre for all the arts, and that is, in fact, what it became.
It has to do, finally, with management, not in the sense in which it is understood by the bright-eyed
lads and lasses in the IIMs but in the sense in which ordinary people understand it—handling
situations and people. If today the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India is an IAS
officer it is not because of anything other than the fact that right at the top what one needs is just that—
handling situations and people. These are not attributes that many of our distinguished archaeologists
are blessed with.
One can argue with valid reasons for the conversion of the Survey into a trust, which has
distinguished scholars and archaeologists on it, and to whom the head would report. But as things are
today, the massively monolithic Survey is, sadly, better ordered under an IAS officer who is sensitive
to the issues involved. In recent years I believe they have actually found someone who is an
archaeologist and has administrative experience. If they have, that’s good news.
When I was removed from Doordarshan and joined the Department of Culture in the Ministry of
Human Resource Development as Additional Secretary I was bitter, demoralized, angry and very,
very hurt. I had put in a great deal of work when I was in Doordarshan: I had hardly taken a day off,
unless I was ill—which was rare. I worked on Sundays, and I worked from 9 in the morning till after
9, sometimes 10, in the night. It was difficult to accept that, for all that work, what one got was a
summary removal, within a day, to a post that was deliberately created for me, in a department where
there was hardly enough work for a Secretary, leave alone an Additional Secretary.
I was told many years later by Gopi Arora, an IAS officer who had been very close to Rajiv
Gandhi, that he, Gopi, had fought hard to get me a post that didn’t make my move look like a
punishment or a humiliation, but failed to get that done. ‘They actually wanted you to be sent to a post
with no work worth the name,’ he told me sadly.
I could not, however, have had a kinder or more enlightened Secretary in the Department of
Culture. J. Veeraraghavan was from the Audit and Accounts Service but was devoted to the field of
education. He had held a number of positions in the Ministry related to education, had been in
NIEPA, the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, and in the Planning
Commission looking after education, but had been suddenly moved as Secretary, Culture when the
powers that be wanted to remove M. Varadarajan, an IAS officer from the UP cadre, from that post.
Veeraraghavan may have been new to the department, but he was not only a scholar but a man with a
very deep knowledge of the arts, and of culture in its many aspects. He called me to his room and
asked me what I would like to take charge of, from among the subjects given to the department.
‘Anything,’ I said sullenly. ‘Sweeping the rooms, getting stationery, things like that.’
‘I know you are resentful,’ Veeraraghavan said gently. ‘But take this list of subjects and go over it.
Let me know what you would like to do later on.’
‘I don’t need the list,’ I told him rather rudely, I fear. ‘I have one on my desk.’
I went to my room, watched by a young Deputy Secretary, Anshu Vaish, an IAS officer of the
Madhya Pradesh cadre. One of her charges in the department at the time was administration, that is,
the internal administration of the department.
A few minutes after I returned to my room she came in, knocking on the door and asking timidly,
‘May I come in, sir?’
‘If you want to,’ I said.
‘I came in to ask if there was anything you might need,’ she said. ‘If the room’s all right, and if you
are happy with your personal staff.’
‘I have a table and a chair,’ I said acidly. ‘What more do I need?’
She said nothing and got up to go. At the door she turned and said, ‘Sir, many of us junior officers
have admired the way you worked in Doordarshan. We admired the way you stood up to pressures
and did what you thought was right. You were a kind of role model to us.’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘But now,’ Anshu continued, ‘you’re being so … so disinterested, and dismissive and so negative.
We didn’t expect you to be like that, sir.’
I was astonished and must have looked it.
‘We all get transferred, sir,’ Anshu said quietly. ‘We … just have to make the best of it.’ Finally I
replied. ‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve been behaving badly, I realize that.’
‘I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn, sir,’ Anshu said and left.
She left me feeling very foolish. I had indeed been behaving churlishly; as she, a young officer,
pointed out, we just have to make the best of it. I had, without being aware of it, allowed myself to
presume I had a consequence that exceeded my identity as an IAS officer; how dare they treat me like
this, me; that was really what was eating me up. It could happen to others. Not to me.
I saw the Secretary the next day and told him I would like to look after museums, the
Archaeological Survey of India and a few other items. He looked relieved and said he would issue
the orders. As I came out of his room I met Anshu Vaish in the corridor. I told her what I’d said to the
Secretary. She smiled radiantly, and it was as if the sun had come out on a dark, grey day. Make of it
what you will. My return to serious work began with that smile.
The interface between government and matters cultural has always been, and will always be,
uneasy. The uneasiness begins when attempts are made to spell out what ‘culture’ means; there are
immediately several voices raised demanding to be heard on the issue, there is anger, indignation,
passion, amusement, and a large number of other emotions and reactions. As Hermann Goering
apparently said, ‘When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver.’ Fascist he certainly was but
the exasperation he expressed is something many less extreme in their worldview share.
Government rules and regulations make matters worse. The anxiety of all those in the ministry
given responsibility for culture and who have some respect for the concept—such as it is—has
always been to try to smoothen the jagged edges of the interface, and no one has been totally
successful. Some have actually made matters worse, others have achieved a very limited kind of
smoothening out in limited areas. This was what I slowly realized as I began my first days in the
department.
Again and again one came up against the question of the suitability of IAS officers to handle
responsibilities in this department—and one came across, also, the ineptness of persons of great
standing in the cultural field in their different areas as administrators. This was and, I should imagine,
still is, a dilemma that doesn’t seem to have any resolution in sight. I met and worked with directors
general of the Archaeological Survey of India who were fine archaeologists, had done major
excavations and published books and papers that had been acclaimed in the world of scholarship, but
who were hopeless when it came to managing the ponderous system—the ASI itself. I met directors
of museums who were fine scholars, but who simply couldn’t manage their institutions. Ultimately, at
the top, one had to manage—but that also needed some knowledge of the skill, the subject itself. As
far as I know just one IAS officer has a doctorate in archaeology and would have been suitable to
head the organization.
In the department, however, the situation was different. The department was a part of ‘government’
and therefore the legitimate stamping ground of the IAS; policy formulation, allocation of funds and
other aspects of governmental work were what we did, and, of course, the inputs and arguments and
proposals from the professional units were a valuable input. But they are never the only factors that
go towards policy formulation, as is generally known and accepted. Political realities are, to take an
example, another major concern.
My summary removal from Doordarshan still rankled though, and while I engaged myself with the
work in the Department of Culture I did air my grievance to a batchmate, S. Gopalan, then an
Additional Secretary in the Department of education, in the same ministry. Gopalan had little time for
my moaning and groaning, and said, ‘Why the hell don’t you go out and take a look at the protected
monuments of the ASI, the museums and other places you’re supposed to be looking after? Get out of
Delhi. It’ll help you.’
I took his advice and entered, as a result, into a world filled with wondrous, awesome monuments,
manuscripts, and artefacts. The magnificent ruins of Hampi, the great city of Fatehpur Sikri and the
immense grandeur of the Brihadeeswara Temple at Thanjavur, were offset by the exquisite Chola
bronzes in the Government Museum in Madras (now Chennai), and the unbelievably lovely
illuminated manuscripts kept in the Khuda Baksh Library in Patna.
The more I saw, the smaller I felt, and my grievance seemed silly and petty. And the more I saw the
more alarmed I felt at the enormous work needed to preserve and restore these priceless monuments
and artefacts. We needed specialist restorers of manuscripts and paintings, engineer-conservators,
archaeologists and epigraphists in much larger numbers than we had, and with greater skills. Sadly,
the few who had those skills found more lucrative employments in the US and in Britain; and we
could not give them the kind of salaries that would bring them back.
Not that we did not have any skilled personnel in these fields, far from it. But we needed more,
much more, and the worrying fact that became apparent was that fewer and fewer young people were
taking to these professions—archaeology, museology, epigraphy and so on—so that in time there
would be a major problem that the country as a whole would have to face.
‘Today,’ the then DG of the ASI told me when we were in Agra, ‘there is no one who knows how
to restore the dome of the Taj Mahal, if, God forbid, it collapses.’
I was aghast. ‘No one?’ I asked.
‘No one,’ he said firmly. ‘Not in the ASI. There may be someone in the Roorkee College of
Engineering or in the Railways. But even that is doubtful.’
‘Why the Railways?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘They build arches for their bridges, and may know how to rebuild a fallen dome.
But, as I said, it is a possibility, that is all. I myself am not sure.’
‘So what happens if the dome does collapse?’ I asked him.
He smiled. ‘Let us hope that it does not,’ he said.
And there was always the basic question. Should government get involved with this kind of
activity, or set aside funds for organizations and autonomous public bodies? In other words, leave
executive action to professional bodies which were independent of the government. We had a body—
an infant at the time—in INTACH and that could perhaps be encouraged to develop into a major body
actually to take on the kind of work being done by the ASI and other governmental agencies. In those
first days in the department I did think of these issues, more particularly because the thought of these
being done by governmental agencies made me uneasy, but it also seemed to me that there weren’t
enough agencies, and more importantly, a general sense of public awareness to be a credible and
practical substitute.
But if this was a worry at the back of my mind regarding monuments, it was a positive sense of
alarm when it came to our museums. They were, all of them, in desperate need of professional and
contemporary expertise in the care of their holdings, their storage and above all in their display. The
distinguished scholar Dr R. Nagaswamy showed me the condition in which the exquisite Chola
bronzes were kept in the Government Museum in Madras; that, fortunately, has changed now, I
understand, and they are being cared for and have been stored in much better conditions. But that was
my first glimpse, and following that there were other distressing examples; the Indian Museum in
Calcutta, the Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad and the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta were crying out
for complete renovations and for urgent care and protection of their artefacts. But their budgets were
pathetically small, and there was always a shortage of trained museum staff.
There was little that I could do about all this, but I did bring it to the notice of the Secretary and on
his advice took these matters up with the Financial Adviser. I have mentioned earlier the enormous
power that these worthies had in the bureaucratic system; in the Ministry of Education and Culture
there was one FA who was a part of the Department of Education—to the extent that he was part of
anything other than his real ministry, the Ministry of Finance. He ‘looked after’ the work of the
Department of Culture rather like the master in the pauper’s home and Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist and
his reaction was exactly the same if, like Oliver, we asked for more. Permit me to refresh your
memory with that fearful account:
[Oliver] rose from the table, and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed by his own
temerity:
‘Please, sir, I want some more.’
The master was a fat, healthy man, but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for
some seconds; and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.
‘What!’ said the master at length in a faint voice.
‘Please, sir,’ replied Oliver, ‘I want some more.’
The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The board was sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and, addressing the
gentleman in the high chair, said:
‘Mr Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!’
There was a general start. Horror was depicted in every countenance.
‘For more!’ said Mr Limbkins. ‘Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Did I understand he asked for more,
after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?

Substitute the Planning Commission for the board mentioned by Dickens in his novel and the
similarity is complete.
The FA simply could not understand that we actually needed more money. He didn’t pinion my
arms or aim a blow at my head with his pen, but his reaction was not entirely different.
In one case, however, we were able to do something, and that was entirely because of the
generosity of the late Ashok Jain, then Chairman of Bennett Coleman. He was a devoted Jain, and
spent a great deal of time trying to identify and restore forgotten or neglected Jain monuments and
artefacts. He did a good deal more than that for the community, but I am mentioning the aspect of his
work that brought him into contact with me. Mr Jain was a gentle person, who never raised his voice,
but who could nonetheless be very persuasive. He and I became good friends over time, and I
enjoyed the time we spent together discussing a number of issues, issues that went beyond the
preservation of monuments to deeper and more basic subjects. When I moved to the information and
broadcasting ministry our meetings continued and the range of issues we then talked about widened
even more.
However, to come back to the matter that he brought up in one of our meetings—it was about the
total neglect of three giant statues of the tirthankaras in Gwalior which were referred to by the ASI as
the Jain colossi. These were in three caves on the side of the hill that overlooked Gwalior town, and
the site had become a refuse dump in part and a place where prostitutes solicited business. Ashok
Jain told me of this and suggested that we go and look at the place for ourselves. I agreed, and
persuaded the then Additional Director General of the ASI, M.C. Joshi, to come with us.
I was appalled at the condition of the site. It was notionally a park, but was actually covered with
filth. The streetlights were broken, and the caves, which we could get to only after negotiating our
way carefully through the mounds of excreta and rubbish strewn around, were in a shambles. The
statues were covered with dirt and grime of ages; where there was some space graffiti had been
scrawled on them. And this was a site officially protected by the ASI!
M.C. Joshi told me that he would take matters in hand immediately, and told the officers of the ASI
who were there what they had to do to conserve and clean the statues. I, on my part, got in touch with
the Commissioner, Gwalior Division and the District Magistrate, and also the Commissioner of the
Municipal Corporation. After some initial hesitation they agreed to clean up the park and restore the
lighting, and, later, when the local police chief was called in, a strategy to rid the place of riff-raff
and prostitutes was worked out.
Ashok Jain made it clear that the cost of the cleanup would be found by him from various trusts and
other sources, something that made the work easier to take up immediately, without waiting for the
numerous bureaucratic sanctions that would otherwise have been necessary.
Two months later M.C. Joshi called me up and asked me if I would like to see the site again. I
readily agreed and spoke to Ashok Jain, who joined us there. The site was unrecognizable. The park
had been cleaned out, pathways laid, bushes and flowerbeds lined them and in between the ground
had been cleared for lawns to be laid. The streetlights had been all replaced with new, brighter lights
that led right up to the caves. The caves themselves were a delight to see; they had been cleaned and
the giant statues had been conserved with care and looked magnificent—imposing and yet serene. We
saw that the park had already become a place for families to visit in the evenings, and many of them
went up to the giant statues to look at them with awe. There used to be a bearded sadhu who had
established himself in one of the caves; I was relieved to see that he had been removed from there by
the local administration.
I went to the Commissioner and District Magistrate to thank them for what they had done; they
brushed my thanks aside, saying they were just as happy at the transformation as I was. ‘If it wasn’t
for Jain sahib here,’ they said, ‘it would never have happened.’
Ashok Jain, characteristically, said he had done nothing, and that seeing the statues restored gave
him a feeling of gratitude he found difficult to convey. All in all, this was one of the few instances of
a neglected site being restored with the joint efforts of the local administration, the ASI and of the
people in this case personified by Ashok Jain and the Jain community.
Unfortunately there was another issue regarding a monument where Ashok Jain and I could not
agree, as it was a little more complex than the restoration of the Jain colossi in Gwalior. Ashok Jain
told me one day that at a place not far from Bhubaneswar, a statue of Mahavira had been converted by
Hindus into a Vishnu statue and regular puja was being performed there every day. I was, quite
naturally, rather disturbed and lost no time in going down to Bhubaneswar to see for myself how that
had happened.
When I got there the local ASI officers took me to the spot and pointed out that it was true that the
statue was indeed that of Mahavira and was being worshipped as Vishnu, but the ‘conversion’ had
been done in the second century AD. They had evidence of it from inscriptions on the statue itself,
below the inscriptions that identified it as a statue of Mahavira. ‘It is a part of history,’ they pointed
out, ‘and the worship Jain sahib mentioned that is being done has been going on for over 1800 years.
How can we suddenly stop it?’
That put the matter in an entirely different context. Through time monuments have changed and the
changes have themselves been sanctified by history; the magnificent mosque in Cordoba, for example,
built when Arab rule was at the height of its glory in Spain, became a church, and services have been
held there for centuries. The great temple at Angkor Vat was originally a temple of Vishnu, but
centuries ago, the image of Vishnu became the image of Buddha. In our own country temples have
been torn down and the stones and carvings used to build mosques, again, centuries ago. These need
to be accepted not merely for what they were but what they became centuries ago, the change
becoming a part of our historical development.
I could not in all conscience do anything, and said as much to Ashok Jain. He disagreed with me in
his gentle way, saying, with a slight smile, that he was helpless as there were very few Jains in
Orissa. ‘If this had been in the west of India, I think you would have found it a little difficult to leave
things alone,’ he said. ‘In the west of India, Ashokji,’ I pointed out to him, ‘this kind of thing would
never have happened.’
But by and large we, meaning the department and the ASI, remained at the mercy of the Financial
Adviser, which meant that there was precious little that could be done other than hold on, just about.
Matters rested there, as far as I was concerned, as the general elections of 1989 were held. The
Congress Party lost and V.P. Singh became Prime Minister of a shaky Janata Dal government. One
result of that was that the new information and broadcasting minister, P. Upendra, insisted I be
brought back to his ministry as Additional Secretary. I was reluctant to go, I must confess, but the
minister spoke to me personally, and my resolve weakened before his persuasion.
Just how unpleasant my stint—mercifully brief—in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting
was I have described in my book Doordarshan Days, and I will not repeat that here. But it was, as I
said, mercifully brief, not more than three months or so, and I found myself in a new unit formed to
deal with the emerging insurgency in the Kashmir Valley, a unit headed by the railways minister
George Fernandes.
This was in late 1989, or early 1990, and insurgency had become a major and alarming factor in
Kashmir, which had been, till then, more or less peaceful. Kashmiri Hindus were killed, posters
demanding that they leave Kashmir began to appear and panic set in within that community. What
began as a trickle soon became a flood, as family after family fled, in the face of a number of
murderous attacks on Hindus—Pandits, as they were known in the Valley—who had been resident
there for generations. Then followed attacks on Government of India offices, chiefly the radio and
television stations, and the head of the television station, Doordarshan Srinagar, was shot and killed
in front of his house. As it happened, he was a Kashmiri Pandit.
The government decided to set up a special cell to try to resolve the problem through a variety of
ways—talks, mainly, and by taking action to redress perceived injustice and wrongs. This was the
cell that was headed by George Fernandes; he was given the task as he was familiar with the
problems in Kashmir, having gone there many years before, to join the struggle then waged against
discrimination and neglect. I headed the administrative setup he had wanted, with two joint
secretaries, Syed Rizvi and S.B. Mathur. Both were IAS officers; Syed was from the J&K cadre and
knew the state well.
Working with George Fernandes was a pleasure. Though the task we had been given was rather
grim, to put it mildly, he made it easy by not only being very accessible, but by encouraging us to
come up with ideas which he would discuss as with friends and then he would take them up, if he
agreed with them with the Prime Minister. One of the first things—in fact the very first, if I remember
correctly—that I put to him was that the unit not be located in the home ministry, where it was, but in
the cabinet secretariat.
The idea was resisted by the home ministry as they saw it as primarily their problem, but the
minister agreed that the last thing the issue should be seen to be was a law-and-order problem. That
aspect would continue to be handled by the home ministry, but the special work to be done had to be
by a unit that was not part of any ministry, but directly under the cabinet itself.
Not surprisingly, the Cabinet Secretary, Vinod Pande, also resisted the idea, but for different
reasons. He complained that he was beginning to spend more time keeping subjects from being thrust
upon him, because some ministry or minister or the other felt it was important enough to warrant
being put there, and here was another being thrust upon him. I went and saw him and, after he told me
what he thought of me and my ‘stupid’ idea I placed the compelling arguments I had before him.
I explained we would have to look at a whole lot of issues—education, agriculture, health, roads,
and many others—and that couldn’t be done from the home ministry. Pande heard me out and then
smiled mischievously. He had a great sense of humour that was often sly, and often perceptive.
‘All right, you wretched fellow,’ he said finally. ‘You should have been a bloody lawyer. Though
you’d never have made it beyond the munsif’s courts.’
‘Why not, sir?’ I asked him, indignantly.
‘Because they’re the only people you can convince,’ he said. ‘Like me. I’m a bloody Subdivisional
Magistrate essentially. I think like a ‘junt-saheb’ [Joint Magistrate, which is what subdivisional
magistrates were called in UP]. That’s why I’m listening to you. But I’ll tell you something, my clever
friend.’ He leaned forward. ‘You’ve made a real enemy.’
I was astonished. ‘An enemy?’ I asked.
‘Yes, oh yes,’ Pande smiled an evil smile. ‘The Home Minister. Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. He’ll
never forgive George Fernandes, or any of you.’
I had indeed overlooked the fact that the Home Minister was, in fact, a Kashmiri himself, and
realized the truth of what Vinod Pande said. I must have looked crestfallen, because Pande laughed
uproariously.
‘Arre, don’t look as if you’ve swallowed a frog,’ he said. ‘We all have our share of enemies. What
would life be without them? Go on, get out.’
Then followed some of the most exciting, and moving months in my years as an IAS officer, shot
through though they were with tension sometimes as sharp as a razor. George Fernandes flew into
Srinagar very often, and we soon discovered that there was another implacable foe that he had—the
Governor, Jagmohan. To be honest, I think the dislike was mutual, but it did not make our work
easier.
I had some good friends there: Ved Marwah, who was then an Adviser to the Governor, and the
Chief Secretary, Ashok Jaitly, known to his friends as Tony. Both, as it happened, were Stephanians,
former students of St. Stephen’s; Ved had left college, as I have said earlier on in the book, by the
time I joined, and I had left before Tony joined, but the bond was strong.
Ved and Tony taught me a great deal about the situation in Kashmir; in fact, it was through them that
I began to understand just how the insurgency had developed to the levels it had reached. They told
me about that concept so dear to every Kashmiri, Kashmiriyat, which isn’t easy to translate—it means
being Kashmiri, Kashmiri-ness, to use a word which is hideous, but which does convey a bit of what
it is.
This was, in times past, the only defence that the inhabitants of the Valley had against invaders:
Mongol, Afghan, Mughal and British. They turned within themselves, to their traditions and their way
of life. It was all they could do. Now that Kashmiriyat was acquiring a more aggressive form, the
efforts to bring Kashmir into the mainstream of the country—clumsy, and at times disastrously wrong
—were seen as another ‘invasion’.
The tragedy was that it wasn’t seen as such in the first years after the British left, or indeed for
decades thereafter. In spite of unceasing propaganda from across the border and passionate appeals to
the residents of the Valley as brother Muslims, it must have been infuriating for Pakistan to see that,
on both the occasions when the two countries went to war, in 1965 and in 1971, Kashmiris provided
the Indian Army with sturdy and dependable support in terms of logistics, transporting food and
material to the front lines often at the cost of their lives. But something happened in between those
years and 1990, something for which we as a country are still paying.
That something was neglect. Neglect and indifference to the needs of the people, and to the very
structure of governance and development. Compounding that several times over was the brazen
corruption at all levels, which the local people saw all too clearly but which the Central authorities
either did not or would not see. If it was the former, it spoke eloquently of their perspicacity and
intelligence, and if the latter of a cold-blooded expediency that was matched only by its monumental
foolishness.
In those years rapacity extended to such an extent that schools either did not exist or were terribly
understaffed and without basic facilities like textbooks and blackboards. Parents desperate to get
their children some kind of education began sending them to the madrasas and this is where it all
began. The teachers in the madrasas were young, passionate zealots who taught the children the basic
subjects needed but also told them of the corruption, the neglect and the utter incapacity of the state to
provide roads, health clinics, schools, food supplies in winter, markets for their produce and all the
ills that made it clear that they did not have the interests of the Kashmiris at heart.
Some twenty years later the young men and women coming out of these madrasas were no longer
staunch supporters of the nation, because they saw the nation as something apart, as indifferent to their
needs and their welfare. These were the first members of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front,
the JKLF, which was, in the first years the main source of the insurgency. It had, it must be said,
widespread support, in many cases tacit, among the people of Kashmir. Note, too, that it was the
Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front; the insurgents saw both units of the state as one.
Later years saw the emergence of other groups, trained, equipped and funded from across the
border, groups far more murderous, whose intentions were not to help the Kashmiris at all but to
attack and weaken the Indian state. That is a different story and has been told by many far better
qualified than me. But in those first years, when it was still the JKLF that had to be countered a great
opportunity was lost because of our time-honoured internal bickering and petty ambitions.
With the mandate of the Central Government George Fernandes engaged in quiet and secretive talks
during his frequent visits; with whom I never knew but could only guess. This was resented, it turned
out, by the Governor, Jagmohan for his own reasons, and by the Home Minister, Mufti Mohammed
Sayeed, for his own. It led to disastrous consequences, but more of that later.
For our part, we busied ourselves with some of the side-effects of the insurgency and the incessant
curfews and tension. Keeping trade routes open, keeping goods coming into the Valley and produce
going out. Winter was on us, the freezing, numbing winter of the Valley, but we had only that time in
which to work out how the apple harvest would be sold. The traditional buyers were wholesalers
from two markets—Calcutta and Delhi. They were not coming with their usual advance payments in
the existing conditions. What could be done?
Would the state make the payments to the farmers? The Governor ruled that out as he said that
every orchard was a training ground for terrorists and he was not going to subsidize terrorists. It may
well have been true for some, but surely not all farmers—and they were in a desperate condition.
They needed the advances to survive, advances that would be adjusted against the price of their crop.
We thought of using NAFED (the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India)
as an agency to buy up the crop and sell it to wholesalers in the mandis of Calcutta and Delhi. A
paper was made ready which George Fernandes endorsed readily and we took it to the cabinet
secretariat.
A meeting was called with officers from the ministries concerned and from NAFED chaired by the
Secretary (Coordination) in the cabinet secretariat and everyone agreed this was the only way. But
we would still need the Governor’s approval to the scheme. The cabinet secretariat agreed to take
this up with him.
The disastrous consequences I had referred to soon caught up with us. An instance was our visits to
the tension-ridden town of Doda, to which we got in a helicopter of the state government flown by a
devil-may-care pilot whose conversation was as entertaining as his flying was heart-stopping. He had
been a group captain in the IAF and the IAF pilots treated him with considerable respect, and also
kept their helicopters at a safe distance from his. Doda was in Jammu province, and the residents of
that small town and the villages surrounding it on the precipitous slopes of the towering Pir Panjal
mountains around it were almost all Muslims. It had become a centre for the movement for azadi
(freedom) which the JKLF had started. George Fernandes decided he would talk to the local people
there himself, and we accompanied him.
As our helicopters landed we heard the mountains ringing with the frenzied shouts of ‘Azadi!’ and
‘Ham kya chahte hain? AZADI!’(What do we want? Freedom!). The Deputy Commissioner, a young
IAS officer whose native town was Doda, as it happened, met us at the helipad and told us that all the
young men in the town were inside the local mosque and did not wish to speak to the minister.
‘Very well, then,’ George Fernandes said. ‘I will go and speak with them. Is that acceptable to
them?’
The Deputy Commissioner’s emissary soon returned and said it was, but no police should
accompany him.
‘All right,’ the minister said.
The security detail with him was aghast and protested violently. The minister stopped them and
said he would be perfectly safe, and no police was to accompany him. Only I was to go with him.
The Deputy Commissioner said that he too would go with us, as he knew many of the young men
personally.
We went to the mosque, our heads covered as was required, leaving our shoes outside. As we
entered we were surrounded by a furious mob of men, shouting deafening slogans and shaking their
clenched fists in front of our faces. Anger blazed out of their eyes. We stood there, and I was
reminded irresistibly of a similar situation when I was surrounded by an incensed mob in Cooch
Behar many years ago, when I thought I would be killed. Oddly, I did not get that feeling here, but it
was unnerving, to put it mildly.
After an age, it seemed, the shouting lessened, and the minister spoke to them in a normal, equable
tone.
‘Are you done?’ he asked them, and then went on, ‘You know, I have done slogan-shouting in my
time, and many other things. But a time then comes to talk, and think of action.’
The crowd went quiet and listened to him as he spoke in calm, measured terms. He asked them
what it was that was troubling them the most.
‘Corruption!’ came the angry reply. ‘Open corruption and nepotism. Go and see the wooden bridge
built over the stream just outside the town. It’s already broken because the contractor used rotten
material.’
A young man thrust himself in front of the minister, truculently. ‘And what about your recruitment
parties?’ he asked, raising his voice. ‘What about them? They come from the CRPF [Central Reserve
Police Force] and BSF [Border Security Force] and recruit only those who are relatives of the
tehsildar [local revenue official] or those who pay him. What about us?’
‘Yes, yes!’ other young men shouted. ‘What about us? Just because we can’t pay!’
The truculent young man stood back. ‘Look at me!’ he shouted. ‘Am I not tall enough? Am I not
physically well-built?’
George Fernandes knew, I am sure, the exact import of what these young men were saying. They
wanted to join the security forces of the Government of India, they wanted jobs; these were no rebels
wanting to wage war on India. These were young impoverished men who saw the face of rank
dishonesty and corruption and it infuriated them because of the injustice of it all.
He spoke with them, reassuringly, and said that as soon as he returned he would send the recruiting
parties back. He said that it was evident that many of them were fit to serve in the CRPF and BSF. He
spoke for a few minutes more and as he finished the crowd shouted slogans again, but these were
different. ‘George Fernandes Zindabad!’(Long Live George Fernandes!) echoed in the valley and as
he left the mosque young men held his hands and asked him to promise he would return, which he said
he would.
We left a different Doda, with a new realization and a new perception that offered some hope, but
clearly the task ahead was awesome in its magnitude. In Jammu, the minister spoke to the Prime
Minister and decided to return the next morning to Delhi.
I had thought the task ahead was awesome. That it was worse, that it was virtually impossible
became evident that night. I was called by the Deputy Commissioner of Doda. He had just been
spoken to by the Governor, he said, and was being sent forty blank arrest warrants. He was told to put
in the names of forty from among the young men who had met the minister and have them sent to
Jammu under police escort.
‘You can’t do that!’ I exclaimed in horror. ‘What have they done?’
‘I tried telling him that, sir,’ the DC said. ‘But I was shouted down.’
Now there may well have been reasons for the Governor to have done what he did. He may have
had information that there were subversives among the young men there in the mosque at Doda, but the
tragedy was not in that so much as in the fact that he never thought to talk to the minister first, to
consult with him on what would be the best course of action. That was, perhaps, his greatest fault,
hubris. He thought only he knew best and that he should be left alone to handle the situation.
Teamwork was never something he considered necessary. A man of integrity, of dedication and
commitment, but with this one fatal weakness that harmed the strife-torn state more than he realized.
I told the minister of this. He maintained a grim silence all the way to Delhi. I could imagine what
must have been going through his mind—the tense silence in Doda, no recruiting parties, young men in
jail, and insurgency seen to be the only way out of this intolerable and unjust situation.
Within a month of this George Fernandes resigned as Minister for Kashmir Affairs, and the
Kashmir Cell in the cabinet secretariat was wound up. The subject would be handled once again by
the home ministry as a law-and-order issue, and the Governor would rule the state as best he could. I
saw the Cabinet Secretary and he was very prompt in having the two joint secretaries given other
assignments, and not left to loiter in the corridors for postings. I sent away the other staff—they were
mainly from the railways ministry so that was not difficult; the minister had them taken back promptly.
I went to see the Cabinet Secretary to take his leave; he had been good to me, and very supportive,
and I wanted to thank him. He waved that aside and said, ‘You’re now to be made a Secretary,
Bhaskar. So I’ll have to find a ministry.’
I kept quiet. ‘How about Culture?’ he asked. ‘Veeraraghavan has retired and Varad (M.
Varadarajan of the UP cadre, and a friend) is holding charge. He’ll hate you for it,’ Vinod Pande
added cheerfully. ‘But it’s a temporary charge for him, and he knows it.’
‘I would like that very much,’ I said.
‘Good, go on, then, I have work to do,’ he said.
He was as good as his word, and two days later I received my orders making me a Secretary to the
Government of India.
 10

Secretary, Department of Culture

Vinod Pande was wrong about Varad hating me for being given the Department of Culture. But there
was something of the tragic hero about him as he smiled sadly but bravely as he signed the papers.
‘This room is the Secretary, Culture’s room,’ he said, in a very melancholy tone. ‘I’ve had it for
some years now and as you can see I’ve tried to give it a different look. Would you like me to move?’
Ever since he’d been Secretary, Culture, he meant. It showed. The room was furnished most
tastefully, with different levels, and a unique ethnic touch that reflected Varad’s innate good taste and
aesthetics. I hadn’t the heart to ask him to move.
‘No, no,’ I said cheerily, to lighten the atmosphere that was, right then, very like Count Orsino’s
court in Twelfth Night. ‘I’ll go into the other room.’ Meaning the room meant for the Secretary, Youth
Affairs and Sports, which Varad was. And that was what I did.
The position of a Secretary to the Government of India has been one that has been the subject of
more than one argument, and of study; should it be the preserve of IAS officers? How does a lifetime
in districts help one to be an effective Secretary of, say, the Ministry of Steel? This is a more or less
standard question that keeps getting asked, irrespective of the fact that, over the years, the government
has taken steps towards career planning for IAS officers, introduced in-service training courses, and
tried to develop in different officers a familiarity with the subjects they were handling.
Besides, subject-matter skills were not seen as being the only thing that mattered; increasingly,
skills as managers, as formulators of policy, became an area on which attention was turned. Unlike
civil servants in other countries, the IAS officers in India do have a major role to play in the
formulation of policies, even though they are, finally, and rightly, determined by the political
executive.
It meant, though, that one had to work closely with the political executive, particularly as
Secretary. For me, in that position, it meant Arjun Singh, who was Minister for Human Resource
Development, a ministry which had Culture as one of its departments. He was an urbane but slightly
distant person, whose politeness was a kind of cloak, hiding his persona. But what did come across
was his shrewdness and a cold, rather calculating, cleverness.
His interest was clearly in his major charge, Education, and this was natural enough. That was the
department that had the most problems and, in the priorities of the government, was far more worrying
and of much greater concern. Not that he ever said so, he was too clever and too much of the
sophisticated, polite thakur for that. But I found it difficult to get much time from him, something that,
initially, I was not too bothered with but later became a minor irritant.
It was, in any case, a department I had got to know and whose immensely fascinating world I had
glimpsed partially as Additional Secretary; now I saw the other aspects—the world of the performing
arts, of the visual and plastic arts. This was, in a personal sense, very exciting; I had been involved
with theatre since I was in college, and even when in service, I spent virtually all my evenings, after I
must emphasize, completing my official work, in rehearsals or performing on stage. Sometimes I
directed plays, but in the earlier years when I was younger, I spent more time acting. All this was
only in Delhi; in the districts there was nothing one could do of this and in Calcutta I found the theatre
world a rather cold, enclosed world which did not take kindly to outsiders like me.
I mention this because it made working as Secretary, Culture that much more personal, something
that I related to more closely because of my theatre work. I had necessarily to leave all that behind
once I became Secretary, for reasons that were practical more than anything else.
The National School of Drama was considered by us journeymen theatre people as an elite
institution that had all the money in the world where we had to scrounge around for it from reluctant
and not too enthusiastic sponsors—when we were lucky enough to get them—or use the tiny amounts
we had in our society’s kitty, hoping to make it up by ticket sales. Now, in the department, I saw it in
a different light; an institution where the students were on strike, as were the staff, and no work was
going on. The Chairman of the governing body was Vijaya Mehta, that fine theatre personality, and
these problems caused her a great deal of distress and exasperation.
I’m not sure that my having been involved with theatre helped me handle the problems of the NSD,
but my years as an IAS officer definitely did. The one aspect of the numerous issues that had got the
NSD into the mess into which it then was, something I felt I could relate to most easily as a theatre
person was their demand for parity in pay with university staff—professors, readers and so on. I fully
sympathized; one of the attributes of theatre as a creative profession was that everyone seemed to
think it normal for those involved with it to be paid a pittance.
Theirs was to be, it was generally and comfortably believed, a life of genteel penury, that of the
shabby kurta-pajama and the jhola. It was what being in theatre was all about. You couldn’t have
theatre persons thinking of living in decently comfortable apartments, owning cars, educating their
children in the same schools and colleges to which we sent our children. After all, a theatre person
substituted material comfort with his ideas and his passion on stage. This notion used to fill me with
anger, bringing out, as it did, the stereotypical reactions of the shopkeepers and traders that the
middle classes tended to be. On this issue, consequently, I vigorously pushed for higher scales, and
the demand that they be paid what academics in universities were paid seemed to me fully justified.
The other issues, like the drawing up of a rational, practical syllabus, I thought it best to leave to
Vijaya and to those she felt would be able to formulate these sensibly. At the time there was no
director, the previous one having left when all the trouble started, and Kirti Jain, a gifted theatre
person who had also done a stint as a television producer with Doordarshan, was holding the fort, so
to speak. It was Kirti who had led the teachers’ agitation and had been considered the instigator of all
the trouble in the NSD. Both Vijaya and I felt, however, that she was the one person who really had
the interests of the school at heart; initially Kirti was prickly and very wary, ready to oppose any
suggestion that Vijaya made that ran counter to the stated demands of the staff, and I know that at times
Vijaya found her exasperating. But Vijaya softened over time, and on my persuading her that Kirti
was our best bet for a rational person to bring some order back to the NSD she agreed.
 I took time off to go and see Ebrahim Alkazi, the legendary theatre person who made the NSD what
it was then, had taken it out of the Sangeet Natak Akademi and made it an exciting and truly creative
place from where some of the finest theatre and film personalities emerged. Alkazi was a little
circumspect, but I discovered that it was part of his reserved nature. He wasn’t given to loud and
passionate declamations of his beliefs and ideas; he spoke softly, and whatever he said was stated in
measured terms. I asked him about Kirti and he smiled. I could see that he was fond of her, and when
I told him that I felt, as did Vijaya, that she may do something worthwhile for the school he did not
disagree. All he said was that, from what he had learned of the affairs of the school, it was in a
terrible state.
Vijaya and Kirti, assisted by some others from the school, worked on the syllabus and the new
rules for the admission and evaluation of students. They also, naturally, worked on the pay scales and
other demands of the teaching staff. I then suggested that we consider appointing Kirti the regular
Director, to which Vijaya readily agreed. The minister, to whom I took the proposal, was a little
more hesitant.
‘She’s too young, isn’t she?’ he said.
‘That’s precisely the point, sir,’ I told him. ‘She can think ahead and plan on a long-term basis. If
she had just a few years left she could not and would not do that.’
The minister agreed, and we had the orders issued making Kirti Jain the Director of the National
School of Drama; she was the youngest Director the school had had till then.
I mention this only to give an example of an issue where, even though I was, in some way,
personally involved—in this case as a theatre person—it was finally on my experience and judgement
as an IAS officer that I was able to bring it to some kind of closure.
The department was far from being a quiet little sinecure that many other IAS officers fancied it
was. It had its problem areas, often tension-ridden areas, and it had opportunities to see, and learn
about, our magnificent traditions and heritage. Some of the institutions that had come into being when
Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, largely at the instance of Mani Shankar Aiyar, someone who made
a great many enemies, admittedly, because of his acid and at times very witty comments on people
and situations, but who was one of the most intelligent and perceptive persons in Rajiv Gandhi’s
personal office. These were the zonal cultural centres, units meant originally to be revitalising agents
for the folk arts and crafts in the country. They were to have been located away from state capitals
and, indeed, most were—the North Zone (NZCC) in Patiala, the West Zone (WZCC) in Udaipur, the
South Zone (SZCC) in Thanjavur, the East Zone (EZCC) in Santiniketan, the North East Zone
(NEZCC) in Dimapur and the North Central Zone (NCZCC) in Allahabad. Most of them were headed
by young IAS officers, except for a few like the NEZCC, and the NCZCC. The NEZCC was headed
by a man whose only qualification seemed to be that he was close to the Chief Minister of Nagaland;
he seemed only vaguely concerned about his work and mercifully did not last long in that post. The
NCZCC had another colourful character heading it: a man who, again, had got the post because of his
connections, and who, at the time I joined the department was embroiled in an unsavoury scandal
involving his son, who seemed to have been running the NCZCC like a personal fiefdom and who
additionally was reputed to have fathered a child on one of the female employees of the Centre.
Again, very fortunately, he did not last long and was replaced by Neeru Nanda, a young and very
enthusiastic young IAS officer who hid her energy and enthusiasm effectively under a quiet, timid
exterior.
The Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre was headed by Pritin Bhattacharya, an IAS officer who had
been inducted into the service from the West Bengal Information Service. He was an invaluable asset
to the Centre, quietly and adroitly managing the demands made on him by combative state ministers,
especially the West Bengal Minister for Information and Culture, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya who went
on to become the Chief Minister. Pritin’s energy seemed endless and he organized some excellent
functions in different places in his region. More importantly, he managed to persuade everyone,
including the mandarins in my ministry, that the logical place for the headquarters of the Centre was
Calcutta, not Santiniketan, which was difficult to get to from most states other than West Bengal. The
location the Centre was given in the Salt Lake area of the city has been built up, almost entirely by
him, as a truly attractive cultural complex, with an auditorium, art gallery and exhibition space.
These Centres were the subject of much debate. Eventually the government appointed a committee
headed by P.N. Haksar, a distinguished scholar and civil servant who had served as Indira Gandhi’s
Principal Secretary, to examine the functioning of these Centres and whether they needed to be
changed, indeed, whether they needed to exist at all. Haksar sahib, as we called him, concluded that
the Centres needed to continue, but he made a number of suggestions about the way they should
function, to fulfil their mandate as catalysts for a process of regeneration, particularly of folk art and
crafts. Sadly, those recommendations were never implemented in full as long as I was there, not for
any lack of trying, but owing to the long-drawn-out procedures—and the inevitable tripping up by the
gnomes in the Ministry of Finance.
One of the most pleasant and rewarding features of being Secretary in the Department of Culture
was working with Girish Karnad, who was Chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi. Appointing him
Chairman was one of the wisest things that had been done. Girish brought a dynamism and vision to
that staid and mouldering body that cleared away a great deal of the cobwebs and musty ways; he
used to come in to Delhi frequently and his visits meant a whirlwind of ideas sweeping into the
ministry. One thing he never really accepted was that the NSD had broken away from the Sangeet
Natak Akademi; he felt, and I agreed with him, that it rightfully belonged with the SNA family. But it
was too late to change that, I felt, and he realized too but reluctantly that bringing it back was not
practical.
It would be fair to say that most of my time as Secretary was taken up with matters concerning the
Archaeological Survey of India. This organization, set up by the British, was responsible for
maintaining and conserving monuments listed in the Preservation of Ancient Monuments Act and this
number was just about some 3,000-odd, against the vast number of monuments and sites that existed in
the country. A part of the reason for the number of protected monuments being so small was the fact
that the Act laid down some criteria—the monument had to be historically significant, or have some
architectural or other feature that made it unique or aesthetically significant, and so on. But the real
reason was, of course, the very small amount of money that the ASI had to do its work. It was so
small that some protected monuments had no guards, no regular maintenance or repair, just the
occasional visit by a peripatetic chowkidar or, very occasionally, by a junior member of the
conservation staff.
In typical government fashion the pay given to the staff and officers was pegged at levels that
comforted the bureaucrats, and made clear to the professional staff of the ASI that they should know
their place in the official hierarchy, which was very low down in the list. As most of the staff were
specialists like epigraphists, conservation engineers, and others who specialized in certain periods in
the history of the country in so far as it related to buildings—forts, palaces, temples, mosques, tombs
and others—they had no idea what all this meant and accepted whatever level they were assigned in
the governmental pecking order.
This meant that increasingly fewer people were joining the ASI; in fact when I became Secretary I
found that there was just about one epigraphist in the organization. I had, earlier, as Additional
Secretary, discovered that the ASI did not have the expertise within its ranks to repair the dome of the
Taj Mahal in the event of it collapsing; as Secretary I discovered even more terrible facts—there was
no system of inspection on a regular basis, and some protected monuments were never visited at all.
Conservation assistants went to them if there was a reported collapse or a crack or some damage to
the structure.
It became clear, though, that it would not do to treat this as a purely governmental problem. The
local people had to be involved, and I soon saw during visits to different monuments that there were
strong feelings in the local populace about what they considered to be ‘their’ monuments. But the
scale of what needed to be done was so enormous as to be disheartening; my attempts to expand the
ASI were also resisted not only by the financial gnomes in the government but from within the ASI
itself. One Director General told me that he was terrified of ‘CBI cases’, meaning instances of
corruption. True, there was a good amount of that in different areas, but my pleas that the answer was
to root it out were not enthusiastically received.
There were dedicated individuals who, on their own, had started movements, and pushed
governments and municipalities to act to preserve heritage buildings. The late Shyam Chainani was
one such, and it was owing to his truly dogged and determined efforts that many fine buildings in
Mumbai were saved. INTACH (The Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) was then in
its infancy, and while people like Martand Singh did a splendid job of going to different towns to
make people aware of the monuments and heritage sites that existed in the areas where they lived, it
would take time for more and more people to become aware of the need to preserve what was left of
the monuments amidst which they lived.
An unfortunate, and very sad, feature of INTACH in those years was its antagonistic attitude to the
ASI. Everything the ASI did, according to them, was wrong, was destroying our heritage; the ASI
were, they said in different forums, incapable of any real conservation and maintenance, and merely
because the professionals in the ASI were not as fluent in English as the babalog who constituted the
first lot of INTACH members and who were all English-speaking and from the elite class, they
usually carried the day. What this resulted in was a resentment in the ASI to INTACH; and yet, among
the people in the ASI were scholars of great eminence such as M.C. Joshi, who became Director
General during my time, and A.K. Sharma, and others whose knowledge and experience was far
beyond that of anyone in INTACH then. Thus the one agency that could have worked side by side with
the ASI and supplemented its efforts, distanced itself from the ASI and the ASI did the same.
But there were other things about the ASI that occupied my time, things that were causes of worry
and even alarm. One of these had to do with the restoration work being done by the ASI of the
temples in Angkor Wat, in what is now Cambodia. These temples had for long been considered the
exclusive preserve of the French, since it was a French archaeologist who came upon them many
decades ago, when it was still a part of the French colonial territories. The fight against the French
and the terrible violence that followed that saw the emergence of the Khmer Rouge put an end to any
restoration work. But the years passed, the Khmer Rouge was ousted and under the new dispensation
of Prime Minister Hun Sen, the ASI—not the French—were asked to take on the restoration work of
these temples.
This was not taken very well by the French, understandably; but for some reason an institution
called Sophia College in Japan began a crusade to get the ASI out of Angkor Wat. Stories were put
about saying that the Indians were causing great damage to the old structures, that they were madly
pouring cement concrete into any gap or opening they could find and throwing away precious carvings
and figures. Films of the carnage allegedly caused by Indian archaeologists were shown at
international forums—fortunately rather obscure ones—and the matter was raised in meetings of
UNESCO.
The DG came to me with this in some distress. He pointed out some very pertinent issues; the
temples were built by Hindu architects and builders mainly from the Pallava and Chola periods, and
since there were numerous temples in south India built at the same time and using similar methods,
Indian archaeologists were far more familiar with the Angkor Wat temples than anyone else; they
were not ‘pouring cement concrete into every available opening’ as was being put about, but, yes,
they were using some cement concrete to strengthen structures that were in imminent danger of
collapse. This was not unusual and they took care not to damage the carvings and figures in any way.
The most astonishing part of all this related to the charge that Indians were pulling down and
throwing away intricately carved sections of hallways and colonnades. The fact, which the indignant
superintending archaeologist in charge of the restoration told me, was something so damaging to the
entire complex as to be nothing short of vandalism. The French restorers had put together pieces of
the galleries which they thought went together but in fact made a total nonsense of them because they
were unable to see that the entire gallery was a reproduction of a sequence from the Ramayana. They
had put the pieces in a higgledy-piggledy manner which would have been very funny had it not been
such a dreadful travesty of what the gallery actually was.
Our archaeologists, consequently, removed all the pieces, studied them carefully, and numbered
them according to the sequence of the portion of the Ramayana depicted, and then painstakingly fitted
them back. This infuriated the French—and, as I said, the people at this place in Japan called the
Sophia College or Institute, for some inexplicable reason—and they were going about denouncing the
‘terrible damage’ being done by the Indians wherever they could. And as I said, they managed to raise
this in the forums of UNESCO as well.
I went to one such meeting in Paris and refuted as forcefully as I could the allegations that were
being made. Partly, I think, because I spoke very sharply, the Deputy Director General, a suave but
enigmatic UNESCO official, invited me to meet him to talk about this. I told him all that I knew, and
he brought up, in what was a rather sly manner, the fact that I was not an archaeologist.
‘No, I’m not,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m an Indian, and you know you’re talking about a Hindu structure
and depictions of sections of one of our sacred Hindu texts. I’m not willing to accept that foreigners
know more than those to whom it is a very personal religious matter and who have studied it, and the
sculpture of the time, for several years.’
A bad argument, with more xenophobia than sense, but I had by then got the measure of the man—
he backed off hastily, as I knew he would. The last thing he wanted was something that a country
might bring up as an insult to their precious culture and heritage by outsiders, particularly a third-
world country like India who were capable of extreme, angry positions on such issues.
I then suggested, my essential nature as a bureaucrat asserting itself, that UNESCO appoint a
committee of experts to go and see exactly what was being done by the Indian archaeologists to
restore the temples. He agreed with alacrity, and I imagine, some relief, and also to my suggestion
that an Indian scholar be on the committee; since India’s abilities were being questioned it was only
fair. I mentioned the name of Kapila Vatsyayana, who was extremely well known to UNESCO and
respected as a scholar. The committee that was finally formed had, I discovered, her as the chair.
Some months later the committee’s findings were made known by UNESCO to all member
countries. They had found the work being done to be of a high standard, and completely in keeping
with the original features of the Angkor Wat temples. There were some minor bits of advice, put in, I
suspect by Kapila Vatsyayana herself, asserting her innate relationship with the ASI—that of a
teacher, a guru, more than anything else. She loved playing that role, and I suspect loves it still.
The acrimony came to an end, almost suddenly, thereafter. One other reason was the open
reiteration of the government of Cambodia that they would prefer to have Indian archaeologists rather
than anyone else. They were responding to the skilful efforts of our diplomats who had been pointing
out to the Prime Minister whenever they could that we shared a common culture many centuries ago,
and many elements were similar even today; they bolstered that with offers to train Cambodian
archaeologists in India, an offer that was gratefully accepted.
Many years later, after I had retired from the IAS, I visited Angkor Wat, something I had not done
when I was Secretary in the Department of Culture. I made it a point to look at the restored galleries
and noticed how carefully the restoration had been done. A guide came up and explained the sequence
from the Ramayana pointing out the enormous detail that had gone into the carvings and sculptures. I
could not help thinking of our band of archaeologists who had toiled there for years, taking up what
was a giant jigsaw puzzle and patiently putting it together piece by piece. Sadly, the work they did is
not known to the millions of tourists who go there year after year. Perhaps it is better this way; those
who worked on the restoration did so not only as trained archaeologists but as persons to whom their
work was a personal act of reverence and faith, which needs to be kept that way.
I can’t help mentioning a small matter that concerned the Taj Mahal, as I think it has helped keep
the monument in slightly better shape; that is, if what we did then hasn’t been undone in later years.
When I visited the Taj Mahal, the superintending archaeologist told me that there was one matter that
was worrying him very greatly.
‘This is a royal mausoleum,’ he explained, ‘and would have been visited by members of the royal
family once or twice a year to pray for the departed king and queen buried there.’
This was obvious, and I told him so.
‘But look at it now,’ he said. ‘Every day some 10,000 persons visit it day after day, year after year.
We have no time to do any repair or conservation work except at night, which is virtually
impossible.’
What he suggested was that one day in the week the monument be closed to the public which would
give the staff time to clean it, and carry out the small day-to-day repairs that the large crowds
inevitably led to. Also, he said, it would give the monument ‘rest’, which he felt was essential.
I thought this was a very sound idea and put it to our people back in Delhi. Initially there was
consternation. There would be worldwide repercussions, I was told, as many tourists from all over
the world came to Agra having planned their tours weeks, even months in advance. And it would be
just as bad for the thousands of Indian tourists as well. I reasoned with them that we could inform all
tourist agencies, travel agencies, and everyone in the tourist trade through advertisements and notices
that this closure of the monument once a week would be done only after six months. But it was
necessary if we wanted to give the 400-year-old monument some relief.
I took this proposal to the minister who, after listening to me, finally agreed, although he said he
would face a lot of flak from the UP government. But he did see the necessity for the weekly closure.
He asked me if it would affect the earnings of the thousands who depended on the tourist trade in
Agra city, from the small shops selling trinkets to the big hotels. I told him that logically it would not,
because after the notice period tourists would merely reschedule their visit to the monument. No one
was going to leave the Taj out of their tour. He saw the point and agreed that we should go ahead.
As I expected, there was an initial shrill cry of outrage from a number of people. But once they
realized the closure would start after six months, and after repeated announcements that this was
going to happen, there seemed to be some acceptance, though with some reluctance. The strongest
opposition came, as the minister said it would, from the UP government. Indeed, there was some kind
of agitation in the city which I suspect the state authorities encouraged, even if did not do so openly.
I am not certain if the weekly closure was actually effected, because I left the Department of
Culture before the notice period started. Somehow I think that at some stage the plan was given up; if
it has been it is a pity, because it would have helped in the maintenance of that exquisite monument,
and that was all that we had intended to do.
There was one matter—a small matter, true, but one that gave me great satisfaction. It concerned a
part of the great wall built by Sultan Allauddin Khalji in the early fourteenth century to protect the
second city of Delhi, Siri. The wall was so wide that it was said that two chariots could be driven
abreast across it, and had what have been called ‘flame-shaped battlements’; below, the walls had
great chambers which, apart from being quarters for the guards, were used to store grain in the event
of a siege. The wall had been broken at several places to make way for roads leading south to
Mehrauli and the Qutb area, several years ago. I had travelled along the road, a narrow metalled
strip, in a tonga to the Qutb when I was a teenager. But the demands of the fast-expanding city made it
necessary that the road be widened. The need was not in question; it was the manner in which the
Municipal Corporation of Delhi set about doing it.
I was called up by the superintending archaeologist of the area one morning and told that overnight
a large part of the wall—a protected monument—had been demolished and a wide road built across
it, the asphalt already laid. The blue enamelled sign saying it was a protected monument had been
flung carelessly to one side. I advised him to file a formal complaint with the police station and also
write formally to the corporation; I promised I would call up the Municipal Commissioner myself.
I did try to call him but the Commissioner was ‘busy’ and could not take my calls, I was told.
Meanwhile the superintending archaeologist informed me that while he had filed a formal complaint
with the police that a protected monument had been destroyed, the local corporation office refused to
entertain any complaint and were ‘offensive’. I then decided that enough was enough. I asked the
superintending archaeologist to hire thirty daily-wage labourers, of whom fifteen should dig up the
new road, and, under the supervision of his conservation assistants, put back the demolished wall as
best they could. In time, I told him, he should restore it fully.
‘But you said I was to hire thirty men,’ the superintending archaeologist said. ‘What do I do with
the other men?’
‘Give them thick lathis,’ I told him, ‘and tell them to thrash anyone, and I repeat, anyone who tries
to stop the digging up of the road or the restoration of the wall.’
As I expected, he rang me a few hours later, very excited. ‘Men from the Corporation have come,
sir,’ he said. ‘They want us to stop our work.’
‘Beat them,’ I told him. ‘That’s why I told you to keep those extra men with lathis.’
‘But, that will mean—,’ he began.
‘I know what that will mean,’ I told him. ‘It will mean that there will be a scuffle, even a brawl.
The police will come and register a case. You will tell the press that a historic monument has been
vandalized by the Corporation.’
He was silent for a while, and, clearly, the penny dropped. ‘I will do so right away, sir.’ he said
happily.
The penny had also dropped as far as the Municipal Commissioner was concerned. I was told the
Commissioner wished to speak to me urgently. I told my private secretary to tell him I was not in the
habit of speaking to junior officers. This was a distasteful thing to say but I wanted that obnoxious
disgrace to the IAS (he was, alas, an IAS officer) to be given a dose of his own medicine. I refused to
speak to him, or to anyone in the Delhi Administration (as it then was).
For many years thereafter, the restored wall still stood; it was a major traffic bottleneck as it
covered almost half of the alignment of the road that had been widened. But it was one bottleneck at
which I was glad to be held up.
Finally an agreement was obviously reached. The alignment the ASI had given the Municipal
Corporation was followed and the road widened, leaving the restored fourteenth-century wall as it
was. Creatures like the Municipal Commissioner—whoever he was—did not understand the language
of reason. For them the lathi and adequate publicity were the best means of communication. I was not
an IAS officer for nothing.
 But in those years, 1991 and onwards, the Archaeological Survey of India was, in spite of itself, a
centre of a growing political ferment that was brewing in the country. The Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) had found new vigour and direction in those years, and began a campaign to demolish the
fifteenth-century masjid, built in the time of the first Mughal emperor Babar, that stood on the spot
they claimed was the birthplace of Lord Rama. This was, as it happens, not a new claim, but that
story is not relevant for the purposes of this book.
As the clamour grew louder and more strident, and as opinions countering their claim were also
voiced with increasing vehemence, the government set up a committee of secretaries to find ways of
dealing with the issue, and I was put on that committee as the ASI was my charge. Before the meetings
began I met the minister, Arjun Singh. He had only one direction to give me: say nothing.
In the meetings therefore I kept mum, although the fact was that the ASI had excavated the site not
once but three times; the excavation reports had, however, not been published, and, as far as I
remember, one report had not even been completed, even though the digs had taken place several
years ago. My noncommittal attitude exasperated other members of the committee, but the Cabinet
Secretary did not press me to express any view. All I did tell the committee was that no conclusion
could be drawn by the ASI or the ministry on this matter.
Meanwhile the political temperature in the country began to rise, and with it my apprehensions. I
told the Director General of the ASI to remove the papers relating to the excavations to a secure and
obscure place, and ensure that they could not be traced or removed. He assured me he had done so. I
told him that unless I personally asked him for them—not on the telephone, not in writing, but
personally—he was not to hand any part of the files to anyone, whoever he was. And there the matter
rested. There were pressures, and requests and demands, but I did not let any of the papers be seen by
anyone; I must have made a number of enemies but comforted myself with the knowledge that it was
better to have some people as enemies rather than friends.
Hindsight is always a good thing, even if it does afford one the opportunity to appear cleverer than
one was at the time. But it is what all historians use, after all, to organize and present their facts. Not
having any pretensions to being anything of an historian, one can, nonetheless, help oneself to their
methods, or some of them. And this incident, not a major or significant one, serves as a good place to
use it.
In those turbulent times I think the ASI found my embargo to be convenient, and even a kind of
shelter. My further admonition that if anyone even indirectly indicated to some interested person what
was in the reports and papers he or she would be dealt with severely helped, I think. Some of the
officials of the ASI were fine scholars, erudite and seasoned in excavation techniques and in
archaeology. But their having spent most of their working lives in relative quiet left them vulnerable
to importuning by clever political creatures, to threats and to bullying. In the circumstances, pleading
that the ‘ministry’ had gagged them was their shelter, and comfort.
And what made the shelter of the ‘ministry’ so formidable? The fact that through me there was a
network of IAS officers who would close ranks and ensure that the protective wall around the papers
was not breached. There was no formal meeting to work all this out; it was taken for granted by me,
and I knew I was not wrong in doing that. As events have borne out, even to this day the actual
contents of the reports are not known, generally. The protection given by the network that was passed
on over time to younger officers has held.
The network functioned in other ways as well, as I discovered. One day I was informed that one
Mr Sankara Menon wished to meet me, from Kalakshetra in Madras (as it was still called then). A
tall, spare man came into my room and introduced himself. He was one of the last of the close
associates of the late Rukmini Devi Arundale, the distinguished bharatanatyam dancer who had been
responsible, to a major extent, for bringing the dance form out among the ‘respectable’ people of
Madras and among connoisseurs of art as a major dance form. She had gone on to found Kalakshetra,
an ashram more than anything else where, set in 100 acres of trees beside the sea, she developed
Kalakshetra not only as a place where the dance was taught but where it was a part of the way the
dancers and teachers lived—in spartan, yet restful, cottages, eating simple food together and spending
their time learning the magic of the form of dance that she had got a number of enlightened gurus to
teach.
‘But all this,’ Sankara Menon said with a deep sadness, ‘is coming to an end. Kalakshetra has no
funds left; the income from the students is just not enough to maintain the institution. Our teachers are
paid 400 and 500 rupees mostly; they stay because they love Kalakshetra, but they too are getting
old.’
‘What can we do?’ I asked him.
‘Some grant could be made,’ he replied. ‘But I fear that a mere grant will not keep Kalakshetra
safe.’
He paused and then said, ‘The land at Adyar, about 100 acres, is worth a great deal. I fear that the
state government has its eyes on the estate. A grant will not deter them from taking it over in some
manner. That is what may bring about the end of Kalakshetra.’
Philistine though I was, I had heard of Kalakshetra and the work that Rukmini Devi Arundale had
done; it seemed to me only appropriate that the institution be allowed to develop as she would have
wanted it to. But it was not going to be easy, I realized. I promised Mr Sankara Menon that I would
visit Kalakshetra soon and try to do something.
‘Let it be very soon,’ he said gravely before leaving. ‘Or else you may be visiting a monument, not
a living institution.’
I went to Madras the next week and spent a whole day at Kalakshetra. It was a true ashram, and
still had about it the aura of peace and tranquillity that Rukmini Devi had given it; classes were being
held in cottages built with thatched roofs and spaces between the roof and walls, allowing air to flow
through them, thus cooling them in the suffocating, humid heat. Paths wound through the estate from
cottages and buildings and across the road to the crafts centre Rukmini Devi had set up.
I also realized, talking to people who were involved with the institution and some who were lovers
of dance and music, that there was, indeed, a possibility of the estate being taken over; it was just too
valuable to leave to the impoverished institution Kalakshetra had become. Thus, whatever had to be
done had to be done quickly. But what?
Eventually a solution offered itself. The Department funded and in an indirect manner kept some
kind of control on a number of institutions, such as the Victoria Memorial, Calcutta, the Asiatic
Society, Calcutta, the Khuda Baksh Library, Patna, the Rampur Raza Library, Rampur, the Salar Jung
Museum, Hyderabad and others. These were managed by governing councils, usually headed by the
Governor of the state, the directors or curators being appointed by the Department of Culture with the
Governor’s approval.
The funds were provided by the Central government, through the Department of Culture in the
Ministry of Human Resource Development.
This was possible because these institutions had been declared institutions of national importance
and included as such under Item 62 of the Seventh Schedule (the Union List) of the Constitution.
Inclusion in the Item, possible by enacting an enabling law, meant that the institution was under the
protection of the Central government and that its expenses would be borne by the Central government
fully. But to have an institution included in Item 62 of the Seventh Schedule the schedule needed to get
the approval of the cabinet, and have an enabling law drafted and passed by Parliament. It did not
need an amendment of the Constitution, as the power to include institutions in the schedule had been
given, in the Constitution, to Parliament, to be done by enacting an enabling law. But it was
understood that this could only be done with the acquiescence of the state government. That was the
problem.
I went back to Madras and met the Chief Secretary, my old friend from the defence ministry, K.P.
Nambiar. He was, as usual, quietly warm, even affectionate, and it was as if we had been seeing each
other often. But when I raised the question of Kalakshetra, a curious smile played on his face.
‘Ah, that,’ he said, and was silent.
‘Come on, K.P.,’ I urged him. ‘We’ll be reviving this fine institution and it won’t cost the state a
thing.’
‘No, it won’t,’ he said, enigmatically. Then he added, ‘Let me speak to the CM. If she’s all right
with it I’ll let you know.’
He meant Ms J. Jayalalitha, then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, the very person who had her eyes
on the estate. I thought it prudent to call on the former President, Mr R. Venkataraman. He had been
Defence Minister when I was in the Ministry of Defence, and had always been very warm and
friendly. I had been to see him in the house he had shifted to in Madras when his term as President of
India ended, and he had been most gracious and welcoming. I told him of the problem, as I knew that,
politics apart, he was fairly friendly with Ms Jayalalitha. He listened to my persuasion and said that
he had personally known Rukmini Devi, had been very close to her and to Kalakshetra, and he would
not like to see it come to an end.
‘I do not know what Jayalalitha will say,’ he said. ‘But let me see. I will speak to her.’
Perhaps it was Nambiar’s persuasion or Mr Venkataraman’s, but I soon got the good news from
Nambiar that the state government would not object to the institution being declared an institution of
national importance. In other words, the lady had agreed not to stand in the way, but with what
enthusiasm we shall never know. I lost no time. I had an energetic young Deputy Secretary, G.
Venkataramani, who worked tirelessly, shuttling between the ministries of law and finance to produce
a cabinet paper acceptable to both. Finally we were able to take it to the cabinet, get their approval,
and have an Ordinance promulgated by the President.
 As soon as I received news that the President had approved the ordinance I rang Sankara Menon
and told him. He received the news with grave but clearly obvious pleasure. Sadly, he and the two
ladies who with him were the last close associates of Rukmini Devi, paid a heavy price for this; all
three were attacked savagely, apparently by people from a nearby village who thought the path to
their burial ground was being closed. All three of them, who were in their eighties, suffered extensive
injuries. The ladies never fully recovered, and remained confined to their cottage; but Sankara Menon
had a will of iron and against medical advice went haltingly to the office with the help of a stick. I
have often wondered about that attack. Was it a kind of punishment for having brought the Government
of India into the picture? I have no idea, and I doubt if anyone will ever find out what prompted this
attack on three old people.
But Kalakshetra was put on a sound financial footing, finally; and a governing council with Mr
Venkataraman as Chairman was appointed. The only disappointment that I had to accept, and it was a
rather bitter one, was that my pleading with Mr Venkataraman to appoint Leela Samson as Director
fell on deaf ears. Leela was the last and youngest of the students taught by Rukmini Devi herself;
except for the years when she went to college, she spent all her young life in Kalakshetra, and then
went on to establish herself as one of the finest bharatanatyam dancers in the country, acclaimed both
within the country and abroad. No one, it seemed to me, was better suited to being the Director—
Leela was young, and had several years ahead of her in which she could plan the long-term
development of the institution. And she was, and is, extremely intelligent and articulate, with a deep
understanding of what Rukmini Devi had brought to the dance form, and what she herself had through
her own talent brought to it. I never ever understood why Mr Venkataraman never agreed. Happily he
did finally agree, almost a decade or so later. But my personal sense of satisfaction would have been
complete if Leela had taken over as Director when we first declared Kalakshetra an institution of
national importance; she could then have begun its rejuvenation from the very beginning, so to speak.
Again, this was something that happened for the very reasons that I have mentioned earlier; being
removed from the world of dance and the performing arts, and yet being able to see what was urgently
needed, gave me an advantage, which, coupled with the network and the unspoken bond between IAS
officers at that level, made it possible to get the task done. That said, I must acknowledge the
immense work put in by Venkataramani, who had the advantage of knowing Madras and Kalakshetra
more or less from the inside, even though he wasn’t a dancer but a rasika, and he gave the job
everything he could to get the draft cabinet note, and the draft ordinance, finalized. Without him there I
would have had a much harder time getting the job done.
While this was going on something no less absorbing, no less worrisome, was coming together in
Calcutta (now Kolkata). The city had recently celebrated its tercentenary and this had found an echo
in London, among a few who loved the city, for whatever reason. They had come together to form an
organization called the Calcutta Tercentenary Trust. The moving spirits behind it were two persons:
Alan Tritton, who held a senior position in Barclays Bank, and Salman Haidar, my old friend, then
Deputy High Commissioner for India to the UK.
They chose as their gift to the city the restoration of the priceless collection of paintings in the
Victoria Memorial by the two Daniells, uncle and nephew, and some by D’Oyly and Zoffany. These
had been lying in a corner of the Memorial, dusty, faded, and in some cases damaged, for decades, as
it apparently was, for one thing, politically incorrect to try to care for paintings by colonial artists—
or so the then incredibly stupid but cunning curator of the memorial made out—and for another the
restoration techniques were not there. These artists were English, and had used the techniques, paints
and canvases they brought with them from their own country. While Indian restorers were skilled at
restoring Indian miniatures and paintings, these paintings were not easy to take on.
The Calcutta Tercentenary Trust, encouraged by Alan Tritton and Salman, decided that they would
identify and pay for the best restorers they could get in Britain, and also pay for their travel to and
from India, if their stay and local expenses were paid for here. I thought this a wonderful idea and put
it to the Governor of West Bengal who was the Chairman of the governing body of the memorial. The
Governor was Syed Nurul Hasan, an enlightened scholar and someone who was well aware of the
worth of the paintings. It helped that he was very fond of Salman, who had worked with him for a
while when Nurul sahib was Minister for Education in the Government of India. The Governor
agreed readily to the plan, and I assured him the extra funds would not be a problem, since it actually
was not a very large amount.
We had not, however, reckoned with the curator, who for some reason made it his business to
block the scheme at every step. He had been charged with providing the restorers transport, and we
had arranged with the Tollygunge Club that they would stay there and the Memorial would pay for
their stay. This wretched man questioned every bill, every voucher on the most petty of grounds—
why was the car kept for longer than the exact time it took to come from the club to the Memorial and
silly things like that.
At a meeting of the governing body he made emotional statements on the tribulations he was put
through by the ‘unreasonable’ demands made by the restorers and, having primed some members
beforehand, seemed to get some semblance of support. I made it a point to attend this meeting and
pointed out that the unreasonableness was nothing more than minor matters inflated into fanciful
problems by this curator. The Governor agreed and the issue was resolved.
I knew, however, that this man would continue to make trouble and I took him aside after the
meeting and was as unpleasant as I could be. I told him that I was a bureaucrat and would make things
very difficult for him if he did not stop the regular planting of stories in the local newspapers and
making the work of the restorers more difficult than it was. I hinted that he might find himself facing
enquiries into a number of matters and I would tie him up in these for the few years of service he had
left. It worked. Suddenly he was on first-name terms with the restorers and there were repeated
exhibitions of excessive bonhomie and goodwill.
And I do not, for a moment, regret having done what I did. These were among the finest restorers of
paintings in Britain, from the National Gallery in London and from the Queen’s Gallery in Windsor
Castle; Alan Tritton had, with the help of the other members of the Trust, done wonders in getting
them to agree to come, and then getting them the leave of absence they needed. The work went on for
three seasons; the team would come as soon as the oppressive heat and humidity of summer died
down and stayed through the winter up to March. The leader of the team, for the best part of their stay
in Kolkata, was a fine young restorer, Rupert Featherstone, from the Queen’s Gallery; he had a sturdy,
cheerful attitude to the work, and was able to deal with the devious cunning of the curator of the
Memorial. He also took to Kolkata, not easy at the best of times for persons completely unused to the
place. (Yes, the British founded and built the city, but that breed of British people is now extinct.) He
used to keep me briefed on the progress being made, and, finally one day he asked me to go down to
Kolkata and take a look at the restored paintings.
I did, and what I saw took my breath away. The paintings literally glowed; some even looked
gaudy, but I was assured by Rupert Featherstone that that was how they looked originally. The work
had been carefully, meticulously done; and side by side, they had got the restorers of the Memorial to
work with them, so that they became familiar with the restoration techniques. Indeed, two of them
were sent to Britain to train in the restoration of Western paintings, so that they could keep these in
good condition and also take on the restoration of other Western paintings in the Asiatic Society and
elsewhere, like the Salar Jung Museum.
I was very eager to organize an exhibition of these paintings in Delhi but Rupert Featherstone ruled
it out. The paintings were too fragile, he said, and would not take a train or air journey well. There
remained the question of where they would hang. When the project was starting up the thinking was
that a gallery would be identified and air conditioned; but after a team of experts in the conditions in
which old paintings needed to be hung came over—again, at the initiative of the Tercentenary Trust—
it was decided that rather than air conditioning, which would go off whenever there was a disruption
in power supply, and backup power was going to be a very expensive proposition, a gallery that got
the full advantage of the southern breeze that blew into the city from the south almost through the year
and protection from excessive heat with ventilation would be the best proposition.
A gallery on the first floor, on the south-west side of the Memorial which opened out towards the
race course and therefore would not be hemmed in with any building in the future was thought to be
the most suitable. But we had reckoned without the curator, again.
‘That gallery has been earmarked for portraits of our national leaders,’ he declared in ringing tones
at another meeting of the governing body. ‘Are we to relegate those portraits to some obscure corner
for the sake of these old restored British paintings?’
I had him, then, just where I wanted him.
‘I’m surprised, sir,’ I said to the Governor, who was looking worried, ‘at the callous attitude of the
curator. Surely the portraits of our national leaders should be right in the central hall, on the ground
floor, as people enter the Memorial. Does he want them to be in an upstairs gallery like other
paintings? Is this the value he places on the portraits of those who fought for freedom?’
The Governor nodded. ‘You are correct, Mr Secretary,’ he said to me, amidst general approval.
‘The portraits of our leaders need to be in the most prominent location in the Memorial.’ He turned to
the curator, frowning. ‘I am surprised you should be so insensitive.’
The curator, wretched creature, stammered and smiled a ghastly smile, and tried to say something
but the Governor cut him short.
‘It is settled, then,’ he said with finality. ‘We will use the first-floor south-west gallery for the
restored paintings.’
And there the paintings were hung. An appropriate ceremony to mark the opening of the gallery was
planned, but if I remember correctly never held, as the Governor’s health deteriorated, and he could
not leave his room.
The project did not end on a note of triumph or even of quiet satisfaction, as the Kalakshetra matter
did. A worried Alan Tritton came to me one day and said that the Trust was in desperate need of
funds to meet the expenses of the last season of restoration. All donors he knew had given generously,
but the expenses were high, and among his friends and acquaintances it was common knowledge that
Alan would no sooner see one of them than he would collar him for a donation. He said ruefully that
now, a donor or possible donor would scuttle away the moment he saw Alan.
He had a solution, but it was a long shot. Lord Curzon had left a sum in a Trust called the Curzon
Trust in his will ‘for the betterment of Bengal’ and had left it to the Governor’s sole discretion to use
as he saw fit. The ‘Governor’ was clearly the one resident in Kolkata, from the way Curzon had
framed his will. And the sum Curzon had left, £100,000, was now a very large amount indeed, having
lain in the London branch of the bank—the former Imperial Bank of India and now the State Bank of
India—for almost ninety years. What Alan Tritton suggested was that we ask the Governor if he
would make a small portion of the money in that account available to the Trust for work which was of
the kind of which Curzon would have certainly approved.
I mentioned this to the Governor, and so did Salman. Initially Prof. Hasan was not very
enthusiastic. He had not heard of the Curzon Trust, and when he saw the papers he wanted the Law
Department to advise him on the propriety of his using the funds. The legal people told him it was
entirely within his discretion, and in fact only he could use it, in terms of the will, no one else. Finally
the Governor agreed, but there was a problem. By now he was very ill and had to be moved to Delhi.
But he did see me once, and agreed to sign a cheque from the Curzon Trust for the amount Alan
Tritton had indicated that the Tercentenary Trust needed.
Not long after that Prof. Nurul Hasan, a kind, gentle and erudite man, one of the few I would call
civilized in the finest sense, died. Among the papers that he left behind was the signed cheque. It had
not been handed over as some formalities had to be completed.
The new Governor, T.V. Rajeshwar, a former head of the Intelligence Bureau, was not only very
suspicious of this entire business, but was wary of the Tercentenary Trust itself. No, he would not let
them have the cheque he said, because he had to satisfy himself that everything was in order and then,
in any event, he would have to sign a new cheque himself. My pointing out that the existing cheque
was perfectly valid cut no ice with him. And there we had, sadly, to leave it, till the Governor
satisfied himself, all over again, that this was a genuine and deserving charge on the accumulated
funds of the Curzon Trust.
But the paintings had been restored. And they are still in the Victoria Memorial, glowing as they
were when they were first painted, a testament to the love that some had, and possibly still have, for
the city now known as Kolkata. There was a ceremony to mark the completion of the task, a muted
one, as everyone seemed a little embarrassed by any mention of British rule in India, which was not
the subject of the event at all, but the restoration of some beautiful old paintings that had been
damaged by neglect and time.
And, as is the case with all bureaucrats, my time as Secretary, Culture was also at an end. I was
asked to join the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting first as officer on special duty, to take
over as Secretary from Raj Bhargava, who was retiring in a couple of months. I lost touch with this
matter as with other matters relating to the Department of Culture, though I heard later, with some
sadness, that T.V. Rajeshwar never actually made any money available to the Tercentenary Trust from
the Curzon Trust funds. Where Alan Tritton got the money he needed I don’t know; but he was a man
of ideas and so was Salman and between them they would have found some donors to provide the
funds needed.
I left with some amount of regret. The Department of Culture was by no means a sinecure, as I have
mentioned earlier; it was an exciting charge where much could be done if one wanted to. I had,
unfortunately, done much less than I could. There was a huge amount that deserved to be done to put
the Archaeological Survey of India back to being an organization staffed with some of the finest
scholars and professionals in the subjects that it covered; two of the National Academies dealing with
the arts, the Lalit Kala Akademi, the academy of fine arts, and the Sahitya Akademi, the academy of
letters, were caught up in intrigues and struggles to gain control, and had the most ineffective full-time
staff that any organization could have, except for the Sahitya Akademi which had a very energetic
Secretary in Professor Indra Nath Choudhuri; many of the other institutions that the Department was
responsible for such as the Rampur Raza Library, the Khuda Baksh Library in Patna, the Salar Jung
Museum in Hyderabad and the Serfoji Saraswati Mahal Library in Thanjavur which had one of the
greatest collection of manuscripts in the country, all needed financial help and expertise desperately.
Among these was one institution that I considered to be the most important the Department had—
the Centre for Cultural Resources and Training. This was headed by a dedicated woman, Premlata
Puri, and it had one basic aim—to sensitize teachers from schools to the arts so that they could in turn
act as teacher-motivators to other teachers and thus, gradually, spread an awareness of the arts among
teachers of geography, history, mathematics and other subjects so that they could, while teaching their
students, slowly infuse ideas into them of the arts, thus making them come from their schools enriched
with a knowledge of, and more importantly, a love for, the arts, without it being yet another subject to
be taught. The idea was a very imaginative one, the brainchild of Kapila Vatsyayana, who had done
so much to make culture a little more of a concern of the government than it had been before she was
given charge of this small spin-off of a subject in the former Ministry of Education.
This institution seemed to me to have more potential than any of the others, or, indeed, than all the
others put together. I saw it as a prime mover in shaping the consciousness of children through the
years, so that in decades to come there would be a more enriched generation of young men and
women who would eventually run the country. And I was convinced that it would serve as the first
step towards a better society.
There was a story that the late Mulk Raj Anand told me once one evening in the house of a very
dear friend of his, and mine, Jog Chatterjee, that I kept thinking of whenever the CCRT came up for
some reason or the other in official discussions or in the numerous papers that I had to handle. The
story concerned Charles de Gaulle and his great friend the thinker Andre Malraux. When de Gaulle
became President of France he asked Malraux what post he wanted in his cabinet. Malraux said, ‘the
Ministry of Culture’. De Gaulle was at first astonished and then amused.
 ‘Why the Ministry of Culture?’ he asked his old friend.
‘Because, Monsieur le President,’ Malraux is said to have replied, ‘I will build a centre for the
arts in every town in the country where children will have free access to the finest music, literature,
visual and performing arts.’
‘And that,’ Malraux said, ‘will save your country.’
There was no way I could have verified the truth of Mulk Raj Anand’s story, but I did ask a friend
who was then the cultural attaché in the French embassy, Philippe Lenglet, and he said that he didn’t
know what effect these arts centres had but they were indeed built in towns throughout France and
children visited them regularly.
‘Perhaps they did change our perceptions,’ Philippe said, ‘I don’t know. But I know that I did grow
up knowing about painters, composers and so on. They weren’t just strange names to us.’
I had hopes of this kind for the CCRT but time was not on my side. I was another IAS officer and
like all IAS officers, moved on.
 11

Secretary, Information and Broadcasting, and Retirement

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting was not an unfamiliar place, to put it mildly; and I have
written of some of my experiences there in my first book. I have no intention of repeating myself, but
there were other things that happened or that I did which did not concern Doordarshan; I mean, there
is life in that ministry beyond Doordarshan, and thank goodness there is. Some glimpses of the
sojourn of this IAS officer amidst those regions might be of some interest, and do impinge on the
basic presumptions behind this book.
The great blight was, as I have mentioned in my first book, the presence of K.P. Singh Deo as the
minister. But again, there was life beyond his dark and sadistic presence. I discovered with some
pleasure the even and well-regulated tenor of All India Radio (AIR). AIR was not unused to IAS and
even ICS officers; J.C. Mathur of the ICS had been Director General, and there had been a number of
IAS officers who held that post, among them S.S. Varma from my cadre, and Suresh Mathur, of whom
I’ve said a good amount in my first book.
Additionally, AIR was used to interacting with the ministry and not letting that get in the way of
their day-to-day work in a way that Doordarshan was not. This was clearly the legacy of their
decades under British rule, and then under virtually the same kind of rule by Indians. Visiting an AIR
station was always a pleasant experience; the personnel were polite and friendly without fawning all
over one, and one felt one was among people of goodwill. They had also the immense advantage of
the fact that K.P. Singh Deo’s baleful eye was fixed, like Sauron’s in The Lord of the Rings, on
Doordarshan, not on AIR.
I was invited to listen to some major innovations that AIR undertook; the Director General was my
old friend and colleague from Doordarshan, Shashi Kant Kapoor, and he got me to listen to the first
live stereophonic transmission by AIR of a concert—Zubin Mehta conducting the Israeli
Philharmonic Orchestra. Needless to say the quality was excellent, and Shashi Kapoor was kind
enough to let me have a tape of the concert, something I treasure to this day. It was not just a triumph
of engineering, but of wise production decisions as well. The compere was Sunit Tandon, another
close friend from my theatre world who loves Western classical music passionately and knows a
great deal about it. Consequently he was able to guide listeners with sensitivity, and come in only
between pieces to comment on the performance and the music. It was an innovation that marked a
turning point in live broadcasting and I was proud to have been there when it came.
It was easy to keep away from AIR and to instruct the ministry not to get too involved in its internal
affairs except when it was necessary under some law or governmental regulation. Their competence
and self-sufficiency was remarkable; the only area where they did need some help was in getting
extra funds for their expansion plans, and although I could not get them all that they wanted, they did
get some funds, of which they made good use.
There was a flip side to this—there had to be, I suppose. There was a degree of reluctance to
accept, or even consider, ideas put to them that did not emanate from within the system. I discovered
this when we were in the midst of the initial enthusiasm to start what was then called Local Radio
Service, LRS, and is now more correctly referred to as Community Radio. AIR’s engineers had
determined, in their wisdom, that the FM frequencies would be used for these LRS stations. Now FM
is a better proposition than AM—what we commonly called medium wave—frequencies used by AIR
for their bigger stations, in that it is virtually static-free and provides much clearer listening. Stereo
sound and high-fidelity sound comes across on FM but not on the old AM frequencies that were being
used.
The trouble was that, while one could get very cheap AM radio sets, transistor sets costing not
more than a couple of hundred rupees, FM sets were considerably more expensive; one reason being
that the manufacturers of these sets made them with a cassette player. I called the major manufacturers
in and asked them why they could not or would not make FM sets without the cassette player, and they
said that it was not going to sell. There were too few FM stations—remember, this was long before
the FM revolution that has come upon us today—they pointed out, so stand-alone FM sets would not
sell as much as those with cassette players. When I pointed out that the price put these out of the reach
of the vast numbers who could listen to LRS stations they shrugged and said that was not their
problem. Why didn’t the government make them, they suggested, rather patronizingly.
I then went to the AIR engineers and asked them what the coverage area of an AM frequency was.
Well, they said, it depended on the strength, but a low-powered medium-wave transmitter would not
cover an area with a radius of more than about 150 kilometres. I then put it to them that if a particular
medium wave frequency was being used in, say, West Bengal, then one could safely use it in the
southern part of Karnataka and there would be no overlap. This would make it possible to have
medium-wave transmitters for LRS stations and also make it possible for listeners in the different
areas covered to buy cheap transistor sets to listen in.
That was when I discovered their virtual imperviousness to outside ideas. They said this was not
possible, but the reasons they gave were vague, and downright stupid. The Wireless Adviser would
not agree was the stupid response, but stupid or not, it was one I could not get around on my own. I
needed them to take it up with the telecom people and of course they would not do that—they were
much more of a closely knit bunch than the IAS ever was. They had decided FM was what the LRS
stations should use, and FM it was going to be. And so it is, to this day. Of course they were terribly
polite about it all. The AIR culture was scrupulously in place through this little argument.
Perhaps I had set about it the wrong way. I should have let the bureaucracy of the ministry loose on
them, and a series of orders and regulations that they would then be showered with would have sent
them scurrying to the Wireless Adviser and the other technical bodies to secure compliance with the
orders. I tried instead to convince them that we needed to use the medium wave so that cheap
transistors would be available to village people, thus making LRS an effective and revolutionary
means of communication—and they smiled at me kindly and told me where I got off.
On another occasion I didn’t lead with my chin. I was visited by a young tabla player, who had a
grievance. AIR had a well-entrenched system of grading artistes; there were such grades as B, B
High, A and Outstanding. This artiste had been graded successively as B and B High, but when it
came to consideration whether the quality of playing merited the grading A the decision was negative.
Not once but on three separate occasions. Which would have been in order, regrettable though it
would have been to the artiste, except that the reason for the decision, every time, was not because the
playing was not up to A standards but because the artiste was a girl.
This was true. Every time the committee members, all distinguished musicians and tabalchis
themselves, heard tapes of her playing, not knowing whether she was a woman or a man, they found
the playing exceptional; it was only when they learned that she was a girl that they turned her down.
This was what my informants from the ministry, whom I had put on the job, had found out and they
would not have been wrong. I called my friend Shashi Kapoor over and told him that this was an
instance of discrimination on the basis of sex and I would not stand for it.
He pleaded helplessness. It was not AIR convention for the DG to interfere in such matters, he
explained.
‘But the ministry can send for the papers, can’t it?’ I demanded.
‘The ministry can send for whatever it chooses to send for,’ Shashi replied.
I decided that I, at least, was not bound by AIR conventions and niceties and sent for the papers.
When they arrived, I passed an order saying that the decision of the committee was overruled and that
the artiste was to be graded A. Compliance was to be reported to the ministry forthwith. It was done,
and I must say I have no regrets in doing what I did. Had the decision been on the quality of the
artiste’s skill and talent, I would never have interfered. But it was on the basis of her sex, and the
reason one of the members gave was that ‘a woman would not have the strength in the fingers a
tabalchi needed.’
Events proved me right. The artiste went on to play with the greatest of musicians, formed a group
of women tabalchis, performed all over the world and is, today in great demand for her extraordinary
skill. And AIR has now given her the Outstanding category; a bit like gilding the lily, but still, a
belated acceptance of the fact that they had initially been guided by considerations other than her skill
and talent. Ironically, her gradations of B and B High came easily as they did not then know the
identity of the player—they listened to tapes and graded the artiste accordingly.
But these were isolated instances; in general, AIR was a more organized and focused body and
kept to its reputation of providing the best in terms of classical music, both Hindustani and Carnatic.
To this day they organize concerts every year of outstanding artistes and every evening the
auditoriums are packed to capacity. Two new recording studios, with a capacity of recording on as
many as thirty-two tracks, were started in Chennai and Mumbai and I was privileged to have been
present on both occasions.
And, as times began to change, and private radio channels started up, using, in those days, AIR
facilities and frequencies, AIR began to change, too; it seamlessly moved into more casual modes of
addressing the audience in some programmes, obviously the ones that presented light music, and
preserved their more formal manner of address for others, such as classical music programmes,
current affairs and news programmes.
 But beyond AIR there was much that took up my time and concern—films being one. The
Cinematograph Act, which was the law used to censor films, or ‘certify’ them, to use the sanitized
word favoured by the ministry, was continually under attack. Not without reason; some of the
decisions of the censors were inexplicable, and naturally infuriated film-makers. The Act was
actually an amended version of the law enforced by the British in colonial times, and, like so many
other laws, was one that successive regimes of independent India found very convenient, even though
they clothed it with a welter of speeches and declarations that amounted to nothing other than hot air.
Under the Act the Central government had the power to appoint a Board of Film Censors (changed,
as I said, to Certification) and the grounds on which a film could have portions taken out or even be
banned altogether were, the security of the state, good relations with other countries and—the one that
was the most contentious—if the film or parts of it were considered to be obscene, indecent or
vulgar.
What film-makers found totally unacceptable was that a group of people could decide what
constituted vulgarity or obscenity, namely the censors, and the fact was that each committee that
reviewed a film consisted of persons drawn from a panel that successive ministers of Information and
Broadcasting had prepared of their toadies, and hangers-on, and persons their party or their cronies
wanted to please or reward. Most of them were, I found, persons who were clueless about things in
general, politically cunning perhaps or vapid social creatures whose minds were innocent of anything
that could be called a thought, or idea. There were some perceptive and sensitive persons in these
lists of worthless people, but they were few and usually did not or could not attend the screenings.
The Chairman of the Board rarely, if ever, saw a film himself. In my time as Secretary, the
Chairman was Shakti Samanta, a seasoned commercial film-maker of repute; he had no doubt been
appointed so that the government could tell the film industry that the Chairman was one of them and
therefore would not impose bureaucratic decisions on them. That was a hypocritical argument,
because the Chairman, as I said, never got to see any film; they were seen by panels and the decisions
were made by the panel, and usually by the very low-level official who was the regional officer, the
panel consisting in most cases of mindless, clueless creatures who merely signed on the dotted line.
Many years ago, when as a young officer I was Under Secretary in the ministry, I was asked by my
immediate superior, a Deputy Secretary, no less, to look at the portions of films excised under the
orders of the panels of the Board to determine whether the Board was following any defined policy in
this matter or not. I must confess I had a hilarious time watching these excised portions, for obvious
reasons, but had an even more hilarious time reading the orders making the cuts. ‘Remove glimpse of
cleavage’ ‘Remove unnecessarily long shot of thigh’ ‘Remove short glimpse of breast’ were some of
the gems; but I also learnt a new phrase from the remarks of these panels—‘pelvic thrust’. This meant
the movement in some of the dance numbers when the dancer pushed his or her pelvis forward in a
crude imitation of the act of copulation. It said a great deal of what these members of the Board’s
panels thought copulation was—perhaps that was how they did it. It was so funny that I forgot for a
time what the job entrusted to me was.
The phrase floated up from papers when I was Secretary many years later, and I had to look into
some complaint made by an indignant film-maker, and I greeted it with much familiar amusement, like
an old friend. These members of the panels were much, much younger than the ones who had given me
such diversion in my youth, but it was a delight to see that their notion of what constituted copulation
was the same. Some Indian traditions clearly persist through the decades.
Needless to say, the panels of the Board did not like ‘pelvic thrusts’, and removed them whenever
they could. Shakti Samanta had some restored, not because he liked them or disliked them but for a
practical reason that he as a film-maker understood: the producer had spent a lot of money on those
dance numbers and to mutilate them would mean financial loss of a very considerable amount. But
some he drew the line at, and the producers then appealed to the Central government, which is where
I came into the picture. I did not need to see the films, but the files were shown to me by the Joint
Secretary before he—or she, since I had a very clear-headed woman officer in that post for a length
of time—passed whatever order was considered appropriate.
The strait-laced antics of the Board’s panels made producers and directors resort to allusions and
suggestions that passed the befuddled members because they did not know how to stop them. A
classic example was the vivacious song ‘Choli ke peechey kya hai’ (What is behind the blouse?). The
producer said, blandly, that what they meant was a very proper bra, or something equally modest.
How could they possibly mean breast? Heaven forbid! And the song was left in the film and became a
great hit.
This was an area which I found very difficult to handle. This was a subject on which I had strong
private reservations, but also some apprehensions. I had no illusions about what some producers
would bring into films should censorship, sorry, certification, be removed. And that instantly brought
with it the related questions—so, what if they did? Is the government the custodian of the tastes and
preferences of the audiences who watch films? What qualifies them to be arbiters of good taste? And
then would follow the counter-questions: So do we leave it all to the film producer and director,
when the world over there has in every country some kind of regulation, even if it is self-imposed?
After all, films have a very great influence on the audiences, so great that it needs to be seen to be
believed. People model themselves on various film characters and stars, in what they wear, hair
styles, general appearance, ways of talking and behaving because of the great craving to belong to that
magic world of a film in which they live more intensely for two and a half hours than in their day-
today lives. Should not, then, a medium that has such a terribly deep effect on society be regulated?
And then you go back to square one—by whom, etc.
It seemed to me that the whole matter was best left to the industry, but the industry was a fractious,
contentious one, split into various groups and besides, there were different industries in different
states; the Mumbai-based Hindi film industry was matched and more than matched by the Tamil film
industry, which had produced two chief ministers, if not three, and by the Telugu and Kannada film
industries, which were almost as formidable. If the issue were left to these industries, what would the
result be? More to the point, Parliament was very touchy about the whole business. Every now and
then there would be an angry outburst from MPs in both Houses on the vulgarity displayed in films
and made demands that the government do something about it.
K.P. Singh Deo, in a rare moment of sound commonsense, called a meeting of all MPs and all
major film-makers where he asked them to speak frankly and settle the issue. Unfortunately the
meeting had an effect which was exactly the opposite of what the minister wanted. The initial
statements were reasonable enough, but soon tempers began to get frayed and allegations were made
by some MPs against some film-makers and vice versa of all kinds of misdemeanours and the meeting
ended in a great deal of shouting and an unnecessary display of ill will on both sides.
I knew that it was morally wrong for the government to determine what the morals of society
should be, but the issue was essentially a political one which the ruling party needed to take a stand
on and be courageous enough to state what that stand was in Parliament. But I also saw that this was
not going to happen, not with the government of the day. And, predictably, the matter was glossed
over and kept on ice. This was a matter well beyond the competence of an IAS officer, and I could
see that as could everyone else.
But it did provide me with some moments that, in retrospect, were rather droll. On one occasion I
was asked personally to view a Tamil film to determine if it should get a certificate or not. Since I
didn’t know the language, I asked AIR to send me one of their Tamil newsreaders who could translate
the film for me. The lady came, and we began watching the film, and she dutifully kept telling me
what was being said and what was going on. But as the film went on, she got more and more absorbed
by it, and her translations became disjointed and distracted, and I had to ask her repeatedly to tell me
what was going on. She then hastily told me and for a while the viewing proceeded smoothly, and
then once again she got caught up by the film and her translation stopped. By this time the plot of the
film had got fairly intense, and the poor translator was so caught up with it that my pleas that she tell
me what was going on were totally ignored.
‘Ayyoyo,’ she wept. ‘Ayyo!’
When I asked her urgently to tell me what was going on she turned her tear-streaked face to me and
said something in Tamil. I knew that I would get nothing more out of her and watched the now-
incomprehensible film with resignation till the end.
I finally got a young Tamil-speaking officer to see it and fill me in about the manner in which the
film ended.
There were moments like these when I did wonder what IAS officers were doing deciding issues
concerning films. It was not a question of individual officers but of a principle, a general issue. And
one would, inevitably, come up against the same answer—all right, not them, then who? Someone
from the industry? A film scholar? And the merry-go-round would start all over again.
The ministry ran a number of institutions, among them the Film and Television Institute of India
(FTII) in Pune and the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) in New Delhi. K.P. Singh Deo
had decided that another film and television institute would come up in Kolkata, to be called the
Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTII) but more of that in a little while.
The FTII was in a rather sad condition when I went to see it. It had fairly adequate television
equipment in a professional studio, but its film equipment was ancient. The financial authorities at the
time—in the Finance Ministry—would not consider any major proposal to provide it with modern
equipment in the shape of cameras, editing equipment, sound recorders and so on. The director was a
seasoned FTII graduate, one of the first, I believe to be trained there; John Sankaramangalam. He
made several eloquent pleas at meetings in the Planning Commission but there was little response. I
think the Planning Commission and the Finance Ministry felt strongly that the ministry had no business
running the FTII, and that translated into an indifference to its state. What they would do is provide a
larger amount under one head—Broadcasting—for Doordarshan and AIR, and under the other head—
Information—they would provide a comically tiny amount and they would then leave it to me to dole
out little dribs and drabs from it to the myriad media units that came under that head, which included,
somewhere near the bottom, the FTII.
I did ask John Sankaramangalam to prepare a comprehensive proposal on the equipment needed in
the film wing; I had no illusions about being able to get all the money that it would mean, but if one
began trying, I thought, one may well be able to keep adding something every year. Meanwhile I made
a discovery during a visit to the Doordarshan Kendra in Kolkata; it had a fully equipped laboratory to
develop 16-mm colour films which was lying unused since it had arrived. Typical of the way things
worked, a desperate request from the Kendra for a colour laboratory, in the days when all visuals for
the news bulletins were shot in 16-mm film cameras, had sedately floated around in Doordarshan
headquarters for years, and, when the proposal was finally cleared and the laboratory ordered, times
had changed. Film was no longer used for news footage on television; everything was being done on
tape. But the laboratory was installed anyway and wasn’t used even for a day.
I lost no time in asking Doordarshan to give the laboratory to the FTII, after finding out from John
Sankaramangalam that it would be useful for the students, even if it was a 16-mm laboratory and they
would be eventually working on 35-mm film. Inevitably, and not surprisingly, Doordarshan officials
objected; all kinds of difficulties were mentioned, and I found it a little difficult to keep calm when
discussing it with them, but finally they agreed, and the laboratory was moved to Pune. A little goal
achieved, a little sense of satisfaction; and at very little cost.
There were other media units with the ministry; the Song and Drama division, the Registrar of
Newspapers, the Research and Reference Division and a number of others. One I found to have a
potential that had not been exploited, as far as I was aware, was the Directorate of Field Publicity.
This had a unit covering two districts throughout the country; each unit had a jeep and trailer in which
a portable screen, generator and 16-mm projector were carried, and a number of films. These films
were, for the most part, documentaries made by the Films Division but they also had a small number
of what they called ‘featurettes’ which were short feature films. All of them were pretty ordinary, and
all of them were old.
The unit went to the numerous fairs and festivals held throughout the year in the two districts, and
screened their films to a motley crowd of curious people. Given the quality of the films I have no
doubt that they made no impression on the audiences, but the featurettes were watched for
entertainment value.
There were two things about this directorate that interested me considerably. One was the fact that
it was possible to convert them from antiquated units, lugging a 16-mm projector and screen
everywhere, to units that had cassette projectors; there were a number in the market that were sturdy
and could take a good amount of banging about, and cassettes (these were pre-DVD days) were sturdy
enough, even though repeated use did make them fuzzy, but then they were cheap enough to replace.
We tried out a number of projectors, and finally set up a small group to evaluate them and select
the type with which we could equip our field units. Meanwhile I asked Doordarshan to give us copies
of some of the hundreds of telefilms they had on tape, from which copies could be made. This work
proceeded apace, and I made it a point to meet the field publicity officers in groups. This was a great
learning experience for me; I discovered that the situation in which these units had to work was
dismal in the extreme. The local state authorities frequently requisitioned them for their own
purposes, and they could not say no because they needed their help when they organized their own
shows; they were plagued with a shortage of funds, which was sometimes so acute they could not buy
fuel for their jeeps or generators. Many units had no serviceable jeeps, many had no serviceable
projectors, many had no serviceable generators, many had no staff, and many had no field publicity
officers.
We took these matters in hand as best we could, given the very limited resources of the ministry,
but the one fact that got me very interested in this directorate was the fact that, while it was engaged
in showing audiences in villages and small towns our dull documentaries and worn-out featurettes, it
could, through its field units, also obtain valuable information from those who came to their shows on
matters that would be of great relevance to the government—what were their greatest needs, what
work was being done to address these, whether good work was being done anywhere, whether the
work was unsatisfactory in different areas, and so on.
I mentioned this to the minister who was not terribly interested. But I found that the Principal
Secretary to the Prime Minister, A.N. Verma, was very interested, and he asked me to get information
on different subjects on a regular basis from the field units. I cautioned him that this was very crude,
unchecked data and could serve only to indicate some trends or reactions, but were no substitute for
information collected by more carefully worked-out methods, and he understood that. But he
understood why I had thought this was a quiet way of finding out what reactions were among people
to what was being done by different agencies.
From then on information collection became as much the work of the field publicity units as the
showing of film; initially the reports were scrappy and even cruder than I had feared they would be;
but they soon gained some kind of coherence, and I sent copies of these to all the secretaries I thought
would be interested, particularly the Secretary, Rural Development, and, of course, the Principal
Secretary to the PM. I remember being rather taken aback when, among the first reports, I found that
almost universally the one thing that was mentioned as the most urgent need was drinking water. Not
houses, roads, health clinics or anything else.
There were a number of ways in which this directorate needed to be given a makeover, and I asked
the very imaginative young Joint Secretary who was looking after this among other things, Raghu
Menon, an IAS officer of the Nagaland cadre, to work out a blueprint. He agreed, but said grimly that
the first item in that would be to get rid of the Director. He was right, of course, for a variety of
reasons.
I mention all this not because I did anything like that, not by any means, but to illustrate the fact that
IAS officers did find themselves having to handle matters that ICS officers never had to. I had, for
example, to handle matters regarding film festivals as Secretary, Information and Broadcasting. There
was a Directorate of Film Festivals that the ministry had and it did a number of things like organize
the National Film Awards and, most importantly, the International Film Festivals of India (IFFI) in
January each year. The convention then was that it was held in Delhi one year and in a major city the
next, the idea presumably being to ensure that film-lovers all over the country got an opportunity of
seeing a selection of films that they would not otherwise have a chance of seeing.
The most common question that was asked about these festivals, every time they came around, was
why the government was organizing them. This was held up as yet another example of how the
government took upon itself tasks on which it had no business to waste public funds, others being
running hotels and airlines. Of course it had no business doing any of these things. There really was
no justification for the government to run hotels when there were excellent professional companies
which were doing that, like the Taj and Oberoi group of hotels. Not to mention the fact that
government hotels were run badly by staff who were insolent or indifferent, and the rooms were
badly cleaned, inhabited on long lease by cockroaches and other such creatures, and you were lucky
if the food didn’t give you instant dysentery. Forget about taste and appearance.
There was some reason for the government to run airlines, as the first crop of private companies
flying on domestic routes folded up, except for Air India International, which, under the stewardship
of J.R.D. Tata became a standard-setter among international airlines across the world. But India
needed a regular network of air connections and the government-funded Indian Airlines Corporation
(IAC) provided that. Never mind the quality of service, punctuality and other factors; they made it
quite clear you were lucky they were flying you to wherever you were going.
But film festivals? Well, films were a major economic activity in Mumbai, Hyderabad and
Madras, and also in Kolkata, Bangalore and Trivandrum, and to that extent the holding of festivals
seemed a part of all that. But why the government? For one simple reason, really. The film industry
was far too faction ridden to do it themselves. The Minister for Information and Broadcasting, P.A.
Sangma, who had taken over from K.P. Singh Deo, openly announced that government would not be
organizing the festivals any more and left it to the film industry. Within a few weeks representatives
of the Film Federation of India were in Delhi, pleading with him to reconsider his decision, as they
simply could not organize it on their own. Perhaps the government could have set up an autonomous
body, like the Sangeet Natak Akademi, which would have organized the festivals; but, having seen the
politicking, manoeuvring, coteries and factions that infested the Sangeet Natak Akademi, it seemed
best to leave things as they were.
But it meant that, whenever the festivals threatened, like the onset of the monsoon, it meant one was
drawn into a world of demands, pleas, requests, threats and cajoling for tickets, it meant the descent
on one of film-makers incandescent with fury at some perceived misdemeanour of the Directorate of
Film Festivals, and the capriciousness of prima donnas among directors, apart from the assorted
actors and actresses who deigned to visit the festival for one or two days.
I must mention that the Directorate itself did a heroic job every time, despite an often venomously
critical press (the venom owing, naturally, to their not getting the tickets they wanted). The Director
during my time was Malti Sahai, who had for years been Deputy Director, and officers of the Indian
Information Service were made directors instead of her; there was a good reason why that was done,
but the last Director, Deepak Sandhu, attracted the wrath of K.P. Singh Deo, the then minister, and had
been summarily moved out, and, if I remember correctly, kept under suspension for a time. The
person who actually got things going was Sunit Tandon, who was also a Deputy Director, but younger
than Malti Sahai. It was he who settled crises, ensured that at least some good international films
came to IFFI, made sure that foreign and domestic guests were looked after, their various demands
met. He took, with a degree of cheerfulness and equanimity, their outbursts at what they perceived as
inefficiency or lack of the deference they felt was their due, coping as best he could. Malti Sahai
came frequently to see me, invariably distraught and in great distress at some crisis or the other, and I
must confess I felt a little helpless at having to resolve these. Tickets were not being issued by Air
India to some distinguished guest, the Ashoka was refusing to provide a particular suite or room to
somebody, and so on. I did call up whoever I could, but relied, unashamedly on the joint secretaries
handling films—Sharwaree Gokhale, an IAS officer of the Maharashtra cadre, or Raghu Menon. Both
had an uncanny ability to fix such problems, and give the Directorate the help it needed.
The first IFFI I was involved with took place in Kolkata, and I only went there towards the end,
after some initial meetings to settle venues and other matters. It helped that it was my state cadre
officers I had to deal with; I got a number of matters settled with some ease because of the younger
IAS officers in the state who were involved. The second IFFI was in Delhi and that was the most
trying of the three I was involved with. This, despite having an almost ready-made complex for the
main screenings at Siri Fort. For this IFFI we had two more auditoriums made, Siri Fort III and IV,
though IV wasn’t functional for that festival.
But it was for this one that the demand for tickets made me consider going into hiding, and the
various tantrums thrown by the celebrities who graced the festival with their presence and gave the
organizers a dreadful time reached epic proportions. I, to be honest, tried to stay away as much as I
could, going to the venue only when it was mandatory that the Secretary be there. I did attend one
seminar where the future of cinema was being discussed. I suggested, rationally, I thought, that when
film-makers were spending a great amount of other people’s money, they should be a little more
conscious of the need to communicate with audiences. Films, like all other creative modes of
expression, are essentially communication. The moment I said that and looked around the room I saw
a set of stony disapproving faces, and there was total silence. Then the moderator—or whoever was
conducting the event—cleared his throat and went on to something else and I unobtrusively slipped
out of the room. I need hardly add that I did not attend any more seminars.
There were some small achievements, in which I played a kind of supportive role. I had suggested
to Sunit Tandon that we try and get Kristof Kieslowski’s trilogy Three Colours (Blue, White and
Red). These are three of the finest films I’ve seen and would, I thought, enrich the festival, even
though they had been shown in other festivals in previous years. The owners, Miramax, refused to
send them, saying that the projection facilities in Delhi were not of international standards. But Sunit
told me to wait, all was not lost, and he used all the connections he had, which were considerable,
and finally rang me up and said that they were coming. A marvellous achievement, and certainly for
me a high point of IFFI 1995.
Compared to this one the last IFFI I had anything to do with, which was held in Mumbai, was by
far the most pleasant. For one thing, the Maharashtra government was very helpful, even more than the
West Bengal government. They made some wonderful venues available, all close together, except for
one. In fact the area, which was next to the Bombay Gymkhana, looked just like a venue for a festival
of this kind, especially with the traffic arrangements that had been worked out by the Mumbai police.
What helped a great deal was that Mumbai was one of the great centres of the film industry, and the
film fraternity turned up in large numbers and was most supportive. For this IFFI I did not have that
sneaking feeling I had for the other two—just what was I doing amidst all these glamorous people?
The IFFI in Mumbai was followed by the Festival of Documentary Films organized by the Films
Division, another unit of the ministry. This was organized well enough, but there were the usual, and
not unjustified, reactions from documentary film-makers that very little was done to have their films
shown. I had by then become very mellow in my reactions, as the event was held in my last month in
the IAS and shortly after it concluded, I returned to Delhi and my thirty-six years in the service came
to an end.
As I have mentioned, there were a number of units in the ministry that, together, formed its
‘Information’ part—the Press Information Bureau (PIB), the Research and Reference Division, the
Directorate of Field Publicity and a few others. This part was originally something the British had put
together during World War II, and has continued, as so many things, and so many ways of thinking,
right up to the present day. The British wanted, obviously, to ‘inform’ the people of India of what was
happening in the war, and also in India—that is, what they wanted them to know, not necessarily what
was actually happening. That continued, without any change at all, to be the mandate of the
‘Information’ part of the ministry.
Many were the handouts given, and many were the statements on what was said to be happening in
the country, and, like the statements and handouts of yore, they were what the government wanted
people to think was happening. Not that they weren’t happening—dams were being built, roads being
laid, schools coming up, and all the rest—but many other things were happening about which the
government chose to keep quiet. The schools without teachers, the health clinics without drugs and
doctors, the roads that were quagmires of mud, the bridges built in the middle of nowhere, together
with rosters of people being given pensions, wages under ‘relief’ schemes which were pure fantasy.
Not that officers and ministries were not working hard to put into effect the schemes and projects
that had been planned; but they often were so immersed in their own efforts that they couldn’t see
what the actual state of affairs was, and placed a great deal of importance on their work as reflected
in statistics and reports from various subordinate agencies, and less on reality which they quite often
never got to see. One wasn’t surprised that the experts in the Planning Commission and various
ministries and agencies considered their figures and statistics sacred, but one noticed, with less and
less surprise as the years passed, that IAS officers also began to believe in these. Again, the figures
and statistics weren’t wholly fictitious; but they did not reflect the situation on the ground, as most of
us know, and I knew when I was in service. But many of us were caught in a rather common fallacy—
that the effort we put into our work must necessarily translate into the figures and statistics we were
then given.
In this maze of self-deception the ‘Information’ part of the ministry was inextricably woven.
Information officers were attached to each ministry, and they duly prepared handouts and statements
that were given to the press, often at gatherings where tea and a large variety of snacks were
provided. What the private sector, with its clever use of words, called PR we called Information. The
private sector had, and continues to have, PR agencies that have given a whole new meaning to the
acronym, a new depth that is almost cosmic. The imaginative presentation of facts has been taken to
new heights by these agencies. It isn’t, consequently, very surprising that a number of our bright young
novelists come from that profession or from advertising, its cousin.
But all we had was ‘Information’. One particular incident sums it up. I had a sudden visitation from
a furious Secretary, Rural Development, B.N. Yugandhar, known for his dynamism and commitment
to the work he was doing.
‘What is with you guys?’ he shouted. ‘We slave our guts out and crores are spent in villages spread
out across the country, schemes are taken up, the local people are involved and not one word about it,
not one word, in any paper or in any news bulletin on radio or television. And if one bloody BDO
misappropriates 500 rupees it’s front-page news!’
I tried to soothe him with some good coffee, and tried to explain what the ground realities were.
‘The media aren’t interested in the amount you spend,’ I said to him as soothingly as I could. ‘They
want what’s news. A BDO misappropriating money is news, the granting of loans to sixty farmers to
buy bulls isn’t.’
‘That’s nonsense!’ he said angrily.
‘It’s a fact, and let’s admit it,’ I told him. ‘My people can send out as many handouts as you like
and print them on glossy paper, in colour, with faces of smiling farmers—it won’t work.’
‘It’s because those buggers aren’t doing their job,’ he retorted. ‘If they did people wouldn’t be
going around saying enough is not being done, that things are a mess in the rural areas …’
‘But they are,’ I told him mildly. ‘Not because your ministry’s not doing great work, but it doesn’t
get translated into action on the ground.’
‘All right, I’ll have to do something about this myself,’ he said and left.
He did what I was afraid he would do. He set up his own publicity unit and the huge amount of
funds that his ministry had for this activity, and which used to be spent through the Information and
Broadcasting ministry, was diverted to that unit. His action was followed by other high-spending
ministries like Health and Family Welfare, and Education. I protested, but there was little I could do
about it.
I had the minister write to his colleagues but it naturally had no effect as the letters went to the
secretaries who had no intention of closing down their own publicity units. Later, after some
pleading, some of them sent some material to the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity, one
of the units of my ministry, but that was it. This practice continues, as far as I know even to this day,
and is a very sad business. The immense benefits of centralizing the publicity efforts of the
government were not of any concern to them; and, to be fair to them, in many cases the funds spent on
publicity were used by different ministers to distribute patronage. The benefit of an integrated
campaign, of one that provided real information as opposed to what was little more than advertising
was lost. Perhaps one day a Secretary in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting who is far
more dynamic will be able to get the government to agree to pool the information effort and place it in
the hands of those who have the professional expertise, and access to even finer professional
expertise, rather than dissipate it in disjointed, uncoordinated campaigns that have a lesser impact.
Yugandhar was an IAS officer who knew what was happening in the rural areas in far more detail
than I did, because he spent a great deal of time visiting far-flung areas throughout the country. But I
got the impression that he had fallen for the fallacy I mentioned earlier. The trouble with this fallacy
was that somewhere inside you were actually aware that things were not quite what the figures
represented; but it was a blurred, dark kind of awareness which you didn’t let yourself dwell on too
much. And that was the dilemma; a real one, which worried me off and on in the days I had in the
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. It was not a divide between what was real and what was
not; it was a divide between what was real in part and what was real but never mentioned in part.
The number of primary schools set up were mentioned; but the number which were mere shells, had
no blackboards or—most commonly—had no teacher were not.
Just one person that I know of in the government system wanted to do something about it: Bimal
Jalan, then Member Secretary of the Planning Commission. He asked me to see him soon after I had
left the IAS and explained what he wanted. He said precisely what I’ve mentioned; that, while there
were achievements in different sectors, there were failures as well. Was it possible, Jalan asked, for
a series of programmes to be done that would present both sides—that showed, say, the health clinics
set up and those that had not been, or had no medicines or doctors or other staff? His objective, he
explained, was simple. It was to make the statements made by the government more credible. People
would believe them if they saw that it wasn’t roses, roses all the way but that there was much that
wasn’t done. The thrust of these programmes, Jalan said, would be to say, ‘We’ve done so much, but
we couldn’t do this and this, however we will take those up and come back to you with a report on
what progress we make with those and other new projects.’
Needless to say, I was delighted that someone in such a key position should see the importance of
presenting the whole picture, and for the record Jalan was not an IAS officer but a brilliant
economist. I told him such a series would be very possible, and very welcome, but would he ever get
the clearance to do it? He asked me to leave that part to him; he merely wanted to know if I would
agree to take the responsibility of seeing such a series of programmes prepared for television and for
the press. I agreed, and our meeting ended. I waited for a follow-up, but none came. The months
passed, and I read that Jalan had moved on from the Planning Commission. So that was that.
But the dilemma continues. If one did decide to do the kind of programmes that Jalan had in mind,
how would one set about getting the ‘real’ facts? It was possible, some NGOs and other agencies not
linked with the government have done it, but how does one get such information officially and accept
them as reliable? That was and is one abiding problem. The other was to convince ministries, indeed,
the political executive, that this was in the country’s interest in the long term. That was possibly
where Jalan had failed, I suspect. No political party likes to have to admit officially that it has
misspent money, that schools have not come up where they should and health care not available
where they said it was.
To an extent, things have begun to change. Official documents are beginning to admit there have
been lapses, and even quantifying them however marginally. ‘Shortfall’ is the politically correct
word. The emphasis on achievements is naturally still there, and often unsullied with any reference to
what hasn’t been done, but in some documents the awareness is beginning to appear.
Sooner or later it must be accepted that providing information means the whole information, and
when that happens the information given will, to that extent, be more credible. This means that there
has to be a collective refusal to paper over shortcomings by officers who are asked to do that,
officers responsible for the execution of schemes and projects in the states and in the Central
government.
There is also the matter of the ‘Information’ part of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
Should it stay or be done away with, something which I understand a committee headed by a former
Secretary (Expenditure) in the Ministry of Finance, K.P. Geethakrishnan has recommended? So far it
would look as if that recommendation has not been accepted, which is a testament to the fact that
sturdy commonsense still exists in the government and among IAS officers who have now the
responsibility of deciding what to do with such recommendations.
I have tried my best to distance myself from the issue, and a decade is a long enough period in
which to do so, and I am still convinced that the government needs a centralized information setup,
which specializes in collecting information and in keeping in touch with the media as well as other
agencies. The prerequisite is of course that they must make real information available; and this must
be a test that a minister of information must be able to persuade his party colleagues to accept. They
must see that providing complete information to the people is evidence of the respect they have for
those who have elected them. It would serve, in time, to bring the government closer to the people,
and that, surely, is what all political parties want.
But back to my final days as Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. As I approached
the end of my service to the state, my thoughts and perceptions, and also my emotions, were a sort of
counterpoint to those I had when I stepped into the National Academy in Mussoorie as a young
probationer; expectation, anticipation and wonder—all of which I remembered vividly—were
replaced with a gradual, gentle severance of the links I had with the systems of government. And,
quite naturally, I did reflect often on the role that I had played, as an IAS officer, in the process of
governance.
I know that sounds rather absurd and without much meaning, but let me explain. I had been
recruited, trained and asked to perform different functions in the system in a manner that other IAS
officers were, but there were thousands of other officers from different services who did much the
same thing. Did being in the IAS make a difference? Or was the service an anachronism, more of a
brake on the process of governance than something that facilitated that process in a way that its
absence would not have done?
At different places in the book I have referred to a bonding, a network, and in doing so have laid
myself open to a good amount of criticism and derision. There will be many who will be quick to
point out that there’s no such thing, that there really isn’t a ‘service’ in the sense that there is, say, the
body of officers in the army. All there is a collection of officers who have the same terms and
conditions of employment.
I have to mention here, at the risk of repeating myself, that all of the items I have recounted had to
do, in one way or the other, with the fact that I had served in the IAS in different capacities.
Ultimately administration is about inventiveness, as is management, of improvisation, of taking a step
back and looking at events and issues in a larger context. It was, for example, that which made Raghu
Menon put the removal of the director on the top of his list of things to do to reshape the Directorate
of Field Publicity, and made me agree with him fully, because our responses to the situation were the
same. Was it a coincidence that he and I were both IAS officers, and had served in different positions
where we had to deal with people and acquire the ability to judge them, to look at events and issues a
little beyond their immediate contexts? Perhaps. It isn’t easy to be dogmatic about this, simply
because such abilities exist in other officers and persons as well; but it seems to me that it is nurtured
and developed by the kind of experiences that IAS officers have to face in the field and in the
secretariats, and it is something one can expect and usually get from IAS colleagues when one needs
it.
It used to be said about the ICS that they prided themselves on being able to do any job that had to
be done except sail a ship, and there was every possibility of their being able to do even that if they
were posted to a coastal district. There are no records of an ICS officer sailing a ship as a part of his
work, but there are records of IAS officers finding themselves involved with work that, given the fact
that they were government officers belonging to a cadre of administrators, were decidedly odd. In
developing India IAS officers were doing all kinds of jobs, and many of them did such jobs with
exceptional distinction. S.R. Rao, as I have mentioned earlier, was one such officer, who was sent as
Municipal Commissioner to Surat, the city which was considered the dirtiest in India and India has a
formidable share of dirty cities, and has, in some ways, re-defined the word ‘dirty’, giving it a
dimension that inspires awe among other inhabitants of this planet. When Rao left Surat it had been
recognized by INTACH, a leading NGO in the field of urban conservation and restoration, as the
second cleanest city in India.
It is certainly not my contention that the IAS is a group of persons who share the same values, who
react to situations in the same way, who have the same goals and think of the major concerns of
governance in the same way. But I have seen a number of instances where being in the same service
has unlocked doors, helped resolve problems, or, at the very least, got one a hearing when presenting
a problem that needed a decision. Nothing of great significance needs to be read into this; but, at the
same time, it would be foolish not to see that something in the nature of a shared status, or kind of
locus in the system, does exist.
No rules have been bent for anyone merely because he is a fellow IAS officer, but the benefit of
existing rules have been made—let’s say, more readily, and the difficulties of not being able to help
owing to the existence of some rule or law have been explained in detail. It was possible for
Yugandhar to come steaming into my room and hold forth on what he saw as the total incompetence of
my officers; it was possible for me to spend time to explain to him in detail what the ground realities
were.
I can recall numerous examples, some so very small that they would escape the scrutiny of even the
sternest critic of the IAS. When I was a Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Defence I was deeply
involved with theatre, a great and abiding love in my life. I never let it interfere with my work, going
to rehearsals only after 7 p.m. after completing the work for the day, but on some rare occasions,
when work spilled over to beyond 8 p.m., I did ask Shailaja Chandra then Director in the ministry—
to hold the fort, as it were. As I say, this was very rare, but on one occasion it cost me dearly. The
defence minister had to answer a starred question (a question that had to be answered by the minister
in person) the next day in the Lok Sabha, and the draft answer needed to be approved by him. I asked
Shailaja to send the file to the minister’s residence, having put together the draft answer and notes for
supplementary questions that may have been asked by MPs. Shailaja, a very bright young officer, was
totally new to the ministry, and to the subject on which the question was being asked. She dutifully
sent the file to the minister, but the next day, when the minister was being briefed prior to Question
Hour, it turned out that the notes for supplementaries related to an entirely different question. The
Defence Secretary, P.K. Kaul, and the Additional Secretary, S.K. Bhatnagar, looked at me, not very
nicely.
As was the convention, joint secretaries sent such files directly to the minister and the Secretary
and the Additional Secretary saw them on their way back. In this case there hadn’t been time; the
minister’s staff had received the file at his house and kept it for discussion during the briefing the next
morning. That was when the mix-up was detected. I knew that Shailaja Chandra knew nothing of the
notes for supplementaries; all I had asked her to do was send the file to the minister’s house, which
she had done. I should have checked the notes myself, which, in my hurry to get away, I didn’t do. I
put on as brave a face as I could, asked for five minutes, raced to my room and retrieved the right
notes. The minister, the kindly R. Venkataraman, smiled when I returned with the right notes, went
through them and the briefing meandered on.
Later that morning I was summoned by P.K. Kaul and got what is known in classical English as a
Rocket. Kaul rarely raised his voice, but what he said was enough. I was told in graphic terms of my
incompetence, and the necessity, if I wished to get on in the service, of giving my work my total and
complete attention.
‘All this nonsense about theatre has got to stop. I don’t care what you do after you finish your work,
just so long as it’s after you finish your work, even if that takes up to midnight.’ He stopped. I stayed
silent, looking at my shoes. ‘All right, then,’ Kaul said. ‘That’s over. Go back to your room.’
I left, a little wobbly at the knees.
But the point is it could have been worse; the point is that Kaul knew that what I needed was that
dressing down, nothing more and nothing less. He also knew that it would work, and it did. This was
an assumption he made because he and I belonged to the IAS, and he knew I would never do it again,
which of course I never did. This is what I am trying to point to. Kaul and I were otherwise totally
different persons; I was not one of those officers of whom he thought very highly, and I thought he was
a type rather common in the UP cadre in those days—very clever, and a great networker. But beyond
all that were these assumptions, never stated clearly, but understood by all in a rather dim, fuzzy way.
The truth of it was there for all to see in the reaction of the other services to the IAS. For some
years before I came to the Central government it had been decreed that no IAS officer could write the
three letters after his name, as it was resented by other officers. A small, petty point but insisted on by
the officers of different services and agreed to by the Department of Personnel to buy peace.
 It was evident in all its edginess when the Fifth Pay Commission was hearing the representations of
different sections of the bureaucracy. I was Chairman Of the Central IAS Association then, and was
invited by the Chairman to make a submission. I chose not to make a long-winded peroration but to
get a cross-section of IAS officers to speak about their problems with the miserable amounts that they
were paid. I chose a very bright young SDO from the Tamil Nadu cadre, a District Magistrate from
Orissa (as far as I remember), a Joint Secretary from the UT (Union Territories cadre) and a
Secretary from the Gujarat cadre. They told a rather astonished Chairman of the Pay Commission of
the misery, humiliation and continuous state of deprivation, of having to make do, that they had to live
in, and yet give everything they could to their work. The simple yet eloquent presentation of the young
SDO—who had done two Ph.Ds—moved everyone, especially when he said, honestly, that he could
easily find a good, handsomely paid job in the World Bank, but chose to work in his country because
‘he believed in it, and in what he could do as an IAS officer’. At the end, I told the Chairman that we
were not going to demand any specific pay scales; we would leave that to him to determine after
considering all the evidence, including our submissions.
Some two days later a number of national newspapers carried a story about the ‘brazen’ manner in
which the ‘IAS lobby had tried to manipulate the Pay Commission’ and that this had been done with
the artful connivance of the Secretary of the Commission, who was an IAS officer. The only true part
of it all was that the poor man was indeed an IAS officer; what the reports did not say was that the
phalanx of other officers in the Pay Commission’s secretariat were all from the Indian Forest Service,
the Central Secretariat Service and other services. The connivance was apparently all done by the
solitary IAS officer among them!
Even to this day there are statements made by virtually every organized service in the government
against the evil machinations of the IAS officers, who block any attempt by anyone from getting more
than they do, and who corner all the important posts in the government. Never mind the truth or falsity
of the statements; that they are made at all is clear evidence of the awareness that there is something
that holds the IAS lot together.
Much is made of the fact that every now and then the house of an IAS officer is raided, IAS officers
are arrested and indicted for corrupt practices. It is true that there are a number of corrupt officers in
the IAS, more than one would like to see, and it makes me—and I’m sure many, many other IAS
officers—ashamed and disgusted. One hopes they will be punished and driven out of the service.
Apart from corruption, there are others who openly practise nepotism, who manoeuvre to get
themselves coveted postings, who cultivate people who they think will be useful to them in some way
at some time.
But when these lurid stories are circulated, when they are written and spoken about, no one ever
mentions that the large body of IAS officers simply get on with their work, and it is owing to their
commitment to their work that the process of governance is carried on. The interaction with the
political elite has, one has to admit, had the effect of separating IAS officers from one another. But in
the day-to-day business of governance, of administration, there is still, somewhere, a link between
them, however tenuous it may be.
There is no doubt that this is a subject that cannot be dismissed with a few generalizations, nor is
that what I am trying to do. I have personally been at the receiving end of the lobbying done by one of
my own batchmates in the IAS, so I know first hand that this happens, though, again, it would be
simplistic to try to erect any kind of thesis on one or even more than one such instance. For every one
such there are other batchmates like Suresh Vaish, who valued his honour above everything else, even
if it meant incurring the displeasure of his political bosses. Like Vinod Dikshit, who never used his
father’s influence and standing in the Congress Party to further his own career, but gave whatever post
he was in everything he had. In my own state the two batchmates I have, Barada Charan Sarma and
Ashok Chatterjee worked with honour and without publicity, and left the service having served the
state as best they could, leaving it the better for their work. They live in quiet retirement now; no one
ever writes about them, but they would have, if either had put his hand in the till and helped himself to
a few crores. Because they are men of honour they live in obscurity, which is as it should be.
There are many such; some I have quoted elsewhere in the book, and there are others, retired and
serving, who deserve to be on a roll of honour. The country may not ever know their names, but they
will have helped, in their years of service, make the country slightly better than it was. When I talk of
the IAS it is these people I talk about, not the ones who have amassed huge amounts of wealth, have
nurtured political contacts and move easily in the corridors of power even today. These officers,
because of whose steadfast if unknown work the state has survived to a large extent are the ones I am
proud to be counted with, and to say, that, like them, I served the state as well as I could.
To have served the state as well as I could. That, at any rate, was my most satisfying thought when
I left the service; I had little to look forward to except the prospect of getting used to living in genteel
but modest, very modest, circumstances, but the thought that I had done the best I could, had fallen
down sometimes by making wrong decisions and judgements, but tried to correct them, gave me a
great amount of consolation. I may not have been appointed to exalted ministries or gone on thereafter
to even more exalted positions, but I had served the state as well as I thought was possible. I had
never wanted anything else like the sinecures many lobby for at the cost of their self-respect and
dignity. I had, in the end, like many of my colleagues merely done the best I could and no man can do
more. That was what made it easy to leave the service with a tranquil mind and a clear conscience.
1 Probir Sen, ‘Prerequisites for Excellence—What Made the ICS the Service It Was’ (Unpublished
paper).
2 ‘Civil Service—An Institutional Perspective’ by K.P. Krishnan and T.V. Somanathan, appearing in

Public Institutions In India—Performance and Design, edited by Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu
Mehta (OUP, 2005, p. 291).
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., pp. 291–92.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 309.
7 Ibid., p. 306.
8 R.P. Noronha, A Tale Told by an Idiot, Vikas Publishing House, 1976, p. 62.
9 Philip Mason, The Men Who Ruled India. Vol. I: The Founders; Vol. 2: The Guardians (Jonathan

Cape: 1953 and 1954).

10 S.R. Maheshwari: Public Administration in India—The Higher Civil Service, OUP 2005, p. 146.
11 Excerpts from The Civil Servant in a Deregulated Economy appended in Two Score and Ten—My

Experiences in Government by G.V. Ramakrishna (Academic Foundation, New Delhi: 2004, pp.
351–54).
1 Constituent Assembly Debates, 17 September 1949.
2 Jawaharlal Nehru: An Autobiography quoted inPublic Administration in India: S.R. Maheshwari,

(Oxford University Press), p. 39.

3 Constituent Assembly Debates,1947: Vol. 1, pp. 793–95.
4 Constituent Assembly Debates X, 1949, pp. 33–53 quoted by David C. Potter:India’s Political

Administrators 1919–1983, (Clarendon Press Oxford: 1986), pp. 148–49.

1 Kalyani Chaudhuri, When The Pendulum Stops—Death of Bengal Bureaucracy (Nachiketa
Publications: 2010), p. 54.
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