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Hmm!
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IAS detained after brawl with cops
DC Correspondent, Chennai, Feb 16
A senior IAS officer was manhandled and detained by the police at Nungambakkam police station on Saturday night after he was engaged in a verbal duel with the police for standing outside a paan shop late at night.
In what seems to be a case of police excess, D. P. Yadav, IAS, was punched on the face by a police official and taken to the police station for refusing to move away from the crowded paan shop at around midnight despite repeated pleas to do so.
"I had bought paan from the shop and was waiting along with a friend to collect the change from the vendor when a policeman came to us and demanded that we leave immediately. When I refused, he used derogatory words to chase us away and I lost my cool," Mr Yadav said. He and his friend were engaged in a heated verbal duel when another IAS officer noticed the incident and intervened. "Despite him alerting the police that he was an IAS officer, they treated us badly. When my friend tried to call for help, I was pushed inside a police vehicle," he said.
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Hmm!
I first heard of IAS in 1955 when I was 12, playing 'kabadi kabadi kabadi' in my village school.
Father told my mom in a reverent tone that one of my distant uncles had just then cleared his IAS exam. I didn't know what IAS was but I could feel the awe that went with it. Because till then I thought that Headmaster was the pinnacle of all achievements.
I then went to my Shakespeare Uncle's place for my pre-university year. And his son-in-law, a charming gent, was there on long leave. He told me that he was fed up with the rural job he got dumped in and wanted to prepare for the IAS exam and he took long leave because it was his last chance. And he bought a Guide Book and it was there that I found the official version of our national anthem in English I was talking about the other day. He couldn't appear for the exam unfortunately since his boss, who came to know of his uppity ambitions, cancelled his leave and asked him to join forthwith or lose his job.
When I went to my university in Vizagh and was in my final year M Sc, one of my brilliant seniors appeared for the IAS exam as a lark and got selected...he retired recently as the finance secretary of the Govt of India and is now an RTI activist.
I then went to IIT KGP as a teacher and, in 1970, a young student of physics again appeared for the IAS exam for fun and topped it. He retired recently as the Governor of our Reserve Bank and had a few nice tongue-in-cheek words for his ex-boss, our Boston Brahmin.
A classmate of his also left physics and joined IAS and retired recently as a top babu upcountry.
In 1970 itself an IAS officer married my didi without dowry...he being an idealist...it is a different matter that his wife, a lady doctor, earned him a hundred times the going rate of the dowry. This fond B-i-L of mine wrote a charming Foreword for my booklet, 'Limericks & Light Verses'...he had read all of its contents unlike the usual Foreword writers. One morning in 1977, while he was sitting in his majestic office in Chennai and I was chatting with him sitting opposite, he suddenly came up with what he thought was the best compliment anyone can bestow on his salah:
"You are IAS material! Why are you wasting your time teaching physics at KGP?"
The reason I got this best compliment was perhaps I uttered the words 'quid pro quo' or, maybe, 'John Maynard Keynes'.
After that I lost track of IAS aspirants till 1984 when a final year EE student at IIT KGP, whom I had taught in his first year, came to me to borrow his Vibrations & Optics class notes which I had confiscated earlier. I asked him what for and he said, shyly, that he was preparing for his IAS exam and chose physics as one of the subjects. I asked him why he wanted to be an IAS and he winked and said:
"Lots of dowry in Bihar for IAS, sir"
A few years later, IAS went out of fashion at KGP and the golden apple turned out to be the combo of (IIT + IIM).
A decade later, in 1998, a physics student of mine, who got selected for a cushy software job in what was then Bangalore, told me that he was going there straight to join his job. I asked him why not he visit his home town in Bihar and take the blessings of his parents before venturing into the job market. He smiled and said:
"I won't be allowed to reach my village sir! People are waiting to kidnap me on my way there to get me married to their daughters"
My own son, an IIT product in 2004, never thought of IAS...nor did any of his batchmates...apparently the sheen has gone out of IAS completely.
So I am not entirely taken aback by the news item that a senior IAS officer, buying paan at midnight, has been bullied and pushed into the police van by a beat constable.
During the Nehruvian era, bureaucrats were a highly respected lot. We heard of names that had an aura and an awe. They gave their frank advice to their netas on what was good for the nation and also for the netas. And their learned advice was much valued. Netas and the babus worked as a team.
The degradation (some call it rot) set in during the IG regime. She wanted to rule the nation for her own good as well as the good of her family...forever. So she invented the phrase, 'committed bureaucracy'....committed to her and her sons. So anyone who gave an honest advice on what was good for the nation was shunted out and she surrounded herself with 'yes-men'. That led to not only her downfall but also that of the bureaucracy as an honest profession.
The slide got rapid with the inevitable liberalization of the economy. Money was floating around and the netas feathered their nests copiously. And the babus were not very far behind. With the result that birds of both the feather are marching to the jail, one after another.
And the aam aadmi is fed up.
So it is no wonder that the beat constable is unafraid.
The good of the nation, my foot!, is replaced with the good of one's own self.
Things have come to such a pass that, if the Supreme Neta, advised by her political aides, decides to bifurcate a state of the union for the larger benefit of her party, her top babu must quickly come up with a 1000 page document defending how bifurcation is good for the state and the well-being of its voters.
After a couple of months, if it is found by the Supreme Neta that trifurcation, not bifurcation, would be more fetching, her top babu has to come up with a new, revised, 1000-page document.
And be ready, with convincing reasons, why Vizagh is the best capital for the new state. Also, why Guntur. Also Kurnool and Tirupati and Muthukur.
For, that's his JOB!
...And my IAS B-i-L says that I am an IAS material...thanQ!
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