Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
An early Royal Navy ad, briefly adopted by the successor Indian Navy ,carried the legend ‘join the Navy and see the world’, followed some time later by a similar ad, this time by the Air Force, urging bright young men to let their ambitions soar, just like the fighter aircraft in the ad, poised to take off. Those were good old days and civil services were less crowded. And hence no high voltage ad campaigns. The extremely bright and ambitious took to ICS and in post independence years to the Indian administrative service etc.
So, if you were the bookish type you more likely would respond to the pocket-sized ads which the UPSC routinely put out in the then dominant print media, offering opportunities in the civil services. A civil services job in any case didn’t offer you the thrill-a-minute life which probably the Navy and Air Force offered and if you ask me even the cash on offer wasn’t attractive enough, something between Rs. 400 and 500.
I know of a bright young Cambridge educated young man advised by his dad to sit for the civil services test. The young man shot back : ‘Dad, you can’t be serious. Not for 450’.He joined what was then the Tata Administrative Service resigning from that as well to carve out a spectacular niche for himself in the advertising world. But then there were many bright young men and women, not as numerous as now, who would give it their all, rummaging through libraries, racing in and out of coaching classes, engaging tutors to arm themselves for the big test that would, with luck, get them into the hall of fame, the hallowed precincts of the academies preparing men and women to man the services, the IAS, IRS, the IPS, etc.
Some of these aspirants later distinguished themselves in their chosen service while many others simply hung around for annual increments, waiting to move out of a not-so-comfortable to a posting that would give him or her the Burra Saheb feel; the feel sat even more comfortably on you after you had made it to the deputy commissioner’s rank, the jamadar/orderly sahib standing behind you, his cumberband and ribboned pugree a real stand- out; the DC sahib felt like a lord and his liveried attendants added to the aura. It gave you much more than merely making you feel good. You should read the memoirs of some of the earlier ICS/IAS retirees to get the real feel of what being a commissioner could be like not very long ago.
Those imbued with a commitment to their chosen calling have through these first six and a half decades of our independence done well enough to help us retain our faith, may be only partly, in the administrative steel-frame which the British had left for us. There may have been the odd black sheep who deviated from the path but by and large the men and women from services have done their country and their calling proud.
That was as long as the political class, manned by freedom fighters of those early years, by and large well educated professionals like lawyers, doctors and the odd academician were at the helm. Evidently the civil servants, stuck to the norms associated with their calling, did the right thing, avoided, temptations that office offered, and rendered professional advice as best as they could.
There were exceptions though when individuals strayed but instances were rare. Meanwhile, the political class underwent a qualitative change, and, for the worse too. Temptations were too difficult to resist. Greed became a byword in the new lexicon evolved by the new class, aided and abetted often by civil servants, who chose to bend when they should have stood up, tall and upright.
And finally we have reached a stage when the politicians have tamed the services into submission; the induction of criminal-politicians into high offices has since made a grim situation look grimmer. Some of the guilty may have been caught out – but only rarely.
The nexus between the politician and the civil servant -call it bonding – has been so well established that sometimes it becomes difficult to tell one from the other. Political parties may be willing to tear each other apart in all other spheres of activity but an attribute common to all is their willingness to yield to temptation, filthy lucre. A willing/pliable civil servant becomes a valuable asset for the unscrupulous politician in office. Major scandals, with the political boss and the civil servant hand in glove, have become a common place.
It no longer surprises when the scandals begin to unravel. Merit has yielded its place to greed. Made things look much easier too. The upright officer is clearly made to feel unwanted. His breed is becoming scarcer as the politicians tighten their hold on everything, from nuts and bolts to the actual levers of power and the working manual too. In the process officers tend to become puppets in the hands of the politicians.
No wonder then that the more adventurous officer should in the circumstances look out for greener pastures on his own. There are numerous instances of this being so, and none as daring as the story of the Joshi couple, husband and wife, both IAS officers, both soldiers of fortune, as it were.
By the time they had virtually built up a multi, multi million rupee empire very few, including their political masters, had either not bothered to ask questions or, more probably were in cahoots with them. So daring were they that the high and mighty of Madhya Pradesh took pride in breaking bread, polishing off barrels of choicest liquors at their house night after night. Such lubrication makes things a lot easier.
And interestingly four years after the couple was exposed they managed to give the corrupt system a slip, sauntering into the unknown with plenty of cash etc in hand as they beat the non- bailable warrants to make a getaway. If the Department of Personnel and the UPSC took more than four years to announce the couple’s dismissal; the Madhya Pradesh Government led by the BJPs Shivraj Chauhan took two years plus to implement the Lok Ayukats finding that legal action be launched against the crooked couple.
Who are they, this Arvind Joshi and Tinu Joshi, husband and wife, both IAS officers – the husband Principal Secretary Water Resources Department and wife Tinu, heading the Woman and Child Development Department of Madhya Pradesh government. That was up to 2010 when their houses in Bhopal and elsewhere were raided. They were suspended the month following that and dismissed finally in July this year. Predictably the twosome chose not to appear before the court even once.
Mind you the Department of Personnel had taken over three years to order the couple’s dismissal. Given the curious history of the Joshi case and it is no surprise that no one ever thought of impounding their passports. The Joshis in the meantime vamoosed. Leaving one wondering who colluded with whom.
Now some vital statistics: the initial raid on their Bhopal house had yielded Rs. 3 crores in cash and another Rs. seven lakhs worth of foreign exchange. Other known assets included Rs.67 lakhs worth of jewelry, Rs. 270 crores worth of stocks/futures trade, 78 bank accounts, 25 flats (18 in Guwahati,6 in Bhopal and one in Delhi), 400 acres of land and Rs.9.83 crores in bank deposits. Arvind Joshi’s father H.M. Joshi, a former Madhya Pradesh DGP also figures among the 18 accused. The Lok Ayukta and the enforcement directorate have attached the Joshi properties and an Rs.135 crore tax bill slapped on them. The two outfits had sent a 7000 -page report to the Madhya Pradesh Government which typically took two years to ask the Lok Ayukta to prosecute the couple. That was in 2012. The dismissal came about in July this year, four years after the event.
And Mr. Shivraj Singh Chauhan, the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, his third term now is said to be an efficient, an honest man. I wonder why it took him four years to initiate action against the Joshis, much after his own Lok Ayukta had woken up to the couple’s guilt.
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