I grew up in a middle-class family in Uttar Pradesh. During those days, students all around me had just one aspiration: to make it to the civil services. This burning ambition cut across students pursuing all sorts of courses. I remember even some of the brighter minds at the  Indian Institute of Technology competing for civil services. Despite being a student of computer science, I too opted for a combination of physics and sociology to make it to the Indian Police Service. I was overjoyed at achieving my goal and so was my entire family. Never could I imagine that one day I would actually end up quitting the same force.

Nothing had prepared me for the disillusionment that began as early as during the training right at my induction. For me, the dinner table had always been a casual affair. But it was not so in the police. One had to dress properly to eat in the mess. I found it terribly difficult to come to terms with this regimentation.

The mandatory unquestioning and undue submission to seniors came as a blow to my upbringing as a freethinking individual straight out of the intellectual atmosphere prevalent at the IIT Kanpur. While training in the northern part of Maharashtra, I found the absolute dictatorial regime of some of my seniors unpalatable and unwarranted. Thinking that it was too early for me to take any drastic decision, I suffered several years of absolute dictatorial rule of my seniors.

While I suffered the harrassment of seniors during my early years in the service, later, during my stint with the economic offences cell, I came face to face with the reality of absolute subservience of the service to political masters and the powers usurped by the political powers running the government.

Just when I thought I was doing a great service to the nation, investigating a huge fraud of embezzlement of soft loans meant for cobblers by big businessmen close to our political rulers in Mumbai, I was moved out of my post.  I was shocked that my work was nowhere near completion and yet I was shunted out, in the guise of routine administrative transfers. I was relieved of my responsibilities even before I could brief my successor on the details of the eight months of investigations that I had done. Though a few well-wishers in the ranks offered me some moral support, they were helpless as they themselves were at the mercy of these powerful political masters.

A few years later, on the advice of some well-meaning seniors in the service, I joined the elite group which looks after the security of the prime minister. I believed that in this assignment there would be no conflict with the political powers, since there was no executive role to play.

However, within a few months I realised that this job more than anything else made me a personal effect of political masters. In the name of providing security to the prime minister, I was primarily managing the tour programmes of the prime minster and ex-prime ministers. If I was not travelling with the prime minister and his predecessors, I was guarding their houses, maintaining the daily lists of guests and servants who visited his house. I was playing the role of a well-paid personal servant. This humiliated me as an IPS officer. It was this job along with my experiences with senior servants and political masters that made me decide that it was time to move on.
No one wants to be a servant. Most colleagues in service never even talk of themselves as being one. They refer to themselves as government officers. My 14 years in service made me realise that while the outside world referred to us as officers, in the system we were just glorified servants to the political masters. If any of us did not behave as a servant, punishments came swift and drastic.
Political masters call the shots and keep to themselves the magnanimity of granting mercy petitions. Once you get entangled, there is no way to get out I was lucky to have made a decision early on and built my career as an individual and not as a personal effect of either a senior servant or a politician.

This first appeared in the June 16-30 issue of the Governance Now magazine (Vol. 01, Issue 10)

Working with tied hands?

Findings of a recent survey:

• 34 percent civil servants have thought of quitting the job, mainly due to political interference, mediocrity, corruption, better pay in the private sector and conformity.
• 81 percent officers across services believe political corruption takes place because there are some civil servants willing to collaborate in it.
• 52 percent respondents believe that postings and transfers are not based on merit.
• One-fourth civil servants believe very few officers have integrity.
• 36 percent of the respondents reported that they had been a victim of harassment in their service.

The Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad, along with AC NielsenORG-MARG carried out the survey, which included responses from 4,808
officers of various services.