Brand IAS

The collector is surrounded by a beehive of peons and never moves anywhere within the district without a phalanx of sidekicks. At every village he (or increasingly she) will be garlanded like a film star with carnations, jasmine or marigolds.

A white Ambassador car with a red-light comes to a village. The entire villagers flock to the car. They try to peep into the car, a person alights from the car with an expressionless face, stiff nose, nonsensitive body language.

You take a problem to the concerned department. You are made to wait for an hour or two, despite the person you have to meet is engaged nowhere. Finally after being thoroughly irritated you get to meet someone who has been entrusted the task of solving your problem. While you narrate your problem, the person is hardly lend his ears to you, keeps passing judgement off and on and the fag end of the discussion says, “I will see what ‘I’ can do.” Mark the heavy emphasis on ‘I’.

Consider the description of this plight “At the state government’s home ministry in Bangalore after applying for verification, I was told (even after 3 months of my application) that my marriage certificate verification was stuck in Mysore (where my marriage was earlier registered). I had to go to the Mysore Police Commissioners office who directed me to a local police station; from there I was directed to the Marriage registry office and from there back to the local police station. The cop in-charge in local police station (they were finally able to pin a man whose job this actually was) was on rounds somewhere else, so we were told to go there. On reaching that place the cop sent me back to Police station, after a quite a bit of waiting (in a state of rising blood pressure) I got my work done. I then went to Police Commissioners office with the required document and as per rules was accompanied by a policeman; lest I manipulate the document (I wish they showed this dedication from the start). After a week, I finally picked up the document from Bangalore’s home ministry after the mandatory handing in of some ‘tea and biscuit money’ to a clerk.”

“A train accident takes place. Scores of people have died. There is chaos all around. Everyone running here and there. If immediate action is not taken even more people will lose their life and lose it well. Ultimately army is called to aid administration. The Administration cannot manage it……..”

Now consider — China recently completed the final section of the pan-Himalayan Golmud-Lhasa railway (1956 kilometres) at 5072 metres above sea level. The final section of 1142 kilometres, running across Tibet’s snow-covered plateau-dubbed the roof of the world–presented some unusual difficulties. The engineers had to contend with building on a 550-kilometre frozen belt, with the snow alternately melting and freezing in summer and winter. Workers had to breathe bottled oxygen to cope with the high altitudes and there was not a single death due to this. This stretch of 1142 kilometres was completed in a mere four years.

Or consider Phase I of Shanghai’s Pu Dong Airport. A four kilometre runway, two parallel taxiways, an 800,000-square-metre apron, twenty-eight boarding bridges, 280,000 square metres of terminal building and 50,000 square metres of cargo warehouse space designed to fly twenty million passengers, 750,000 tonnes of cargo and 126,000 flights a year- all these were completed between October 1997 and September 1999.

This gave the Chinese technicians eight international patents in the manufacturing of high-tech girders.
The economic development, political integration and social pride that projects such as these engender for China and its far-flung people are all too obvious to elucidate.

Cut to India. Impressive as the completion of the Konkan Railway or
the Delhi Metro Railway have been, they pale in comparison to the Chinese projects, especially where implementation skills and political will are concerned. Consider the statistics. It took seven to ten years to complete the 760-kilometre Konkan Railway. As for the Delhi Metro, between 1950 and 1990, some thirty feasibility studies were carried out by various bodies to evaluate an alternative transportation system for Delhi. The final go-ahead came in 1990 after a long gap of forty years. Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited was established in 1995 and it took the first phase of eleven kilometres to be completed in 2004 after a long span of nine years. The eighteen-kilometre Calcutta Metro took a good twenty-four years to complete, from 1971 to 1995.

Our new expressways, the golden Quadrilateral included, are perennially in a state of half-finish. One or the other side of the throughways is being laid or else under litigation at any given time. It is common for us to see a part of a road dug up one fine morning. And it is actually common to see that road in exactly the same state even after we return from our summer vacation, when in most other countries such works are carried out practically overnight.

A private organisation planned, prepared, executed the modernisation of the Chhatrapati Shivaji airport in Mumbai with the type of difficulty unimaginable. The modernisation process of the fully functioning and very congested airport was like, “performing an open heart surgery on a running person in the midst of his marathon.

The government cannot perform, or replicate this, can only feel jealous of the performance.

The one common in all the failures is IAS, the one common in all obstacles in the IAS, the one problem in all of them IAS…….Say hello to the IAS, the epitome of inefficiency, apathy corruption, arrogance and mental sickness.

A district magistrate and a junior engineer both are abducted by Maoists. Both are treated well. The entire limelight is hogged by the District Magistrate, no one is concerned about the fate of junior engineer at all.

That is the Brand IAS…..
Brand IAS: A superbrand, that is supercorrupt, superarrogant, superapathetic superinsensitive brand value of IAS. The name itself evokes all hatred, and all exclusivity. How this brand is made, what makes it run, what type of awe and aura it weilds, its a lesson in itself and can put some of the best superbrands to shame.

The IAS are a breed apart.
The IAS are a part of All India Services created by the Constitution of India under the previsions of Article 311 & 312.

Article 311(1) provides that no person who is a member of a civil service of the Union or an all-India service or a civil service of a State or holds a civil post under the Union or a State shall be dismissed or removed by an authority subordinate to that by which he was appointed.

According to Article 311(2) no such person as aforesaid shall be dismissed or removed or reduced in rank except after an inquiry in which he has been informed of the charges against him and given a reasonable opportunity of being heard in respect of those charges.
Provided ………..and a series of conditions for that.

The Politician come and go….. politician go back to the people every five years to get a mandate to represent the people…… if at all they can get the mandate. But the bureaucracy once inducted become permanent entity. They have no accountability, responsibility, no love for people, for country. One action of politician can cost their image may be their rejection, as well, in re-election but no such penalty is awarded to the bureaucracy. They can do everything without being answerable at all to anyone.

The bureaucracy is an extension of the British rule in India. The bureaucracy was an instrument to control India from Britain, consequently variety of rules and laws that were framed, were framed essentially for perpetuating the Britain interests. These rules, these provisions that were exploitative in nature still persists.

The bureaucracy have  the best of both worlds– one side illiterate poor citizens on whom they have to apply and implement themselves and at the other side their representative-gullible, ill-informed and who can be easily fooled. Protected by a constitutional provision and supported by the same provision that were made for the colonial civil servants, from the beginning of their training period onwards they move with their colonial mindset of looking down upon everything. And, if they don’t look down upon they are elevated, praised, eulogised, made a hero, publicised, composed   a song….. what not. Always a win win situation. If they do not do anything (delay their job), don’t respect people, country law, protocols, they satisfy their ego; if they do something that is their valid, legal duty, for which they are paid, they are elevated to demi God status, as if they have done something by sacrificing their entire career, their entire family, have been completely selfless.

Brand IAS as you call it… by virtue of the constitutional position they control finance they sign the cheques, they delegate the govt work. Obviously they decide who has to share the Govt’s responsibility, so it will not suit them if they are not judgemental and if they do not follow their whims and fancies. Agreed, one has to be judgemental to dispense the finance, provided one is capable of being judgemental in the present world with specialisation and super specialisation.

Whims, fancies don’t have a place in a rational world, and in an age of dialogued where do we stand for being judgemental.

The Indian administrative service is meant to serve the society. They are civil servants not civil masters, they are not for dispensing favours which is the true right of the citizens, bestowed by the constitution. Brand IAS never serves only dispenses favours but only from where they can get a favour back. The favour is always a favour in favour of favouring ?

To hell with the country, people or the image of the country. By virtue of their position and the constitutional provision they have, Brand IAS is identified  by a very specific set of work culture. They are world leaders in inefficiency, a symbol of   inactivity, overjealous of every thing and highly prejudiced. Despite their main job being co-ordination, they will be the last people in the earth to do so. They may have to swallow a lot of their pride in asking for the best of services despite the fact that they know the quality of service one can obtain. The fact that the Govt has to withdraw from the IAS a good amount of money which they have kept for either investment or for public welfare at that last moment because it has remained unused, unutilised, speaks highly of the inefficiency. To imagine that the government has earmarked funds for some provision that lies utilised and utilised in the most hurried manner possible, with total disregard to the priority the management and work culture is known to be believed.

Brand IAS spends the hard earned money of the exchequer not because they have to be spend on something that was earmarked but because it has to be somehow spent. If there can be any parallel of this type in the entire world, one can rate the Indian Administrative System as the best in inefficiency.

Apart from the inefficient work culture, they promote brand IAS which has a very distinct set of identity, with the help of which they set them apart from the rest of ‘Indians’. They portray themselves as if they are aliens brought from a planet, which is out of our solar system, milky way and this universe. The qualities that set them apart is their arrogance, ego, overjealous nature and loads of sycophants for this ego massage. They can’t behave like normal people because they consider themselves as ‘supernormal’ (read abnormal). They programme their entire software in a very mechanical manner, they have set for themselves a specific set of protocol which they follow in order to make themselves different from others.

The public perception of IAS is very well managed (read manipulated). The subordinates help their masters in ‘awe’, “Hamare sahab bahut paisa kamate hain”, general public perceives “kitna Achha chor hai, paisa bhi kamata lekin  kam bhi karata hai.”

The media is so awe struck by these immortal people. India today came out with an issue on some achievers. More than 70% of which were IAS officers. It is a very queer situation to eulogise IAS offers. Imagine a person with all authority in the world, with all money and funds at their disposal want to do some work, want to innovate, which, if fails won’t be held accountable, consequently can take infinite risks. Out of 20,000 old officers if some 10-11 of them became successful, will that be considered an achievement? And the media raises enormous hooplah on the transfer of the bureaucracy.

And what a publicity have they done over Anil Verma, Alok Ranjan Jha and S.V. Krishna. No one ever enquired about the whereabouts of the junior engineer who was also abducted along with R.V. Krishna, as if junior engineers are no human beings or their life is less costly than IAS officers. Brand IAS that is its value!

Superbrand IAS, if they have to describe themselves will say I am super because I am in Indian Arabpati Service and despite doing everything nefarious and evil I Am Safe. Despite the fact that I wreck the country from within by doing wrong work and no work, I will never feel that I Am Sorry.
By
An Anonymous writer who would like to lodge his silent protest.