India's Most Wanted

I have never met Chandrakant Anil. Nor Ratn Sanjay. Yet I salute this 1991 IASand 1998 IPS duo currently serving Siwan. I believe the entire Indian civilservice, should give them a standing ovation and support them for doing what fewin the system have had the courage to do. They have put their ownlives at stake, becoming marked menforever, by putting the common weal beforepersonal safety or career. They have protected democracy and shown us a sterlingexample of what good governance means in the rough and tumble of day-to-day lifein one of India’s most backward states. If only therule of law had been upheld by the civil service on the very first day whenthe first version of Shahabuddin attempted to raise his head inSiwan,, we would have been spared all that's followed.

But, finally, by reading out the law to MohammedShahabuddin, MP, in his own language, theduo has redefined the lingua franca of good governance in Bihar. Raids on Shahabuddin's house have revealed tiger and deer skins, night-vision goggles,laser-aided guns and other arms with markings of Pakistan ordinance factories.Further photos of the honourable MP with some of India’s most wanted criminalshave reportedly been seized. In other words, a man who sits inside thehallowed walls of Parliament is a national security threat! And the union government continues providing him Z-category security, to protect a habitualcriminal. What a shame.

Can Shahabuddin explain to thenation why, and how many times, he visited Kashmir and the border areas in the past four or five years? Did he go there toprocure the rocket launchers with which he fired on SP B.S. Meena? He is alsosaid to have had the president of the Siwan Policemen’s Association killedbecause he refused to support him in the recent elections. Lastly, there's thematter of those who have vanished from Siwan. Every child in Siwan knows where thesepeople vanished, and where more than a hundred bodies lie buried now. The government should order this private graveyard, bang in his backyard, tobe dug up, bodies exhumed, scientific identification done and the pictures displayed for thenation to see, so that shame is out in the open and not hidden. And to see thatjustice is done to the perpetrator of this outrage.

Chief Commissioner, Income Tax, Bihar, should now seize all the properties,which are known to be owned by or captured by the honourable MP through benamimethods, and auction them; re-open his tax returns which have been quietly filedaway for years, and freeze his bank accounts. The honourable MP has violatedalmost every law of every department and yet no one has had the courage to lookat him till date.

We all have, at one time or the other, lamented, in drawing room conversations,about the degeneration of the system in India. Despite our spectacularachievements in other fields, we are reducing ourselves to a nation ofhand-wringers when it comes to standing up for the right and doing somethingabout it. The time has come for every right thinking Indian to standup and becounted. To support Anil, Ratn and others like them who, in the face of severalinsuperable odds, are saving that very system that most only talk aboutsaving. Each time we talk about saving it, and don’t doanything, we are saving the nation on a part-time basis - something no nationcan afford.

To those who are scared to take him on, all I ask is: Would they have reactedsimilarly, if Shahabuddin had targeted their own family in any one of these ways?Why then a different attitude when it comes to the public cause? We oftenforget we are holding a trust - called the IAS - given to us by the peoplethrough the Indian Constitution, and not something we have got due to theabiding grace of any individual, no matter how powerful he may be. We owe asolemn responsibility to uphold this trust, conscientiously and faithfully. Andif we cannot act, we should resign and make way for someone who can stand up.

In this context, I feel compelled to recount a conversation I had with a not-so-honourableoccupant of yet another high, honourable, constitutional position in India, onOctober 16, 1996. He, along with many other ‘honourables’, appalled at therate at which we were demolishing illegal buildings in Delhi to restore publicland for public purposes, and after holding out several threats to me and myfamily, and after physically trying to harm us, finally said: "Why don’t youselect a different, smaller target and forget about this?". To which Ireplied, precisely what I have argued above: "I hold a trust called the IAS-If I do not have the courage to take on the biggest offender first, I shouldresign from the service and make way for someone else who can."

The British ruled India with just two or three provisions of the CriminalProcedure Code, namely Section 133 (public nuisance), Section 144 (Unlawfulassembly) and a few others. Today, with many more powerful laws in the arsenalof the modern administrator, he is often unable to control even petty law andorder issues, what to speak of controlling habitual criminals like Shahabuddin.What an inescapable irony of history: too many laws, yet too little justice; toomuch of government, but too little governance.

All right thinking IAS officers must form a collective action group tosupport those who silently toil and uphold the law. The time has come to realise that the myriad conduct rules cannot be for good officers in the IASalone, while others who devour the fence from within -- and the politicalexecutive -- have none whatsoever. This asymmetry must end. As also must end thelegacy of administrative impotence which has slowly crept into the system inBihar (and in different degrees, elsewhere), often under the guise of ‘remainingbalanced’, or for ‘not acting in haste’ or something elseequally laudable. All these are indeed extremely important and worthwhile canonsof administration, if we have a strong state, functioning in normalcircumstances; not after we ourselves reduce the state to spectacularimpotence, through decades of masterly inactivity and cowardice, as has happenedin Bihar.

Unless the like-minded in the IAS support the countless facelessyet courageous officers like Anil-Ratn, who to a lesser or greater degree, aredoing a phenomenal, yet unsung job, of upholding the law, every single day, theservice would continue to lose professionalism, whatever execution capabilitiesit has at present and public respect, at an even greater pace than what ishappening today. And we will get blamed for anything and everything from theLatur earthquake to the Asian tsunami!

I appeal to the Prime Minister, Dr.Manmohan Singh, to personallyintervene to ensure Anil-Ratn’s security -- to withdraw Shahabuddin’sZ-security and accord it to Anil-Ratn instead. The PM should act, and not allow Shahabuddinto do so. A public acknowledgement that officerslike them in the service are examples of how good officers should be, and thatthey are indeed coveted. This one act would be applauded much more than onethousand words on administrative reforms. If this PM, of unimpeachableintegrity, doesn’t act now to protect officers who stand up for the publicgood, no one else perhaps ever will.

What is paramount to appreciate is that while Anil and Ratn areexceptional, they are not exceptions. There are many officers in the service,who if given a similar opportunity, will do exactly the same. I for onewould happily give up my current position at a premier international financialinstitution (IFI) and go to an equally challenging district in Bihar if I amordered to do so by the government and given a similar mandate. I am fully awarethat I am just a very small cog in the proverbial wheel of government, yet if ithelps, I am offering to do so now - which would be my modest contribution tostrengthen the best career in the world, the IAS, in my own small way.

And I am not alone. There are many more like me in the IAS and IPS who would readily do so. Sadly, public perception is not this. Publicperception needs to be changed and directed to the fact that India possesses oneof the most brilliant higher civil service in the world, which sits on top ofone of the most appalling lower civil services, thereby often becoming theobject of public opprobrium. Having had the benefit of seeing the IAS, themultilateral world and the private sector from very close quarters, I can averwith confidence that the canvas, the diversity of work, the opportunity forhaving impact on the lives of the common people, civil service outclasses all others.

Individuals will come and go. But institutions have to go on forever if we,India’s gen-next, aspire to build anything close to a modern, prosperouscountry. The time has now come for individuals to (re)createinstitutions, so that, someday institutions can create individuals. To stopbeing a nation of hand-wringers, when it comes to standing up and acting for thecommon weal. And to realise that we cannot save the country on a part-timebasis.

Srivatsa Krishna is an IAS officer.These are strictly hispersonal views and not those of any institution he is associated with, in anyway. But he fervently hopes these are also the views of India, and of everyright thinking Indian.