Robin Gupta spoke about his life in the government as documented in his book, And What Remains in the End. He has a lucid style and covers the phases of his career with consummate ease. Initially, he joined the police service, and Robin maintains that the real tough assignments are carried out by the police. Thereafter, the reader is taken along with the author to Robin’s postings as an IAS officer in Bengal, and Haryana / Punjab in the main, with a stint in Delhi.
While he was in Bengal, he had to deal with the Naxalites. As he states: “Often heinous murders attributed to the Naxalites were reported over the police wireless. The target of their fury was the government machinery and the sahibs of the gardens….. and I found the corpse of a young assistant manager who had been hacked to death, lying prostrate among tea bushes…..”, and then the author notes that the tragedy of Naxalbari started haunting me.
He did not have to deal with the Naxalites for long, as he was deputed to the central government and was transferred to Delhi, to the Department of Civil Aviation and Tourism. As Robin notes: An academic by nature, I started enjoying the access to knowledge, with a semblance of power, at the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism. He met some of the important dramatis personae of the day and noted the manner in which their background influenced their working.
He was posted as joint publicity controller, which required him to project the excellence of the ITDC chain of hotels, the flagship of which was the Ashoka in Chanakyapuri.
Thereafter, Robin joined the sports ministry and did a fair amount of travelling. Between 1984 and 1987, he went to Dacca, Italy, Mauritius, and Germany. Even as he travelled, he was fearful of leaving Delhi, for his elderly mother would be left all on her own.
In Haryana, he took charge as joint secretary in the Department of Health, Ayurveda, and Medical Education. The start of his duty took him to Kurukshetra, where it was proposed to construct an Ayurvedic medical college and hospital. The author confesses that having been brought up in the aftermath of the British Raj, he was suspicious of hakeems and the medicines they prescribed which did not reveal the ingredients that had been assembled in the paper packets that they handed out. And he admits that it was slowly that an understanding of the Indian system of medicine came to him.
Thereafter Robin makes an insightful comment on the IAS: After 16 years of service, it dawned on me that IAS officers were no longer rulers. Unlike their predecessors in the Indian Civil Service, who were tribunes of imperial power, today civil servants are advisors & facilitators.
As chief settlement commissioner, Haryana, Robin describes the touching story of Dayawanti, who had been denied possession of her home for 40 years and how he was able to get her possession of it. The author faced threats from the powerful affected party but he did not relent.
Robin ruffled a lot of feathers in the state and acquired powerful enemies. Even as he was planning to move back to Bengal, he spent the waiting period as joint secretary, department of Administrative Reforms.
During the Q & A, Dr Gautam Vohra raised the issue as to why he never sought to make his career at the Centre (Delhi) as many officers did. He cited the example of his father, an ICS officer of the Punjab/ Haryana cadre who came to the Centre and retired as a Secretary to the GOI.
Poonam Bali and Radhika Dubash repeatedly stressed why it was impossible to get work done. For all the karamcharis wanted a bribe.
Renu Jain and Harpal Singh went into long diatribes on what plagued the government machinery. Arvinder Singh stated that the demands on the government had shot up with the increase in population but others like Neelam Misal and Raj Sharma observed that a concomitant number of officers were taken in each year to cope with the demand. And so the discourse proceeded.
