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Journalism of Courage
Former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg’s memoirs of his years in government is refreshingly different from the usual reminisces of retired civil servants. Garg represents the new age IAS officer, without the pedigree background, top drawer college education and a sense of entitlement. He was the eldest of a family of eight living in a two-room government quarter, yet a topper at Government College, Ajmer, and in his Chartered Accountancy examinations. He stood fourth in the Indian Civil Services Exam listing, his oral exam pulling down his overall score.
What is heartening about Garg’s story, recounted engagingly without a discernable sense of grievance over the ups and downs in his career graph, is to discover that the steel frame of the country has not yet collapsed completely into an army of ‘yes’ men. The book suggests that an honest, innovative and bold officer can survive, even if he treads occasionally on the toes of the establishment. Several of Garg’s tolerant seniors warned him of possible consequences of his actions but did not stop his individualistic streak and obviously gave him good CRs. As SDO, Garg stirred a hornet’s nest when he decided, in the spirit of fairness, that patwaris, who worked in fertile plains, should be transferred to barren hilly regions and those without contacts — who had been consigned for years to the boondocks — be assigned alternative positions. He followed the same principle later in the transfer of school teachers. He innovated the system of teachers’ recruitments without awarding marks for interview, which offered leeway for favouritism. He upset the teachers unions by conducting school exams while the teachers were on strike, and the government employees union by streamlining the system for application for employee loans and withdrawals from Provident Fund without unnecessary delays.
Politicians were generally displeased by his adherence to the rule book. When he declined to invite Congress politician Girija Vyas to inaugurate a clay art complex in Rajsamand during President’s rule, he received transfer orders soon afterwards. Vyas explained frankly that though he had done an excellent job, “we have asked for your transfer as your continuance does not suit us”. Garg, in fact, faced several untimely transfers and short tenures in his eventful career.
His first posting in Delhi, in 2000, as director in the Department of Economic Affairs was a total surprise for him as the prestigious North Block is generally reserved for those who can pull strings at the highest level. Garg, who subsequently worked in different posts in the finance ministry, offers insightful vignettes into the goings on in the corridors of power, rather rare in an era when government’s functioning is becoming increasingly opaque. The author recalls how in the last years of Manmohan Singh’s tenure , the former prime minister had become so powerless that even then environment minister Jayanti Natarajan kept the Cabinet Committee on Investment waiting for 40 minutes and then defiantly informed the PM she was still examining the project. Garg rates former finance minister P Chidamabaram as an outstanding boss, meticulous and hard working, who made copious notes on files and returned them the very next day.
When Garg returned to Rajasthan, his home cadre, he was principal secretary of finance with Vasundhara Raje as chief minister, and part of the team that developed Raje’s Bhamashah platform — a smart card for women beneficiaries that delivered Rs 1,500 in each woman’s bank account. The fact that his former boss and mentor Rajiv Meherishi headed the chief minister’s office, worked in his favour. The day Ashok Gehlot took over as chief minister, Garg was transferred to a punishment posting and the Bhamashah scheme was put in cold storage.
When Narendra Modi took over as PM in 2014, Garg found, much to his surprise, that he was selected as India’s ED in the World Bank (WB) on the strength of his service record, much to the annoyance of Raje who was back as CM and needed his services. The author claims one of his achievements at the World Bank was successfully diverting Pakistan’s attempts to send the Indus Water Treaty for arbitration. With the cooperation of WB President Jim Kim, he worked the rules to get the issue referred instead to a WB neutral expert. Ironically, the Foreign Office, which almost lost the plot, had initially asked him to keep out of negotiations. Because of this maneuver, India was able to claim, after the Pahalgam attack, that the Indus Water Treaty was in abeyance.
Garg returned to the finance ministry as secretary of economic affairs in 2017 with Arun Jaitley as the finance minister. He appeared to be in the good books of his minister, the PM as well as the two powerful secretaries in the PMO, Nripendra Misra and PK Mishra. But, within two years, he had fallen from grace. The PM’s then principal secretary Nripendra Misra, called the shots in the government and did not take kindly to Garg often countering his views, whether on the future of BSNL and MTNL or suggesting replacing all input subsidies for farmers and eliminating the MSP scheme by an income support scheme for farmers. Among other contentious issues, Garg disputed the RBI’s demand that it retain most of the budget surplus. By the time Nirmala Sitharaman took over as Finance Minister in May 2019, it was clear that Garg’s days were numbered. The new finance minister made known her displeasure of an officer whom she may have perceived as too cocky. Nripendra Misra informed Garg that he was no longer in tune with the thinking of the government and was to be transferred. By then, Garg concluded it was best to put in his papers, though he still had a year left of service. He realised that there is a price to pay for declaring “No Minister’’ once too often.
The writer is contributing editor to The Indian Express
