Civil service lines

For nine months in Mussoorie, English, August was a companion to Saurabh Rao 28. His first thought on stepping down at Wardha railway stat...

For nine months in Mussoorie, English, August was a companion to Saurabh Rao 28. His first thought on stepping down at Wardha railway station on July 23 was not a stifled pang for hometown Lucknow but a memory of Agastya8217;s arrival at little Madna in Upamanyu Chatterjee8217;s wry account of a civil servant8217;s first year. Rao had faxed a travel plan, but the collector8217;s jeep forgot to receive Wardha8217;s earnest assistant collector under training. 8220;Agastya had a jeep. I was worse off,8221; laughs Rao, a postgraduate in political science.

Son of a retired Indian Forest Service officer, he got into the Indian Police Service in 8217;02, and spent 11 months training. But father told son ek aur chance lo give it a second shot. Last year, he made it.

For now in Wardha, he is merely an 8220;observer8221;. A lonely, bored observer. 8220;I8217;m lonely. All men are either senior or junior,8221; he says frankly. 8220;Wardha is calm, quiet and small, not like UP. I spend all day from 10 am to 8.30 pm with collector-saab.8221; His idea of a civil servant8217;s prolific duty formed from day one, July 24. On a Saturday holiday, the collector was at home but hosting a press conference on farmers8217; suicides in the region.

The boredom vanished for one day, August 11. Courtesy Sonia Gandhi, the former bookworm learnt his next important lesson, shadowing collector saab on a tense day she was there. The Congress president whizzed through Wardha on a tour of malnutrition and drought hotspots. Overwhelmed, by the end of that very important day, he had got one thing straight. 8220;Protocol duty is unproductive but very important. Not a single mistake can be pardoned.8221;

During training tours at Kargil and Drass, Saurabh listened to the armed forces8217; 8220;expectations8221; from the civil service. One firm request from the men in uniform is still embedded in his mind: 8220;They told us they want the IAS and IPS to be more respectful to the armed forces.8221;

In the Northeast at Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura 8212; 8220;places I visited for the first and last time8221;8212; he took in whispered, off-the-record tales of 8220;cuts8221; to the underground movement from government offices, even the collectorates.

After 8.30 pm when Wardha sleeps, Saurabh tackles his 30 training assignments or tosses a shuttle at the local badminton court. 8220;India8217;s changing fast, and my role as an IAS officer must adapt accordingly,8221; he says. He resolved his post-high school career dilemma by deciding on the civil services like his father. His batch8217;s motto, he maintains, was to work hard. 8220;And we must never forget that we are public servants.8221;

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By the way, the jeep did arrive, after an anxious telephone call to collector-saab and a 20 minute wait.