Time Out — The Great Indian Nightmare

Nine twenty-five, a stolen glance at the wrist reminded me, and the jiggers threatened to crawl right up the spine. This must be their way of testing you navigation skills, I concluded morbidly, a kind of find it or forget it contest. In which case, I’d be just right for the Andaman and Nicobar service.

And why not? Just how do you expect the bosses at Dholpur House to pick out a thousand-odd candidates from among lakhs who believe they will make as capable administrators as their next-door neighbour? Just how do you decide who’ll do as a civil servant and who won’t, except by using imaginative criteria? And wouldn’t anybody jump at the chance of getting any old service?

Back in the good old days — in 1950, to be precise — there had been just 3,647 applicants to choose from. It wasn’t so bad 25 years later either, with 28,538 making their bid for the Great Indian Dream of riding in back of a white Ambassador sporting a cute little banderole with the two most magical alphabets in a moffusil — DM.

Since then, much water has flowed down the washbasins of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Administration and for many, the dream has turned into an unrequited nightmare. It started with technomania — the unnatural interest that the IITians and medicos suddenly began to pay to the IAS. Why are administrative seats blocked up for people who get their kicks tinkering with machinery or devising newer techniques for battling peculiar diseases that only the Indian countryside could come up with? It doessn’t need a Head of Aerodynamic Design to tell you that you can crack the Civils if you’re used to slogging 14 hours straight in your secluded room in Powai. If you top, it still proves nothing — even the General Studies paper has a healthy smattering of medical and engineering concepts, easy as pie for the specialists.

And while this iniquity goes on, how come we hear no whistle-blowing from the men "of unquestionable moral integrity and strong ethical fibre" in Dholpur House, who have been provided with those whistles precisely to ensure a level playing field? Maybe they’ve just given up. Wouldn’t you, if they gave you a C-I flat on Shahjahan Road for your comfort ever after?

Charity, however, was more than I could offer that Sunday morning, doggedly hunting my exam centre. And then, finally, there it was, the Sarvodaya Girls’ School, right where the Eicher Map had always insisted it was. The papers had already been given out, but there was one final column I had to fill in before they obliged me with mine. Just the usual stuff: name, date of birth, centre, category. `Indicate in writing whether SC, ST, OBC or General. For General write Other.’

`Other,’ I faithfully marked, and settled down to begin my tryst with the Great Indian Dream.