There is a spate of writings by civil servants – bureaucrats, diplomats, policemen and security analysts on issues concerning their life and times. Most of them are autobiographical in nature, and while the focus may be on their personal life and the trial and tribulation faced by them in the course of their careers, they (also) cover the significant milestones in the ecosystem which they served and shaped. So whether it is KC Singh writing the times he spent with Gyani Zail Singh or Rajan Kashyap’s Beyond the Trappings of Office, or Gurjit Singh’s The Harambee Factor on India-Africa Economic Partnership, RI Singh’s Turmoil in Punjab and Sanjeev Chopra’s We the People of the States of Bharat – these books provide a valuable insight into the way India has been governed. We have books from Anil Swarup, Amarjit Sinha and SY Quraishi which document the best practices of governance and are inspirational for the next generation of civil servants.
The serving DGP of Uttarakhand Ashok Kumar as well as ex DGPs Anil Raturi and Aloke Lal have also been writing extensively on a range of subjects – from cyber-crime to musings of a reflective civilian to stories of crime and passion. Earlier too, civil servants like Dr RS Tolia, SS Pangti and Indu Kumar Pande have expressed themselves through their writings. The former CAG Vivek Rai has been prolific in his output and PK Basu has produced an edited volume called the Making of a Nation which is a compilation of articles by thirty serving and retired officers. In fact, we have also had an interesting collaboration between the spymasters of India and Pakistan AS Dulat and Assad Durrani in narrating their perspective in ‘The Spy Chronicles’. Many of our generals too – from JJ Singh to Ian Cardozo to Gen Brar have written on how their actions shaped our current history. This is just an illustrative list, but the point being made is that unlike the ‘third person narratives’ of Imperial gazetteers during the days of the Raj, these books take a position in which the civil servant as the author bats from the front foot.
It is true that all first person accounts have to be taken with a pinch of salt. But in the absence of archives, organized record keeping and the refusal of both the Union and the state governments to declassify records even after the standard term of four decades (the norm followed by Great Britain and US), the historian and contemporary analyst has no option but to turn to those writings to get an insight into how decisions were made at several crucial junctures in the life of our nation. And often, these reflective writings also hold important learning lessons for the future.
