Why I am not a civil servant
I have so far been discussing the institution of the civil service from the point of view of a radical reformer, who wants to improve things, but has no personal axe to grind. No scores to settle and no ghost to exorcise. This is the truth. I have so far kept away from personal matters for two reasons. I wanted to focus on mater which had to a general rather than a merely personal validity, and I wished to avoid a charge, which I fear would still be leveled at me the charge which I fear would still be leveled at me the charge of insufferable personal vanity. Still I should be less than honest if I claimed that personal factors played no part in my decision to leave the civil service. It is now time to set out my own testament, and to share with the reader my own peculiar outlook on the world which has led me, inexorable to the path which I have followed. If by so doing I find some understanding, if not sympathy, it would be sufficient reward for having written this book.
My first reason for leaving the civil service is the loss of personal freedom that is involved in the whole business. It may be argued that all salaried employment necessarily involves a certain loss of freedom. This is true, as far as it goes, but the degree of curtailment differs in each profession. In scientific or technical or academics jobs, one may indeed enjoy complete functional autonomy, being subject only to ma loosely defined control for purely administrative reasons. Ideally such control only provides the necessary support and backup, which enables the real workers to concentrate their efforts on scientific or technological accomplishment. At the other extreme from this ideal, we may take the case of convicts undergoing imprisonment, whose activities are completely determined by the prison staff. Between these two extreme, there is vast range of jobs; and it may surprise some people to know that the civil service is closer to the lower end of the scale than the top.
This may seem a bizarre statement, but let me explain senior civil servant, for all the prestige and privileges which they enjoy are only tools of the government. The higher they rise in their professions, the more closely they have to serve their political masters. The top civil servant, say the cabinet secretary or the chief secretary of a state, are completely at the beck and call of the politicians. To those who do not have direct experience of how things are run, these grandees may appear remote, awe-inspiring figures, but what I have said is the truth. The plain fact is the top mandarins have no professional brief of their own. They exist only to do the bidding of the government. Their raison de etre is to obey and serve. This is not service in the ennobling sense of philanthropy or charity; this is service in the sense of sub serving the ends of power. It is true that in return for this submission they enjoy considerable influence and power of their won. But this power, let it be remembered is the power of a satellite, which shines not with a personal luster but in reflected glory. I think there is something degrading about the whole business.
Yes, it is fact the civil servants are privy to many state secrets that they move constantly in the rarefied upper echelons of the government and as a consequence some of the glamour of power rubs off on them. Above all they are permanent, while politicians are only temporary. This enables them to make their own off the records claims- that they and not the politicians- are the permanent rulers of the nation. All this may be true enough but is it therefore sufficient reason to hold the civil service in high esteem. To my mind there is something distasteful in arguments of this kind. In my view their position is morally equivalent to that of the begum and her low born paramour who ran the country in the reign of Mohammad Shah Rangeela. This is the power of royal favorites and intriguing courtiers. Such power deserves corn rather than esteem.
Of course what is at bottom of this apotheosis of the civil service is really a worship of power as such. India is not unique in this. In turkey during the years of the sublime Porte it was a ruler that the top civil servant had to be eunuchs. Surprisingly it became a custom among the gentry to have the eldest son castrated at an early age to prepare him for initiation into the civil service. There may still be many, who are prepared to be emasculated for the sake of entry into the gilded purlieus of the civil service. I prefer to keep my natural endowments and face the rigors of being an ordinary citizen.
If it is degrading to be employed in doing the bidding of politicians; what makes this servitude doubly galling is that the business of politics is to do with belief and convictions. It is concerned with the pursuit of value. That at least is how things ought to be – but there is shocking gap between what ought to be and what is. In practice Indian politics is a game completely devoid of moral purpose. It is the pursuit of power by any means. This state of affairs may be tolerable for those who have no belief or convictions of their own, but as the reader may have inferred, I have quite a few convictions of my own. To forsake one’s faith, And to devote oneself to the bidding of those whose motives are simply to consolidate their own power, to be forced to serve the personal ambitions of unscrupulous politicians behind the ethics of public service, this is the kind of daily deception and institutionalized humbug that makes the job of a senior civil servant particularly unbearable to me.
Let me also add that the perks and privileges that go with the job, and that are supposed to gild the pill, make the medicine bitterer. Public service is satisfying when it is accompanied by the Spartan ethic-lofty ideals and simple living. This has been the personal creed of many of our best civil servants. To this is due the present status and prestige of the civil service. It is therefore preserve to cite the liberal perks and privileges as the main reason for joining the civil service. This is precisely not the reason for which anyone should join the civil service. Those who are fond of the good things of life should go into business, or other highly paid professionals. They should set their sights on becoming world bank consultant, so that they can advise their countries on how to avert economic collapse on a thousand dollars per diem, or try their hands at becoming supreme court lawyers, or advertising executives, or best selling novelists or record breaking sportsmen or heart surgeons, or any of the other icons of modern life, they should not bring in this mercantile culture into the civil service and destroy its old values.
Personally I would go beyond this. For me the Spartan ethics meant giving up not merely the trapping of authority but authority and privilege itself. I think this was the meaning of my leaving the civil service; I saw it as an act of self abnegation. That the purpose of life is not to be someone-however powerful or important, but to do something worthwhile, however insignificant it may seem to others. A man expresses his essential being only in his actions. His action alone has moral quality. The rest is only word-mere dross. Every good deed is good enough in my scheme of things for the spiritual equivalent the Nobel Prize, and in this field the Prime Minster and his peon compete on an equal footing. Indeed, the peon often has a better chance of doing something purely disinterested and therefore morally superior.
I also define success and failure in a different way, some might say in an idiosyncratic way. To my mind every life is a kind of failure. The prospect of disease, the loss of loved ones, the travails of old age and the final catastrophe of death, make nonsense of our claims of success. But real failure is in not being able to live up to your convictions; in not trying to work out your dreams. To hold oneself back from some long cherished goal for reason of prudence-that is real failure. By the same token success is in taking the plunge- in challenging oneself, in making the maximum demands on one’s skill, ability courage etc. the cardinal virtue of civil servant is caution, they7 are forever holding back, hedging their bets, saving their skins and toning down their advice, with judicious provisos and caveats. This is not mu cup of tea, to me it is anathema.
I started this chapter with the concept of freedom. To me freedom means standing alone. It means ploughing one’s own furrow, it means having the courage to stand on one’s own two feet, without institutional props. The civil service is a large organization with plenty of members who are roughly equal in terms of ability, in such an organization it is the pushy adventurer with the knack of handling important people, who makes his way to the top. But the end does not justify the means. Indeed the end itself is unworthy of serious effort, because at the end of the day, one only ends up serving important politicians no matter how high one rises. The games is therefore not worth the candle.
This self assertion may be heroic but the skeptic may well ask, what is one to do with this freedom. My answer would be follow your nature bent. I do believe that every individual is born with a unique individuality; an inner nature that one must follow. Those who suppress this inner nature lead miserable lives- however successful they may be in a worldly sense. The problem is that most people do not know their own natures. They are so much under the influence of conventional and social conditioning that they take success in the worldly sense to be the only goal worth striving for. Knowing oneself is the hardest thing in the world. Unless one is driven by an inner demon, as great or revolutionaries may be, one may never look deep enough to glimpse one’s own inner depth. It requires a disciplines; a purification of the mind to know oneself.
Still without this self knowledge one cannot find fulfillment. In my case this knowledge came early. I knew when I joined the service. My destiny was to articulate the vague aspirations of youth into a coherent system, a blue print for a better world. But I could not be content with mere abstractions. I wanted to translate my vision into reality. I wanted to build a better world in practice as well as theory, and I did not think the civil service provided me with a large enough canvas for my dreams. This is why I am not a civil servant.
