When Courage ends Stupidity begins
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(Ramkrishna Ayyar can be seen in the in the above Photo)
By Ramkrishna Ayyar
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Before I begin, I would like to recite a poem:

King David and King Solomon
Led merry, merry lives
With many, many lady friends
And marry many wives
And when old age crept over them
With many, many qualms
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms
-Anonymous

I don’t claim to have the qualities of King David or King Solomon, and what I am going to say is neither Proverbs nor Psalms. It is a mere citation of some of my experiences in official life which I hope will be mildly interesting to those connected with governments in India.
I may mention that more than ten years of my thirty-year career in the Indian Audit and Accounts Service were spent in the service of the government of Bombay / Maharashtra. I was initially deputed for an innocuous job designated as Deputy Financial Advisor for Koyna Project without specifying exact duties and responsibilities – in fact, the post was created to accommodate a son-in-law of an ICS officer who was well-connected with the top bureaucrats of the government of Bombay, and this person (who was junior to me in service by a year) found it irksome, as his boss, who was the financial advisor, did not give him any work, nor did he seem to be aware of his “existence.”
My friends, like Mr. Sharma and. Mr.Rao, who held high positions in the Indian administrative service, had dealings – difficult and delicate – with politicians who were their superiors in the government. I did not have to deal with many politicians but dealt mainly with officers of different departments –both state and central- and I would like to talk to you about some of my contacts with the Indian Civil Service and Indian Administrative Service officers who were my superiors or contemporaries and my experiences, some of which were happy and some of which were not so happy..
In my initial year of service, I had occasion to demonstrate my capacity for intelligent and useful scrutiny of projects which impressed the then-Finance Minister of Bombay, Dr. Jivaraj Mehta. He was instrumental to give me more responsibilities in the Finance Department and for project scrutiny. I may mention, in this connection, one particular case relating to the proposal for execution of a bridge over the Thana Creek. It was a mammoth project and was a pet one of the then-PWD Secretary, Mr. S.G.. Barve, who was a distinguished member of the Indian Civil Service. While examining the proposal, I had a number of queries which required clarification and the file was returned for answers by the PWD. An “angry” secretary who apparently got offended by my noting in the file wrote in the file that the proposal was very clear and did not need any clarification, but the ’’F.D. Pundit’’ seems to need further education. He nevertheless answered all of the queries and marked the file to the Finance Secretary (N.T. Mone). The Finance Secretary, usually a mild-mannered officer, wrote on the margin of the comments by the PWD-Secretary calling me F.D. pundit that “such levity in noting should be deprecated.” He noted further that he was glad that the PWD Secretary still was able to answer the queries of the finance department.
In spite of this initial confrontation, Mr. Barve soon became an ardent admirer of my handling of the proposals of the PWD in the Finance Department and was reported to have given instructions to his private secretary to segregate and put up files seen by me in bulk for his signature without even opening the flaps. In fact, in one instance, I happened to detect an attempted fraud in a tender case sent for clearance by the Finance Department. This tender case was seen by three experts: one of the I.S.E. and two of the ICS. I got encomiums for this extraordinary detective work. Mr. Barve chose to mention me by name and praise my work openly in a public meeting organized in Nashik by the government of Bombay at the inauguration of the Bombay engineering research institute, in the presence of the Chief Minister (Y.B. Chavan) and Dr. Jivaraj Mehta.
Soon thereafter, during the bifurcation of Bombay state into Maharashtra and Gujarat on 1/5/1960, my services were sought by both Gujarat and Maharashtra, and Maharashtra succeeded in getting me and promoted me to the position of financial advisor to the government.
I would like to mention two instances in which I had a mild confrontation with colleagues of the Indian Administrative Service after 1960. The one – minor one – was relating to a proposal for a grant for the secretariat Gymkhana which the Resident under secretary, a junior officer of the IAS, sent directly to me on which I had raised a few relevant queries which he found it difficult to answer. The next day, he brought me a note containing this proposal which he prepared anew and got approved by the finance secretary without informing him about the previous one in which I had made queries and which he had destroyed. In fact, I asked him what would happen if I mentioned this action of his to the finance secretary. He was worried, but I did not want to make it an issue, but it only revealed the extent of duplicity which a junior officer was capable of doing.
In early 1961, due to heavy rains, an earthen dam under construction across the Pansat River collapsed and it resulted in a huge twenty-feet wall of water flowing down the river, bursting an existing Khadakvasla dam and causing enormous damage in the city of Pune. The government decided to appoint a committee of inquiry under Justice Naik. At that time, I was called by the finance secretary to his room and was told that the commission under Justice Naik was being appointed and Mr. Naik wanted that Mr. Madan, an IAS officer and a colleague of mine in the Finance Department, should be appointed as the secretary. Mr. Madan was sitting with the Finance secretary at that time. Apparently, Mr. Madan wanted to continue as deputy secretary in the Finance department at Bombay and also work as secretary of the commission in Pune and draw salary for both posts. The Bombay civil service regulations allow a person holding full charge of two posts at the same time to draw full salary in one and half-salary in the other. I mentioned to the finance secretary that the intention of this rule is to provide for short-term arrangements, and not for an arrangement which would extend to a couple of years. When Mr. Madan heard this, he became very much agitated, and the Finance secretary humorously told him that the proposal when made, would be cleared by himself without calling for my remarks . Mr. Madan felt vengeful and wanted to cause harm to me for suggesting the rule position to the Finance secretary. He acted in two ways: One, he was probably most active in getting the IAS officers association of Maharashtra to pass a resolution that an outsider of the IAAS had been holding the senior post of financial advisor when senior IAS officers were available and that I should be re-patriated to my parent department. When the proposal to extend my deputation in the finance department was made, he, as the administrative deputy secretary , noted that my deputation should not be extended and I should be re-patriated, and he passed on the case to the finance secretary who was an IAS officer who happened to be holding earlier the post of secretary of irrigation after the retirement of Mr. Barve and who knew my capacity for work and with whom I had differences in clearing proposals. He gave some reason for extending my services for six months, and at the end of that period continued my services calling for the file himself and noting on it. He had a tremendous appreciation of my work in the finance department and gave me other responsibilities in addition to my Finance Department work, such as Chairman of a committee to inquire into hospital stores management ,member of the Haffkine Institue Reorganisation Committee, Secretary of Steering Committee for Bombay’s Development. etc. In the latter capacity I could succeed in completing the massive water supply pipeline from the upper Vaitarana reservoir and do the initial work for augmenting the water supply system from the new dam across Bhatsai river. In fact the hydraulic engineer of the Bombay municipal corporation hailed me as a modern bhagiratha! I was however disappointed as I could not get the approval for the metro system in Bombay due to impediments by the railway authorities- they delayed the consideration by getting a committee headed by Mr. De Costa a retired railway engineer appointed to consider the requirements of metro systems in all major cities..
On the basis of my experience, I would like to mention a few lessons.
Don’t stall or stress over whether you are doing the right thing. You will always know the answer in your heart. Rather than be discouraged, always remember that rejection and resistance are almost guaranteed when you are doing something very important and very special.
Keep in mind that whatever you do, mistakes are part of life. So don’t waste time kicking yourself for the past.
Of course, one must remember where courage ends and stupidity begins. The truth is we are all born with potential greatness and blessed with numerous opportunities to soar to dizzying new heights.
(Writer is a former Accountant General of the Maharashra State, India. He was also financial advisor of the Maharashtra State Government. Besides that he is a deep thinker.)
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