Babu master
The passing away of a dear old friend, K.P. Singh, in Delhi last week was significant in the lives of many senior babus. Though many of his best and senior babu buddies have passed away before Singh, his memorial service was replete with the real heaven-born who were still around. Though never a bureaucrat himself, Singh will be
remembered by a slew of babus in key positions across the capital and even more in Uttar Pradesh. He strode the vast bureaucratic plains in a manner that today’s weak shadows of lobbyists could never dream of or even hope to aspire. Though he worked even long stints for the Birlas, then ITC, and finally the Shrirams, he never really felt or sounded like somebody who was carrying out any master’s orders.
Singh was a great analyst of policymaking and surrounded himself with people, ideas, debates and discussions and even politicians. A small private cabal, in typical Singh’s understated style that called itself modestly the Politburo, would meet at his house and discussions would ensue on how the country was being governed and what needed to be done. His passing away leaves a huge hole in the informal power network that Delhi babus had long relied on. His warmth, his concern for the individual and his family and his ability to create new networks and share them freely were refined characteristics that made the man truly a colossus of his time.
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The darker side
Timing is all, goes the old adage. And B.V. Kumar, former chief of the Economic Intelligence Bureau, got it down pat. His recent authorial work, The Dark Side of Black Money, has come out just when tales of corruption and illicit gains are uppermost in the nation’s mind. Naturally, there is a great deal of interest in Mr Kumar’s observations since the 1958 batch Indian revenue officer spent several decades dealing with economic crimes.
Mr Kumar’s detailed narration of the seamier side of government and business is of great interest to the lay reader rather than veteran observers, for whom many findings would be all too familiar. Still, Mr Kumar exposes the less publicly known facts such as business houses regularly funding members of Parliament to influence decision-making. He also notes that India has lost more than $400 billion in illicit financial flows — a figure that Julian Assange of WikiLeaks may also have inputs on soon. In the present gloomy climate, Mr Kumar has painted a dreary picture which his fellow tribesmen would do well to ponder over.
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