Buda Na Mano, IAS Weak Hai: How UP IAS officers’ humour turns true post Durga Shakti episode

THIS photo was taken during Uttar Pradesh IAS Association’s Week in 2006. A few IAS officers of the state staged this humorous one-act play seven years before young IAS Durga Shakti Nagpal was framed on a communal case and suspended. Read the banner carefully. It says: Buda Na Mano, IAS Weak Hai, which if translated will…
read like this: “Don’t feel bad, IAS officers are weak”. If Durga episode is anything to go by, what officers used as a piece of humour seven years ago is actually turning true. In fact, Nagpal’s suspension is yet to be revoked despite various IAS organisations had mounted pressure both in Lucknow and Delhi during the last 12 days. Their associations have met the political biggies but have yielded no results so far. Actually, the political outburst including Sonia Gandhi’s hard-hitting letter to Prime Minister is not the result of any powerful IAS officer’s pressure but the outcome of a sustained media campaign, both print and electronic, in favour of the young woman officer. Nagpal who had created a fear factor in the minds of sand mafia in western UP is now a household name in the country and abroad thanks to the media. And her powerful colleagues in the cadre have failed miserably to take her out of this 12-day-long humiliation. Maybe, a section of ruling political class in UP is now laughing with the same tagline: Buda Na Mano, IAS Weak Hai!