“IAS wants to be a groom in every marriage function and a corpse in a death ceremony”, IRS officer P Satya Prasanth writes

INDIAN Revenue Service (IRS) officer P Satya Prasanth, who earlier had written a series of stories on the need to have parity between IAS and the rest of civil servants, has come out with a 9,000-plus-word piece: “India! Please Depute the Best Man to Deliver”. A Hyderabad-based deputy commissioner of income tax, Prasanth claims “IAS is an iron framework that has corroded”. (Disclaimer: BoI does not subscribe to most of the adjectives used for the IAS in the piece, though the writer has raised some valid points). BoI picks out 10 descriptions for the IAS, as being used by the IRS officer in the piece placed in his blog:

1. IAS is an iron framework that has corroded.
2. IAS is now an octopus which holds India back for the selfish gains of the members of this Service instead of ushering reforms for development of this huge country.
3. IAS is now not a Service but it is a lobby, a caucus or a gang which protects its own narrow interests first than that of the nation.
4. IAS is the only service which controls itself, gives itself from the left hand and also from the right hand. It now fixes no accountability or any liability under error of judgment, duty of care principle or mis-governance on its cadres. It only endeavours or attempts (as provided in the Mission Document of National Mission for Clean Ganga) to achieve a task but will not be answerable if it is not achieved.
5. IAS is now steel armour to shield monopoly, incompetency, inefficiency, corruption, complication, greed, delay and non-specialization.
6. The title IAS is boldly displayed with the name to bulldoze every qualification criteria.
7. Cadre Rules are drafted on the basic assumption that only IAS officers are the true faithful nationalists in India, rest are disloyal, dishonest, illiterates and fools, a concept borrowed from the colonial rule.
8. Looking at the Ministries/Departments headed by them, it makes one wonder why IAS denotes ‘Indian Administrative Service’ and not ‘Indian Avatar Service’ or ‘Indian Almighty Service’!!! Or better as ‘Indian Superman Service’ or ‘Indian Omnipotent Service’…
9. An IAS wants to be a groom in every marriage function and a corpse in a death ceremony.
10. God only knows how an IAS officer is suitable to be appointed as Director of Enforcement Directorate, an investigative arm of Government or as Director General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) or as Comptroller and Auditor General of India, or as Executive Director of IMF and World Bank or as RBI Governor.
For reading the full story, log into the IRS officer’s blog, www.satyaprasanthp dot blogspot dot in. Also, BoI requests all its readers not to post any comment that has objectionable content or the one which gets personal.