IAS versus IFS

the mains form is here and i guess it will be with you all very soon if it isnt already there. i’m having some last minute jitters filling up the services could some of you kindly give your opinions on what i’ve written below…

ifs – because of navtej sarna, nirupama rao, arundhati ghose – I want to be
in their shoes someday!! early career is great you get to learn new
languages interact with new people visit distant capitals. there is greater
camaraderie amongst batch mates because of a small batch size. time for
intellectual blogging. good exposure and opportunity for personal growth.
usually the best working environment which govt can provide. organising
cultural programs. I enjoy going to the india habitat centre often and
organising the same abroad will be great e.g. dance music. you don’t get
thrown away to distant villages and states. your cadre doesn’t become a
reason for one to contemplate leaving the job.

later in career too one could possibly join rajya sabha or like our new VP
mr. ansari hope to reach a titular office of grandeur.!

ias – because the tag is easily recognised by one and all. it reverberates
through peoples head as someone not to be messed with. minor irritants in
life get sorted out easily. how far is it true for ifs? however early in
career to be thrown amongst the villagers in an office which is a leaky road
side shack wouldn’t be a great thing. ass licking your way up the postings
and promotions ladder for getting anything worthwhile. I believe right now
im comfortably placed in new delhi, with ias, delhi itself would become a
luxury destination. why demote myself in life? but then top 45 ranks without
an aberration have picked IAS in 2006! maybe I missed some point? or maybe
they are all way too inspired to help the down trodden.?

policy formulation quite interesting but implementation is only – alright.
preparing answers for parliament more clerical sort of work in my opinion.

messing around with goons of politicians when polling has gone wrong and
I’ve to order a repoll would be dangerous for the family. staying in states
I will get a meagre Rs. 15 per month for children education. it would be
much better putting them in british school or american school via ifs.

what use is the intelligence and energy which I will bring to the government
if integrity itself will be battered and will force me to kill my ideals or
get out to save my skin!

later in the career one could again join rajya sabha or join politics e.g.
yashwant sinha, jaswant singh, manmohan singh and so on..

I believe there is some restriction imposed by mea against interacting with
certain people when on a mission abroad. is that true?

eventually I reasoned it will be luck if I got in top 50! so why not put ias
on top, ifs has a greater chance to come anyway! and would I be leading a
frivolous/fake life in ifs for the work profile available?
e.g. in the nuke deal what couldn’t be sorted out by the diplomats was
eventually sorted out by ias and technocrats. so will I only be a curious
traveller and a drama organiser in ifs at the end of it?

how difficult is it for an ias officer to go abroad… my neighbours just
returned from a 3 year posting to washington, he is from the 1979 ias batch
but he seems to have some major links as he was in delhi 10 years prior to
that and has now shifted his madhya pradesh office to MP bhawan in new delhi
and will stay here till his retirement! this is just an exceptionally well
connected case. what is the usual life..

I hope I can get this sorted out and be sure about things help will be
appreciated 🙂

Women on top

As long as women stay on top, India stays on top. When men get on top, India goes down. Wondering what a female chauvinistic pig i am ? a traitor to the men folk ?

Not really, this only refers to the kamasutric sexual position which can help bring down the population of a country where an average woman produces more than 3 kids in her life time.

Interestingly, it is not only the Biology class in School which brings smirks on the faces of students. In fact even economics class does so when it mentions the causes of population rise in India as Sex being a Rural Recreation.

Today 158.4 million people in India live in urban slums and 234 million in all are below the poverty line. Worldwide 2007 is the watershed year which will be remembered in the coming times when the urban population exceeded the rural population. This mass exodus won’t only result in Mega cities such as NY or Tokyo or Mumbai but also shrinking cities right from San francisco to Detroit to Leipzig to Ivanovo to Bangkok and Banjul eventually causing their extinction.

Today ignoring the poor and slum dwellers in the battle against population can spell the death knell for mega cities in the 22nd century. By any means, whatsoever as humane in a way as possible population increase must be curbed.

Sonia Gandhi in a speech in Netherlands recently commented that, “Only Centrist politics works in India due the the diversity present in the nation”. Madam, have you wondered what will happen when the 1971 population census will cease to operate, for the purpose of determining Parliamentary representation of states, and the next census at 2026 will be adopted? The southern states controlling their population very well will have diminished representation in the Parliament in the wake of the fact that North Indian BIMARU states of UP, MP, Bihar and Rajasthan will have the majority say in running the country, simply because they failed to control their populations.

Yes of course why will the South want to stick to India as it is? It will want a partition. India as we know it won’t exist anymore. Also, why southern states might want to split is the drying up of Fresh Water sources in North India owing to Global warming by 2030 but that is outside the scope of this post.

The time is gone when Indira Gandhi imposed high handed and inane measures which kept future parties from touching the population issue with a 20 foot pole. The public has forgotten those times.

The need of today is tightening the population control measures even if they sound absurd as long as they work! Out of the box thinking is the need of the hour and not romping on the box!

Women on top, Sonia Gandhi and Pratibha Patil are you listening? The balls are in your court.

Bureaucratic parlance – What Vs. Why

What is what and what is why? why is what and why is why?

Which of the above two question makes grammatical sense as it is ? It’s quite obvious the former question.

It is stated most often in this world that he who goes to the root cause is the one who can deal best with the issue. At other times it is said not he who asks ‘what’ but he who asks ‘why’ is miles ahead. Let’s take a simple example to prove the importance of what if not its superiority.

Suppose an IPS/IAS officer faces trouble with a mob vandalizing his district. He comes to the scene and tries to take a note of what happened.

The “What” route.

Q1 What happened?

Q2 What is to be done?

Q3 What does the rule book say?

Q4 What does the senior say?

Q5 What does common sense say?

Finally apply the solution and the situation is resolved.

The “Why” route.

Q1 Why did it happen?

Q2 Why was this not averted?

Then if the person in charge is smart he takes the ‘What’ route and otherwise he gets bogged down by the reformist stand. In case he continues the ‘why’ approach eventually he will fail at serving the system sooner than later.

‘Why’ is a right wing reformist word associated with reformers, researchers and academicians. Not with people who have to be spontaneous fast and effective and have to perform on the spur of the moment.

So which approach is superior? In my opinion proclaiming the superiority of one approach over the other is initially, on the face of it for “what” approach. However realistically all answers to “what” questions have to be answered with “whys” and only then the next step follows.

Both questions beautifully complement each other, without one assisting the other most mysteries of this world would have remained unresolved today.