The perpendicular pronoun

Several things strike you immediately upon reading former Cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian’s autobiography.

Going by the stories he narrates of various postings from his early career to the end, he’s clearly very upright (in his first posting, he fired his servant who was misusing his name to get into cinemas free), and he’s smart (the idea of the Delhi Metro, TSR says without hesitation, came to him while visiting Singapore, and in one furious week of negotiations, during which he locked up warring factions of government in one room until they came up with a solution, he was able to get a basic project together).

And even if he is horribly pompous, TSR has a great way with words. When asked by examiners whether it was auspicious that the IAS interview was being held on the birthday of a well-known seer after whom he was named, TSR shot back “I will tell you when the results are out!”

TSR also quotes another interview one-liner from a batch-mate who was asked how administrative bottlenecks occurred — “my experience with bottles indicates that the bottlenecks are always at the top”!

TSR, in his own words, is not terribly fond of listening to advice. Early in his career, he’s told that it’s prudent to not put down one’s views in writing, and to try and leave one’s position open for as long as possible.

Yet, TSR goes and does just the opposite. Indeed, even after the horrors of the counter-guaranteed exorbitantly-priced fast-track power projects like Dabhol have become public, the former Cabinet secretary devotes considerable space in his memoirs berating a ‘junior official’ in the finance ministry for stalling these projects.

A man less full of himself wouldn’t brag about his role in supporting a host of such projects, but TSR as they say, is made of sterner stuff.

“The Indian nation”, says TSR, “would have been better off paying him a billion dollars, and retiring him from its services … towards the end of my tenure, I found that he was in fact worth five billion dollars!”

I have a friend in Enron who used to say much the same thing ten years ago, but today he spends his time bitching about Rebecca Mark and Ken Lay!

While memoirs such as this are full of lots of lovely anecdotes and have important learnings for both young and experienced officials, the sweeping generalisations in the book have to be treated as just that — as generalisations.

After berating all manner of officials, from the lowly finance ministry one to a senior one in the railway ministry, TSR says that had Mumbai been in any other country in similar circumstances, it would have had an auto-route over the sea by the 1960s.

While that sounds very good, in the real world, costs do matter. Let’s not forget the Delhi-Noida toll-road looked a winner when it was set up, but is today in the process of restructuring its debt.

Independent regulators for the power sector, among others, are a great idea, but had TSR spent some more time putting into place ways to ensure a regulator’s independence (perhaps such appointment should be ratified by Parliament), we wouldn’t have had the kind of regulatory capture that is being witnessed today.

Barring the honourable exception, most regulators today function as arms of the ministries they’re supposed to be independent of.

TSR, of course, was a very tough Cabinet secretary and, going by what one hears of his successors, quite a rarity, not unafraid to speak his mind.

At a meeting with the President where the civil aviation secretary was arguing that it was not possible for Air-India to spare two planes for a presidential visit overseas, TSR told him that it was on his initiative that a decision was taken that Air-India planes wouldn’t be pulled out of service arbitrarily and that, if need be, planes would be leased from the market.

Indeed, he even added, “gratuitously and totally needlessly”, that in many countries the prime minister or the president travelled by commercial aircraft, and that perhaps the entire First Class could be booked for the use of the president and his family, as had been done for the Queen of England when she visited Africa.

Eventually, needless to say, the president spoke to the prime minister, and Gujral agreed to sparing two Air-India planes.

Despite the sad episode of the Fifth Pay Commission, some gory inside stories of which TSR provides, the former Cabinet secretary seems quite happy with the achievements of the United Front government.

Indeed, he’s so soft on former prime minister Deve Gowda, he says the PM went out of his way to deliberately look unsophisticated, to show to visiting foreign dignitaries that he was of rustic, peasant stock.

Scraping the insides of his bulbous nose with his fingers while talking to World Bank president Wolfhenson, and rinsing his mouth loudly (and then swallowing the water) while lunching with IMF chief Camdessus, TSR would have us believe, were all just performances.

Deve Gowda’s statement to TSR, that he should be completely impartial and not allow the PM’s children to influence decision-making, finds mention in the book, and appears a major factor in how TSR views his former boss.

Pity that such an experienced bureaucrat didn’t keep in mind that one of Deve Gowda’s predecessors, Narasimha Rao, even sent out a letter to this effect!