Government Official or Servant of the Public? Part-I

With retirement from service usually comes the end of exciting moments. At least so far as professional matters are concerned. Having superannuated in 2005 from the post of Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh I took up an assignment as a Member of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA).

It turned out, in a way, to be a bridge between active service and a completely retired life. That period of five years provided its own moments of exhilaration as NDMA had just been constituted by a law of Parliament and was entrusted the responsibility of implementing the new legislation.

Upon my return to Hyderabad after completing my tenure in NDMA I was looking forward to leading a relatively peaceful life. I was, thus, prepared neither in body nor in mind for the headlines that greeted me in a popular daily Telugu newspaper that day.
It was the 11th of February 2012? My wife Usha had noticed the news item and, unsure of my reaction thereto, asked my son Arvind to show it me.

“Have you seen this”? he asked me, handing over the paper. “CBI to issue notice for appearance to Mohan Kanda”? was the front page headline!

I had for sometime been following the developments relating the ongoing investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the allegations of accumulation of disproportionate assets by some political leaders. Some senior officials of the state government had already appeared before officials of the investigating agency.

The proceedings were covered prominently in the media with an occasional sensational twist. In fact I had been the Chief Secretary of the state for about a year during the period covered by that investigation. The facts of the case, however, rang no bell in my mind and I could recollect no details of the role, if any, I had played in the matter. The news item, therefore, came as a surprise to me.

Needless to say, I was somewhat unhappy that my name should have been dragged into the public domain in that unpleasant context. One deals literally with thousands of issues, especially in a position such as the Chief Secretary to a state government, and it may not always to possible to reconstruct events and remember precisely what the sequence of events was and the reasoning that formed the basis of a particular recommendation made years ago.

In any case there was no wishing away the need to answer the call of duty, the irritation caused by the circumstances notwithstanding. I appeared to possess an uncanny gift for getting drawn into controversies however far unconnected they night appear to be from my functions and responsibilities.

I recalled with wry amusement my father’s words of advice once as we were sharing a meal. He urged me first to eat what I disliked the most. His point was that if something unpleasant was unavoidable it was better to get it over with at the very, beginning. As Shakespeare’s Macbeth said, “if it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘t were well. It were “done quickly.”

I had always benefitted from following that sage counsel scrupulously. Even if it was a question of the order in which a flight of stairs had to be claimed and some distance walked to reach a particular place, I invariably did the harder thing first. With a shrug I decided what to do and asked my assistant to connect me over the phone to the Deputy Inspector General (DIG) CBI who was heading up the investigation.

Apparently he was away and his deputy, a Superintendent (SP) of Police came on the line. I told him about what I had read in the papers and said that if it was true that the CBI wished to speak to me there was no need to issue a notice. I would gladly go and assist in any manner I could. In I told him I also that would, in fact, much rather prefer to go to the CBI office and do the needful immediately. The SP was somewhat surprised that I did not insist upon being formally summoned.

He also offered to meet me at home as what was required was only some clarifications in regard to some facts mentioned by other officials during the investigation. I told him that as the records of the case would be available for reference at the office. I would be able to refresh my memory, if I were that, especially in view of the passage of several years since the reported events had occurred. The two officials were good enough to agree that I could go to their office the same day, despite the fact that they had to reorganize their schedule which, naturally, was chock-full of commitments.

While travelling to the CBI office I thought back to the little exchange I had had sometime in 2005, with Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy the then Chief Minister of AP. I prided myself of generally being prompt in the disposal of papers. The CM was also not a person prone to complaint. He did, however, on one occasion ask me why a particular matter appeared to be getting delayed at my end.

Without so much as thinking about it I replied that whenever I shut my eyes while disposing of my papers, I found myself wondering whether what I intended to write would, years later, be called into question and, if so, found to be in order, by the likes of CBI, the State Assembly and Parliament, the Central Vigilance Commission and the Supreme Court! Rajasekhar Reddy appeared surprised at my somewhat exaggerated justification of delay.

I thereupon pointed out to him that the prevalent procedures at the centre and the states required officials to defend before such institutions the rationale behind decisions taken by governments. This was so even when the decisions in question had been taken with the prior approval of or, for the matters at the instance of the political masters. And officials had to perform this duty not only while in service but even after retirement.

I had said what I did at that time more for the sake of saying it. I and had not imagined that the full import of my prophetical statement would actually be realized in my own case in the future! And the irony was that, years after leaving service, I was back in the public eye for the wrong reasons (and disliking the fact as much as I did earlier), I had spent enough time in my time on drafting rejoinders to refute baseless speculation in the media. And correcting wrong impressions sought to be made in the public mind by politicians catching me in the crossfire while one party traded accusations with the other.