Before I sleep tonight

[Sanjeev Sabhlok <sabhlok@almaak.usc.edu>]

Too many comments I need to make on the things that have been stated
today on IPI. But before I call it a day, one question. Only one.

You folks have known me for 8 months now. I have nearly 16 1/2 years of
service in the IAS and if I were to go back next year, I would be in a
position which would soon propel me to ministries of GOI which interfere
in all kinds of matters on a daily basis. For the rest of my 21 years in
service (the retirement age now being 60), I will be able to make
decisions to interfere with your life. You have authorized me to do so.
You have empowered me to do so. You have selected me to do so.

One small little question: are you by now satisfied that I possess
sufficient wisdom to go and fix minimum wages across states, prices of
coal, oil, control the movement and trade of various commodities,
subsidize various sectors appropriately, and in general, perform - with
my super-brilliant mind, the tasks that NONE of you can! Remember the
nice words used for me by Vinay and sometimes by others (something about
being of limited strings)! Do you trust me even now? Is my brain
super-powerful?

Clearly many of you love me. You like my interference in your life. You
trust me!! Just because you have never ever (and nobody in India has
ever) spoken on policy issues with another IAS officer at such length,
and you realize that I am pretty ordinary, pretty human, and of pretty
much limited brain power, does not mean that others, with whom you have
not interacted, are better! Just because they are quiet, they are not
necessarily superior. I assure you, tho' here you have to take me at my
word.

Folks, I am not being arrogant, but I can clearly tell you one thing. I
am one of the very few highly qualified AND very sincere IAS officers in
the country today. When I was not so highly qualified, I was convinced
that I could interfere in the lives of my 'praja' with impunity since I
was the smartest person, chosen by the UPSC to be your 'mai-baap.' No
compunctions in my heart would have arisen had I not visited Australia
(my first foreign trip) and then, lived in USA. I was convinced that USA
and other countries were a sham; that India was indeed "mahaan." And
that my destiny lay in ruling this land of mine and its teeming people
as a senior official. But today I am humbled and know that I know not.

Today, much humbler, I know that I can only ruin my country more and
more by doing the tasks expected of me in most cases. Such as running
public sector companies, implementing poverty alleviation programs, etc.

There are some people on this list who think that they can retain their
old views since THEY can do this socialism thing right. They believe
that Sanjeev is a bit of a nut. He of course does not know anything. He
is very 'theoretical.' Charu, for example, is confident that he can fix
minimum wages. Rajeev Manikoth uses Hayek in a strange way to prove that
he can impose Sanskrit on India since he (i.e., Rajeev) knows best for
India (I only humbly request that we allow the parents to choose the
language!), others talk of economics as delinked from reality. Of
course, THEY can create reality perfectly, given a chance! We are
apparently talking irrelevant things like socialism and capitalism.

Well, Sir, I do possess the power to do whatever I please (and I
honestly mean that!) if I return to the civil service today. I am
"authorized" the arrogance that only Gods can aspire for. For an IAS
officer to not know the answer to every problem under the sun is unheard
of!! We are gods, Sir, in India!! We know everything!!

Do you trust me to deliver the goods for you?

I expose myself to you, the people, so that you can judge better that
bureacrats are people just like you. They know not anything by magic.
They know not how to run a business. They have no MBAs, no business
experience, no experience of anything productive (in general).

I wish to withdraw myself, as a senior civil servant of your country,
from this elevated position of having to set prices for onions and peas,
for wages and for rail travel, for everything. I wish to divest myself
of my power to interfere in your lives, to enter your establishments
uninvited. I wish to be your servant, as a bureaucrat. Not your master.
That is why I ask you to smash away this horrible state of affairs in
India.

Trust me. I do not use economists to buttress my otherwise weak
arguments. I have been speaking similar things without ever having read
half the economics that I have read now. I have **seen** too much, and I
speak from the heart. I am very pained when some of you (indirectly)
still trust me as your god. Trust me by NOT trusting me to be a god.
Think of me (and all your bureaucrats) as a simple human being who was
lucky to do well in the civil service exam one day. Who was able to
write better English than his neighbour.

Is that not good enough for you? That you and I are the same,
essentially, i.e., citizens of India? That you are actually more
competent than me in virtually everything, since you have the local
knowledge and are threfore in a position to best decide your choices and
future?

Begin to trust in yourself. For once in your life.

People. Don't blindly trust your ill-trained and arrogant bureaucrats
and politicians to do what they please.

Sanjeev






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