A Cabinet Secretary Looks Back

Title: A Cabinet Secretary Looks Back – From Poona to the Prime Minister’s Office
Author: B. G. Deshmukh
Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2004 (First)
ISBN: 9788172234744
Pages: 392

Bhalchandra Gopal Deshmukh was a 1951-batch IAS officer from Maharashtra who had served in his home state and Gujarat in the junior cadres and got promoted as Chief Secretary of Maharashtra. In the meantime, he was intermittently deputed to central government where he took up various assignments. He was posted as Cabinet Secretary in 1986 and appointed as Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister in 1989. He served three prime ministers in his career – Rajiv Gandhi and those who followed him, such as V P Singh and Chandrashekhar – until he retired from service in 1990. Deshmukh has written several books on his tenure in the government and this book is one of them. The parts which attract the readers’ attention is from his assuming the post of Cabinet Secretary. The period 1986-90 was noted for tremendous political upheavals in India and abroad, such as the Bofors scandal, Ram Janmabhumi issue, insurrection in Sri Lanka, heightened militancy in Punjab and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. The book presents a closer picture on some of these issues but unfortunately, it does not further clarify any of them.

Deshmukh declares at the outset that it is not his intention or objective to expose any sensational facts or to expose skeletons in the cupboard. If you get discouraged at this and decide not to read any further, you’ll not be much mistaken. The narrative is so lacklustre and neutered. His only aim is to motivate the young generation to join the civil service because the experience is ‘fascinating and self-satisfying’. The author seems to be a status-quo man with not much innovative ideas to transform or improve. He openly confesses that ‘it is impossible to remove corruption but people are happy if it is controlled and reduced’ (p.135). However, the book uncovers the pettiness of a few personalities, the most notable being V K Krishna Menon, who was the defence minister in Nehru’s cabinet. Our author was due for promotion as deputy secretary and his name was sent to the defence ministry of which Menon was the head. At that time, he was pissed with the finance minister C D Deshmukh who had raked up the jeep corruption scandal against Menon. He stoutly refused to accept the author declaring ‘I don’t want a Deshmukh in my ministry’ (p.52), referring to his namesake who was Menon’s bete noire. There are glimpses of the miserable license raj in the book which was introduced by Nehru and Indira and was stifling India’s industrial growth. We read about a chief minister finalizing the list of who should get cars. Remember that all of them had paid the full price out of their pockets but could not get delivery of the vehicle because the government was determining the number of vehicles to be produced in a given month. There were restrictions on private industrialists to set up plants with their own money. Government sometimes refused to grant licenses, according to the claims of their competitors on the plea that they’d lose market share if the new plant came through! Altogether, the system was planned to work in a way as to maximise corruption. 

Having served in the highest echelons of Indian bureaucracy including the home department, the hollowness and obvious duplicity in his assessment of the communal situation in some trouble spots in North India are to be attributed to political correctness rather than naivety. He believes economic parameters to be the cause of communal unrest in Moradabad and Aligarh. He says that Muslim workers did not earn fair wages while Hindu financiers and traders reaped the real profits. See the deceitful comparison? He does not say whether Hindu workers earned fair wages or Muslim financiers reaped profits. All this sophistry is to avoid pointing out the real cause of communal clashes – fanaticism. Further, he opines that Muslim youth were not properly educated and faced unemployment which led them to antisocial activities that ultimately turned into communal trouble (p.106). He does not stop to think for a moment whether it was one of the causes that drove Muslims into a sordid orgy of violence in 1985 following the Supreme Court’s verdict forcing a little-known man named Mohammed Ahmed Khan to pay alimony to his divorced ex-wife Shah Bano Begum. That’s why readers reach the conclusion that duplicity and selective amnesia are prerequisites to secularism of the Indian variety. Quite naturally, Deshmukh justifies the 1975-77 Emergency with the remark that ‘if some progress had to be made, gentle force is required to enforce discipline among staff and make citizens accept their responsibility’ (p.84). He has a very low opinion of the military top brass, especially General Sundarji who is accused of canvassing for the post of field marshal for himself. Exposing an unrealistic and fanciful mindset, the author advocates for a cut in defence spending through effective foreign policy which can develop friendship with our enemies that would substitute for the shortage of funds to buy arms (p.167). This is a strange comment from a Cabinet Secretary and it is fortunate that the government was sane enough to consign this idea to the dustbin. There is a section in the book that exposes the blatant intervention the executive made on the prerogative of the Election Commission of India. Rajiv Gandhi decided in October 1989 that national elections should be held on 22nd, 24th and 26th of the following month. The author himself conveyed this information to Peri Shastri, the election commissioner, who was very agitated at first at this shameless appropriation of the Commission’s authority, but later fell in line (p.213).

The author had a close official relationship with Rajiv Gandhi and he closely watched how Indira Gandhi functioned as the prime minister. As a result, this book provides some shocking revelations about the administrative tenures of the mother-son duo. Indira handled her state chief ministers like puppets. Vasant Rao Naik in Maharashtra was asked to step down after she promoted his rivals in the party to create trouble. The reason for this disgraceful act was that he was getting popular with good agricultural reforms. Naik resigned in February 1975. Under Indira’s tenure, corruption became more rampant and refined. The system of the party claiming a good cut in all major contracts, especially with foreign supplies, was well established (p.174). This was claimed to be proved in the HDW submarine case where the German company paid 10 per cent commission to Indian agents in buying submarines for the Indian navy. The author was informed that Indira was very annoyed with the agent as he did not pass on the promised amount from the commission to the Congress party and she refused to meet him on her next visit to the UK (p.203). This leads him to lament that ‘as cabinet secretary, I was aware of the widespread corruption in the central bureaucracy, but I could not do much in the atmosphere then prevailing when political corruption was overwhelming’ (p.153). Rajiv Gandhi had far more integrity in this regard, but he faltered in other areas. Rajiv’s inexperience and immaturity in administration and political matters created acute problems. He reshuffled the council of ministers 22 times in a space of 39 months and there was a virtual merry-go-round in some of the ministries. He was more inclined towards suave advisors and officials who came from public schools, could speak and write good English and had a gloss both in appearance and presentation. He was impressed with short-term results and impatient when an officer tried to explain a long-term strategy that was bound to be slower. There was another face of Rajiv than the gentle and calm one he wished to project. He had little respect for some opposition chief ministers such as NTR, Karunanidhi and Devilal and used to fight with them in NDC meetings. He did not show necessary respect and consideration in parliamentary proceedings. He was unwilling to attend parliamentary sessions unless absolutely necessary (p.175).

In the final section of the book, Deshmukh reminisces about his time with V. P. Singh and Chandrashekhar as the principal secretary to the prime minister. Regarding Singh, he observes that he implemented Mandal Commission recommendations to split Hindu votes and crush the BJP whose support he loathed to accept and with whom he did not share a public platform in the election campaign. This same frame of mind regarding assuming power at any cost afflicted Chandrashekhar too. His overarching ambition to become the prime minister made him cast away his scruples and morality and take the help of Rajiv Gandhi whom he heartily disliked, if not detested. As a private person, he was a gem of a man, but his ambition turned him into a typical Indian politician. The author also handled the Kashmir issue and bemoans the pathetic situation created by Article 370 of the Indian Constitution – which conferred special rights to Jammu and Kashmir – without identifying the root cause which was the article itself that was finally scrapped in 2019. He notes that refugees from Pakistan who arrived in Kashmir during Partition could not be granted citizenship due to the special status of the state and displays impotent rage at the government’s helplessness!

The author led a clean career without any adverse reflection or irregularity. In fact, he boasts about this in a contented way that the only conviction he faced was for a traffic violation of sounding the horn in an area where it was banned. The book contains an account of what the author knows about the Bofors scam and concludes that neither Rajiv Gandhi nor any member of his family received any portion of the kickbacks. There are no private or personal anecdotes in the book. His marital status would have remained an enigma had a photo of the author and his wife with the chief minister’s family been not included. There are separate chapters on Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab. Reading the dull passages, readers feel that the author never took up any challenging job, always bowing to senior bureaucrats or politicians and feeling contented for even minor accomplishments. His career remained shuttling between the central and state administrations in New Delhi and Mumbai respectively. The book is designed with a bit too much bureaucratic perspective. Transfers and postings of secretaries after a change in administration are given undue prominence.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star