(Mis)adventures in the corridors of power
How do you manage the largest human gathering in history? What do you do when the responsibility of calming a riotous mob is entirely yours? Or, for that matter, if your shoe breaks just as you are heading out to greet the chief minister? For officers in the Indian Administrative Service—an elite few selected from among a few hundred thousand candidates in a year—such situations lurk right around the corner, every day, as do furtive mind games and power struggles, unexpected transfer orders and endless censure from all quarters.
In How to Placate an Angry Naga , Leena and Jiwesh Nandan, career bureaucrats who have been through the perils and pleasures of being a part of the civil service, present a candid and vivid picture of life on the inside of ‘the steel frame of India’. Narrated with dollops of humour, yet frequently bordering on the reflective, their stories—featuring whimsical bosses and autocratic politicians, over-zealous juniors and suspicious spouses, communal riots and railway disasters—cover the whole gamut of experiences of IAS life. Along the way, the authors reveal valuable lessons that aspiring officers aren’t taught in the training academy, such as how to tackle a visiting VIP’s not-so-official demands, or the best expression to adopt when a naked sadhu approaches you to voice his grievances, or the supreme usefulness of ending an official discussion with the phrase ‘Dekhenge’ (We’ll see). And, above all, they emphasize the need for officers to live up to the ideals the services have always stood for, without letting cynicism or complacency get in the way.