The cutting edge of governance

From 2G spectrum allocation to India staying out of RCEP, a former bureaucrat provides a peek into the inner functioning and decision-making processes behind key incidents

I Dared to Dial Differently: An Insider’s Account of the IAS

By J. S. Deepak

Published by 

Hachette India

XI+318 pages ₹799

 This book is a must-read for those who want to gain deeper insights into the way three of the Union government’s recent initiatives were planned and executed. One of them pertained to the conduct of the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi in 2010 and the other two were about policies on telecommunication from 2007 to 2010 and about India’s international trade negotiations in 2019. In all these cases, the role of the government became a little controversial. But this book provides fresh perspectives on each of them.

 

The author, a retired civil servant, was associated with policymaking in these areas in the governments led by Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi. Retired civil servants generally avoid providing a first-hand account of decision-making in areas where they played a key role so soon after they demitted those offices. That is yet another reason reading this book will be irresistible.

 

Mr Deepak (a self-confessed Kayastha from Uttar Pradesh whose original name, Deepak Saksena, got changed to J S Deepak, thanks to the school authorities in Bengaluru where he was born and grew up) is an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 1982 batch belonging to the Uttar Pradesh cadre. He served, among others, the ministries of communication and commerce, before becoming secretary to the department of telecommunication and India’s Ambassador at the World Trade Organization, a role in which he also advised the Union government on its negotiating stance during the proposed formation of a new trading bloc, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership or RCEP.

 

In recounting his days as a joint secretary in the department of telecommunications, where he was posted from 2008 onwards on deputation to the Union government, Mr Deepak brings out the many aspects of the governance deficit that had begun to afflict the Manmohan Singh government. How the telecommunication minister at that time simply disobeyed clear directives from the Prime Minister to conduct auctions for allocating 2G spectrum to telecom companies was as shocking as it was reflective of a weak coalition government. The same government, however, succeeded in conducting the first auction of 3G spectrum in 2010 in a manner that earned plaudits from all quarters. The governance structure had remained largely unchanged, except that some civil servants, including the author, were firm in their resolve to carry out an operation that should be seen as fair, transparent and efficient.

 

Mr Deepak’s strong resolve to fix the problems in the telecom sector, however, would not always yield the desired results. He made little headway in fixing the problems that afflicted the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited and the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited. What the author candidly brings out is the power and influence the minister and some of the senior officers can wield in thwarting any moves that junior officials wish to initiate to fix a problem in the system.

 

By the time the Narendra Modi government came close to taking the final decision on pulling out from RCEP, Mr Deepak was in Geneva as India’s Ambassador to WTO. An early votary of India joining the RCEP, Mr Deepak changed his mind because he felt the negotiators had tweaked an important element in their strategy of insulating India from a process of steep reduction in tariffs. Eventually, he played a key role in influencing the Modi government’s withdrawal from RCEP, a move that was criticised by many economists.

 

In 2010, Mr Deepak was drafted into a small team of officers to help the Manmohan Singh government complete preparations for the Commonwealth Games on time and prevent India from becoming a global laughing stock. The author believes that the Games would have been a disaster but for the last-minute intervention made by Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar and the team of special officers, of which he was a member. The inter-institutional politics and battles that contributed to the mismanagement are an eye-opener.

 

Apart from providing a peek into the inner functioning and decision-making processes behind these three incidents, Mr Deepak’s book will stand out for another reason. A memoir of a retired civil servant usually follows a chronological sequence of developments in his career. Mr Deepak’s memoir, containing nine sections, including 28 short chapters, is structured a little differently. The first section follows a chronological sequence. But the remaining sections focus on specific themes — be they the telecom policy challenges; the trade policy turns or saving the Commonwealth Games from a fiasco.

 

This structure allows Mr Deepak to delve into interesting themes and subjects like recounting the story of how the Uttar Pradesh civil servants attempted an unsuccessful campaign to end corruption in the service or how he dealt with various chief ministers in his long career. Nowhere does he pull punches while highlighting the weaknesses of many ministers or even his civil-servant bosses. He is as frank and forthright while praising some of his civil servant colleagues, including his bosses, and a Prime Minister, who was learned but turned out to be weak in enforcing what he believed was the right decision.

 

Though the title of the book is a bit of an overstatement, since there are no indications of his dealing with issues differently, the candid description of his journey as a civil servant in different governments makes it a good read.